Heed the Thunder (15 page)

“Goddam you, Alf! Hand over that money.”

“The money’s in Omaha, Bark. Banked.”

“Then you’ll write me a check for it. I’ll have it certified before—”

“No,” said Courtland.

“You’ll do it or I’ll kill you!”

“I won’t do it. Go ahead and kill me if you like.”

Courtland laughed pleasantly and began drawing on his gloves. He looked at Bella and winked. And the banker’s finger tightened around the triggers of the gun.

“I ain’t kidding with you, Alf. I mean to have that money.”

“Or my life,” nodded Courtland. “Well, you don’t get the money so you may as well start shooting.”

“I mean it!” persisted Barkley.

“So do I mean what I say. I’m not going to give you back the money. If you want to kill me, go ahead. I can’t say that I blame you in the least.”

The shotgun wavered. Slowly the barrels drooped.

The banker brushed his brow with his hand.

“Alf,” he stammered, piteously, “what’s come over you, anyway? Are you sick, man?”

“You might put it that way.”

“Give me the money, Alf. Just sign it back to me, and we’ll forget all—”

“No.”

Barkley stared at him perplexed. He opened his mouth to speak and his voice choked with the mingled impulses of threats and pleadings. He sagged back down in his chair, his mouth hanging open childishly.

“You!” said Bella.

And Courtland turned to her. “Yes? You had something to say?”

“Never mind,” she said sullenly.

Courtland looked from her to Barkley. He laughed. Abruptly he turned his back on them and walked out.

…Myrtle Courtland saw him coming across lots. But she did not, of course, do anything so unladylike as to go forth and meet him. She waited until he had gained the porch; then, with a theatrical gesture, she flung open the screen and extended her arm, allowing one formal hand to dangle in front of him.

He laughed.

He shoved past her.

Puzzled, Myrtle let the screen close, and, as an afterthought, she closed the door.

Courtland was standing in the center of the shabby room, his hands on his hips, smiling strangely. A little timidly she took a step toward him.

“I’m so glad you’re back, my dear.”

“What have you got that lace around your neck for? Don’t you suppose everyone knows you trimmed it off your underskirt?”

“Oh,” breathed Myrtle. “Oh, Alfred!”

“Well, go on. Why don’t you offer me some tea? Don’t tell me you haven’t a gallon or so made?”

Myrtle’s lip quivered. “I’ll—I’ll get it right away, Alf—”

Suddenly he was shouting. “Goddam you and your tea! D’you think I want to bathe in it? You with your airs, you tupenny swell! You’re a cow! A goddamned long-necked cow! You belong in a pasture where you’d have enough room to prance around with your skinny ass…”

He raved on, reviling her. And the tears that had been in Myrtle’s eyes went away. And her lips stopped their trembling, and her shoulders straightened. And she seemed to grow taller. He stopped, at last, and his body sagged; and then he was hugging her knees, sobbing wildly; and she was stroking his hair. Stroking it, and staring off into space.

“It’s all right, dear,” she said, not understanding but knowing. “It’s all right.”

T
here was much to gossip about in Verdon that year:

Alfred Courtland took over the bank, and Philo Barkley began the operation of a small-loan and commission business from his home.

Jeff Parker sold out to the railroad (there was definite proof, at last).

Link Fargo had a stroke which laid him up for several months.

Edie Dillon assumed the proprietorship of the hotel.

And Grant Fargo went to work on the Verdon
Eye
.

Of all the other happenings, this last aroused the most comment. Lincoln Fargo declared that the news had brought on his stroke; and everyone else was moved similarly to a greater or less degree. Every day, at the beginning, parties were made up to go by the dingy windows of the
Eye
to watch the flash young printer at work; and they walked away, shaking their heads, declaring that the day of miracles had at last arrived. There were some who stopped Grant upon the street, over-riding his peevishness to feel his pulse and brow, and they feigned astonishment that a man so obviously ill should be up and about. Others insisted that he was not really Grant at all, but a double, and they sternly demanded to know where he had hidden the body.

Not having the character nor the physical strength to repel the ribbing, Grant endured it. And gradually it subsided.

Grant had not wanted to go to work, of course. He had that inexplicable fear of employment which a man long out of work acquires. But Bella had been insistent on his doing something, since she could not obtain the expected money from her father, and Bella, insistent, was very hard to deny. Too, by that time, her body had become as necessary to him as food and drink. Yes, even drink.

So, he had gone to work on the
Eye
, and time found him not too greatly discontented. The eight dollars a week which he earned was ample for spending money. He had excellent free room and board at home. And he had Bella. He had all the comforts of a wife and none of the disadvantages. It was a pleasant, easy life, and he was prepared to continue it indefinitely.

Bella, naturally, was not.

She was beginning to despise Grant, even though she enjoyed their intercourse. Ever frank with herself, she knew that she would enjoy another man—almost any other man—much more. She intended to use him only to get away from the town and establish herself in some large city (she had ideas of becoming an actress). She believed that he was saving his money so that, eventually, they could go away together.

