The Boss of Wind River/Chapter 14

ACNUTT was able to boss the job on the following day; but Kent was less fortunate. Pains in side and head attacked him, what of the pounding he had received. After waiting a couple of days for them to disappear, with a healthy man's confidence in his own recuperative powers, he was driven back to Maguire's, where he took train for Falls City. There his injured side was strapped and he was ordered complete rest and quiet.

Early in the winter, because he was alone in the world, he had leased his house and moved to an apartment building. This now seemed to him about as cheerful as a prison. He longed for human companionship of some sort, and he would have disobeyed his doctor's orders and gone out in search of it, but for the fact that his face, covered with bruises, would have attracted attention. But in the afternoon of his first day's confinement came William Crooks and Miss Jack.

That young lady took charge of the situation with calm capacity.

“Now, Joe,” she said, “you're coming up to the house until you're well. Doctor's orders. So tell me what things you want and I'll pack them for you.”

“I couldn't think of troubling you,” he protested. “I'm not sick, you know. Just a cracked rib and a jolt on the head. I feel all right, really.”

“You do as you're told,” she replied. She began to pull out the drawers of his chiffonier. “What a mess your things are in! Nothing where it ought to be. Where do you keep your pajamas? Dad, look in that closet for his suit case.”

“This is kidnapping,” said Joe.

“Call it what you like,” chuckled Crooks. “Do as Jack tells you and quit kicking. I have to.” He brought out a suit case and a deep club bag. “Fire in what you think he needs, Jack.”

Joe watched uneasily her selection of articles supposedly indispensable to his comfort, and gave in.

“Hold on, Jack, or else get a trunk. Let me show you, if I have to go.”

“That's better,” said Crooks. He paused and regarded Joe critically. “Well, you did get a pounding. Did the whole crew jump on your face?”

“It felt that way at the time,” said Joe, “but you ought to see Finn Clancy's.” He told the story of the fight briefly, making little mention of his own part in it. “So you see I was out of the fun at the wind-up,” he concluded.

“Too bad,” said Crooks with a sympathy born of personal experience. “There will be trouble over that, though. They'll call it contempt of court, and malicious destruction, and the Lord and Locke only know what else.”

This prophecy proved to be correct. As soon as he could be located writs, summonses, and orders to appear and show cause showered on Joe. These passed on to Locke, who secured delay by physicians' certificates, affidavits, motions—all the methods by which the experienced attorney can clog the slowly moving wheels of the law.

Meanwhile Joe nursed his knitting ribs and rested completely. Jack established an invisible wall about him through which no business affairs penetrated.

“Dad and Mr. Wright can look after things for a week or two,” she explained. “Mr. Locke says you needn't worry about law matters. Everything at the camps is going well. So, young man, you just make yourself comfortable and be lazy. That's your job for the present.”

When a few days had accustomed him to inaction it proved to be a very pleasant job. He developed an unsuspected capacity for sleep. This meant the restorage of his nerve cells. The pains in his head lessened and ceased, and the bruised flesh gradually assumed a normal hue.

His favourite place was Jack's den. There was a bow window with a south exposure, and in the recess stood a huge easy-chair. Joe lay in it and absorbed sunshine, for the days were warming and lengthening, and stared up into the blue sky dotted with little white-wool clouds, or watched Jack, who had made the den her workroom. He found the latter pursuit the more entertaining.

Jack affected white, with a superb disregard of laundry bills. It set off her lithe, straight figure, the small uplifted head with the abundant coils of dark hair, and the pretty piquant face with the firm yet tender mouth. From top to toe she was spotless and neat and trim and dainty. Her conversation was a tonic in itself. She was direct of speech, frank, and often slangy when slang best expressed her meaning. There were many odd “characters” dependent upon the open-handed bounty of William Crooks, and from them she had heard strange philosophies born of twisted lives, odd expressions which occasionally crept into her speech, and scraps of forgotten song. She had listened by the hour to old Micky Keeliher who tended the garden; to the widowed Mrs. Quilty who came once a week to do the washing; to crippled Angus McDougal, once a mighty riverman, whose strength had departed, and to a dozen others. Not one of them but would have died for William Crooks's daughter. To her they sang the songs of their youth in cracked, quavering voices; for her they unlocked the storehouses of their experience and gave of it freely. She absorbed their songs, their sayings, their tales; and as nearly as her youth would permit she understood their viewpoint of life.

Joe, buried in his chosen chair, listened to the queer tunes she lilted—tunes which had stirred the hearts of by-gone generations in other lands—and by turns stared at the bright out-of-doors and slept. And Jack, on her part, felt a strange happiness, as if the room held all that was best and most to be desired. She did not analyze the feeling; she was content that it was hers. Bending over her sewing one bright afternoon during the last days of Joe's convalescence she crooned:

“That's a cheerful song,” said Joe ironically from his chair. “Did he come back?”

“Of course,” laughed Jack. “Unfortunately, he died as his head touched her knee, and naturally she was inconsolable. Like to hear her lament?” She drew her face into lines of sorrow and threw back her head in a preliminary wail, as a dog howls.

“Stop!” cried Joe. “Look here, Jack, remember I'm an interesting invalid. I want something cheerful.”

“Well, that is comparatively cheerful. Now, if I sang you a real Hielan' lament”

“Don't you dare,” Joe interrupted. “I am still far from strong.”

Jack laughed. “You smoked yesterday. Doctor Eberts says that a man who can enjoy a smoke is well enough to work.”

“Good for the doc!” cried Joe. “Me for the office and then back to the woods. Hooray!”

“Not for a day or two,” said Jack. “Things are going all right. You keep quiet.”

Joe sank back in his chair. “I suppose so, but—well, I want to look after them myself.” Far off against the blue sky a wedge of black specks bored through space, swinging off beyond the limits of the town. “Look, Jack! The first geese going north. That means the end of winter and open water. We'll start our drives in a few weeks.”

“Yes, Joe.” She perched on the arm of the big chair and stared after the birds, her face clouded with discontent. “That's life, and you can live it. Oh, heavens! Why wasn't I a boy? I'd love it so. I want to go up to the camps and see the rollways broken out and the banking grounds emptied. I want to wear spiked boots and ride a stick in white water and use a peavey. I want to come back to the wanegan at night, and eat and dry off by a big fire and sleep out of doors. I want—don't you dare to laugh at me, Joe Kent—I want to come into town with the bully-boys, with a hat pulled down over my eyes and a cigar in my mouth sticking up at an angle, and sing 'Jimmy Judge,' and 'From Far Temiskamang.' I want”—she faced him defiantly—“I want to ride up town in a hack—with my feet out of the window! Yes, I do. And now tell me you are shocked.”

“I might be if I saw you do it,” said Joe. “I've felt the same way myself—like breaking loose from everything. If you were a man you wouldn't, though. Only the shanty boys tear off these stunts. We can't.”

“All very well for you to talk—you could if you wanted to,” said Jack disconsolately. “I'm a girl. I can't even go up to the camps unless dad takes me.” She voiced her grievance again. “I wish I had been a boy.”

She turned to the window and stared out. Joe rose and stood beside her, looking down at the burnished brown of her hair and the soft profile of her cheek. Once more the nameless thrill he had felt before when he had touched her hand possessed him. Hesitatingly, awkwardly, impelled by something which was not of his own volition, he put his arm around her. Instantly, as if a curtain had been rolled up—as if a screen had been withdrawn—he saw his own mind clearly.

Why, he loved her!

It came to him with a shock of utter amazement. Little Jack Crooks, his playmate, his friend, his confidant, the girl he had looked at so long with unseeing eyes—she, she was the only woman in the wide world for him. She had always been the only one. Edith Garwood? Pshaw! How could he have been so blind? Not all her radiant beauty and deceptive sweetness could compare with straight, loyal, little Jack, his chum and his love.

She seemed unconscious of his arm until he spoke her name. Then she turned her head slowly and her dark eyes looked directly into his. What she saw there brought the red to her cheeks in a wave. Up and up the telltale crimson tide leaped to her brow, to the roots of her glossy brown hair, but her gaze did not waver.

“Should you, Joe?” she asked simply.

Stumblingly, humbly he told her, and she listened, nestling in his arms as one who has found her own place. And so, when bluff old William Crooks came home, he found them sitting in the twilight, planning wonderful things. Joe put the situation simply.

“Jack has consented to marry me, sir.”

William Crooks stared at him and then at his daughter.

“Fact, dad,” she confirmed.

“Well, I'll be” began Crooks out of his unbounded astonishment.

She put her hand over his lips. “I hope not, dad.”

“Well, you take a man unawares,” growled Crooks. “How long has this been going on?”

“About two hours, I think,” said Joe happily.

“Oh,” said Crooks; “I was afraid you had been holding out on me. You're sure about this, I suppose?”

They were very sure.

“Well,” said Crooks judicially, “I don't know any young fellow I'd rather give Jack to, Joe. Shake hands, you robber. But, mind you, you've got to put your business on its feet before you marry her.”

“I'll do it,” Joe promised.

“Of course he will,” Jack asserted with perfect faith.

Bill Crooks regarded them wistfully. In their youth and hope he saw his own. He thought of a far day when he and a girl had faced the world together, determined to wring from it success. The success had come, but the woman of his heart no longer shared it with him. Suddenly he felt old and lonely. He roused himself with a sigh and a shake of his big shoulders. No one, not even his daughter, suspected old Bill Crooks of sentiment. His thoughts were his own.