She had begun to see him openly, once her father had lost the check of money upon her. One evening, after he had finished work, she stopped by the print shop in the big red Chandler and picked him up.

He was pleased to see her in one way, and not in another. Everyone knew that they were keeping company, but there was no use flaunting the fact. Also, it was his habit to stop by the saloon for a few drinks after his labors—a few for himself and a few for the bartender.

Nevertheless, he was thrilled as usual to see her. It was early spring, and the top of the car was down, and in her linen duster and white driving veil she was like a picture on a calendar. He put on the other duster which lay on the seat, donned a linen cap with a celluloid visor, and got in at her side.

“Would you mind stopping by the saloon?” he asked, as she put the car in gear.

She frowned slightly. “I suppose not.”

“I just want to get a cigar,” he lied. “I’ll only be a minute.”

“All right,” she said.

She stopped a few doors beyond the saloon, and he hopped out and ran in. It was five minutes before he returned, lustily puffing a cigar.

She shot the car forward so quickly that his head snapped back, and they went roaring out of town, toward the hills, without talking. He watched her, covertly, as they jounced from one side of the rutted road to another. Finally, frightened at their unholy speed of eighteen miles an hour, he reached over and attempted to retard the throttle.

She tried to elbow his hand away, jerking the wheel with the effort. The awkward, top-heavy car skidded, shot toward the ditch, then slipped back into the ruts again and went bouncing and pounding forward.

“What were you trying to do?” he demanded angrily, when he could at last speak again.

“I’ll ask you the same, Mr. Grant Fargo.”

“You know you were going too fast!”

“I guess I know how to drive. You just keep your hands off the wheel after this!”

“I’ll do better than that,” he declared grimly. “I’ll stay out of the car.”

She laughed maliciously. “Sissy! Was Mom-um’s ’ittle boy afwaid?”

“Well, I don’t care,” said Grant. “Just suppose we’d been up along the river road when that happened. Suppose we’d gone over the bluffs. How would you feel then?”

“That’s simple.” She shrugged her shoulders, lovely even beneath the concealing duster. “I wouldn’t feel anything.”

Her voice was flippant, but inwardly she was frightened. Not from the recent skid. Something else. Something that she had felt, that she had seemed to feel that night she had met Grant at the fairgrounds.

Impulsively she put a hand upon his knee; and after a moment one of his closed over it. They smiled at each other, and he moved over in the seat.

Little by little the seemingly unbounded vista of rich green fields and great barns and spacious houses was left behind them. The land began to tilt, to rise in waves, and it was as though there were an undertow at work, pulling all of its beauty and wealth downward, backward into the valley.

Sand splayed the fertile black clay, and the splays grew until there was nothing but sand. Fences disappeared or sagged dismally between ineffectual posts; sunflowers and sandburs towered triumphantly over the straggled ranks of corn. In the fresh shoots of wheat, the rag- and pigweed fed. There were few cattle, and those wandered forlorn across the waste, their great ribs showing. The few horses—nags—stood head to tail with one another, swishing their tails apathetically to drive off the sand flies, now and then nosing hopelessly at the stunted bitter grass.

There were no proper barns, only rail uprights crossed at the top by more rails and roofed with hay, banked, sometimes, against the north wind by a manure pile. The houses were, at first, unpainted one-room frames; then soddys; then dugouts—hummocks in the devastating sand, identifiable as habitations only by the length of stovepipe protruding from the roof.

These were the poorest of the section’s people. Yet they were white. They were Americans. And, if called upon, they would have lived up to those obligations scrupulously. There was no housewife here, no matter how starved, overworked, overbred, who would not have slaughtered her last laying hen and used her last ounce of meal to provide for a passing stranger—who was, like her, white and American. Any of the lank husbands in their ragged overalls and toeless boots would have walked twenty miles to accommodate the same stranger, refusing anything but thanks.

So Grant and Bella waved courteously as they passed. They waved at the tots with their snotty noses and flour-sack shifts. They raised their hands to the dim figures in the doorways of soddy and dugout. They did it and meant it, without snobbery.

For the country was large and lonely, and Americans stood together.

At last, as they mounted the loftiest of the swelling rises, the sand all but disappeared, and the wheels of the Chandler rolled smoothly along on rock. They drove between two sagging posts, passed a caved-in dugout, and stopped at the side of an ancient strawstack. The exterior was black with age and weather. But it had been dug into deeply on one side, and there the walls were clean, clean and yellow like the floor.

Grant looked around, shaking his head, wonderingly.

“You know, it’s funny. Pa says this used to be one of the best farms in the country.”

“What happened to it?”

“Pa says it blew away, overnight.”

“Silly. How could a farm blow away? Come on and help me down.”

He got out and went around to her side of the car. She opened the low door, clasped his hands, and leapt lightly to the ground. He kissed her, smothering her body against his; then, arm in arm they entered the excavation in the strawstack.

He spread his duster for her, helped her off with her own and made a pillow of it. Matter-of-factly she sat down. While he watched, his heart pounding, she unfastened her garters, pulled her dress and petticoats up around her white hips, and slid up her corset.

Then, she lay back, looking at him, one silky black brow cocked in deliberate provocation.

“Well, do you think you’ll ever get your eyes full?”

“Never!”

“Well, when you do fill them, there’s something else to…”

…It was odd how sweet and soft the straw had been before, and how sharp and sour it was afterwards.

Bella sat up suddenly and began to re-clasp her stockings. There was a wisp of straw between her thighs. She brushed it away angrily, filled with disgust that was all the more bitter because she would not recognize it. Grant, still reclining, tried to caress her shoulder, and she leaned forward, away from him.

“Grant,” she said, “you had something to drink in the saloon tonight, didn’t you?”

“Just one,” he lied. “What of it?”

“Do you stop in there every night?”

“Oh, no. Only now and then.”

“How much money do you have saved now, Grant?”

“Well, let’s see,” said the printer, pretending to think. “Umm—fifty dollars.”

“You said it was sixty the last time I asked you.”

“Isn’t that what I said? I meant to say sixty.”

Bella laughed, and a cold thrill ran down Grant’s spine. She changed so suddenly; he couldn’t keep up with her. Only a moment ago…

“Well, don’t you believe me?” he demanded, belligerently.

“Do you want me to?”

“Suit yourself.”

The girl’s eyes blazed, and she sat looking straight ahead for a moment. Inwardly she was cursing herself. She knew what he was, how he was. Why had she let him go this long without a showdown?

She sat looking ahead, her face concealed from him, and into her harlot’s brain there came an idea so simple that she wondered she had never thought of it before. When she turned back to him, at last, her voice was filled with humility and forced frankness.

“I don’t care if you haven’t been able to save anything, dear.”

“Well, but I have, though,” he insisted, sullenly.

“No, you haven’t, sweetheart, and it’s all right. I know you’ve tried awfully hard, and you’ve meant to, but you just couldn’t do it. After all, you’re only making eight dollars a week; and by the time you buy a drink or so every day, and maybe a cigar or two, why it’s just all gone.”

“It goes pretty fast, all right,” Grant admitted.

“You don’t have anything saved, do you, darling?”

“Well, I…I…”

“Do you?” She brushed his ear with her lips, left them there.

“Uh…well…I guess I don’t, Bella,” said Grant.
“OUCH!”

Laughing angrily, Bella scrambled to her feet while Grant rocked on the straw, nursing his bitten ear.

“You little bitch!” he moaned.

“You’ll think I’m a bitch—a wolf-bitch,” she snapped, “before I’m through with you! You’ve had plenty of fun with me, Mr. Grant Fargo—”

“And I suppose you didn’t have!”

“Certainly, I did. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. But that’s neither here nor there. I’ve wanted to get away from here for a long time, but it didn’t really matter whether I did or not. Now it does matter. I’ve got to go now. Do you understand what I mean, Grant?”

“You don’t mean y-you’re pregnant?”

“Why not? Did you think we could go on forever like this? I’m three weeks past my period, right now. I didn’t see any use worrying you, and anyway I thought you were saving some money. I thought within another two or three months, by the time I had to go, you’d have enough saved.”

Grant looked at her horrified. As in a daze, he got to his feet.

“Y-you’re lying to me!” he exclaimed.

“And I suppose you plan on waiting eight months to see whether I am?”

“No—no, of course not. I—I just don’t know what to do, Bella. If we were down South someplace, where I know some doctors…”

His voice faded into futility while she eyed him contemptuously.

“I’ll scrape up a little somewhere,” he said at last. “Enough for me to get to Omaha or Kansas City on. I’ll get a job, and send for you—”

“No, you won’t, Grant.”

“Why?”

“You wouldn’t send me any money. You wouldn’t come back. You’d leave me here to face things by myself. No. You’ll get enough for us both to leave on, and don’t you try anything different. If there’s ever a day that I don’t see you, I’ll tell my father and we’ll have you picked up and brought back wherever you are.”

Grant shuddered. She had read his mind clearly; and he knew that she would do exactly what she threatened. She would bring him back to face her father, and, worst of all, his own family. Peevishly, he wondered why she couldn’t act like the conventional heroine, concealing the man’s name until the last.

As if his last thought had crossed her own mind, she spoke again:

“And you don’t need to think you can blame it on anyone else, Grant. Everyone knows I’ve never gone with anyone but you.”

“I wasn’t thinking of anything like that,” he protested, humiliated. “I just don’t know which way to turn. Can’t you get any money from your father? After all, he did promise—”

“Well, he changed his mind, and you know how he is when he decides not to do something.” Not even to Grant would she reveal her father’s foolishness.

Grant shook his head helplessly.

“But I just don’t know what to do, Bella! I don’t know where to get any money.”

“You can start saving, for one thing. I can scrape up a few dollars. We’ll make out.”

“You don’t know how it is in the cities, Bella. It takes a lot of money. I might not be able to go to work right away. It might be a month or two before I could get anything, and we’d have to live all that time.”

Bella shrugged on her duster and started for the car. Miserably, he trailed after her.