The Keeper of the Bees/Chapter 2
The Great Adventure
Now a great adventure may be killing white hippopotami in Africa to one man and commanding his own soul for an hour to another. To Jamie MacFarlane, after years of steadily taking orders from superior officers, there was something exhilarating in assuming an erect position and for the first time deciding for himself whether he would seek his fortune toward the north or the south. Why he decided on going north, he had not the slightest notion, but it was probably because the road led down in that direction, and he had found mountain climbing more than he could endure. So he started north and on a downgrade. He went very slowly; he kept looking at the sky, the trees, and it seemed to him that the blooming orange orchards he passed and the lemons and the loquats were less heavy in their perfume, the air grew more bracing. He began to wonder if he could ever reach the sea, if he could have a strong tang of salt in the air if it might not be bracing. He picked up a stick beside the road and used it as a cane upon which to lean. After a while he came to a crossroad and there he paused intently to examine each of the three directions, any of which he might travel if he chose. Truly he was having a heady adventure!
As he stood there a car approached from the east, and noticing Jamie’s uniform, his emaciated face and hands, the driver stopped, as all drivers stopped in those days, only Jamie, confined in hospitals, did not know it, and asked him if he would like to ride. The car was turning north, so Jamie said that he would very much like to ride. That is how it happened that the wheels of an automobile carried him so far from the region of the hospital that when he was really missed and nurses were sent out to seek him, one hundred miles away and still speeding northward, Jamie was making fine progress on his big adventure.
He liked the road that led to the north. He liked it so well that when finally the driver told him he was turning west at the next crossroad, where he had business in a big city, Jamie decided that a man in a uniform who might be sought by government officials had better remain in the country, and so he climbed from the car and slowly plodded north.
In an enforced rest, he began to realize that night was coming and that he was hungry. He had not a cent in his pockets, and to lie on the ground in the chill of a California night would probably kill him very speedily. Then he realized that quite likely death was the Great Adventure he was seeking; that in taking his fate in his own hands and walking out of the hospital and away from the provisions that were made for him by his government, he had known that he would exhaust himself speedily to such a point that his troubles would be ended in the quickest way. He spent a few minutes wondering whether his troubles would be ended or only just begun, because the Scots have a way of teaching hell, and fire, and brimstone, and having been to the world’s latest war, Jamie MacFarlane knew more about hell than any Scottish minister who ever had described it from a pulpit, and having carried an open wound in his breast for nearly two years, there was no one who could tell him much about fire, and the brimstone at the springs had not worked.
So he went on through the evening shadows until he could go no longer; then he sat down on a nice, big, warm boulder beside the road, crossed his feet, and waited to see what would happen. The very thing that he might have known would happen had he been living among a world of well men, did happen. Another car came along, and the owner, noting his pallor and his uniform and having a vacant seat, stopped, and again he was asked if he would care to ride.
“Slick!” said Jamie to himself. “Maybe this isn’t going to be so bad after all.”
He looked at the car, which was loaded to the running boards with camping paraphernalia. He could see rolls of bedding; he could scent food. The man had a friendly face, the girl on the seat beside him was young and pretty. The woman with whom he was invited to occupy the back seat was of motherly appearance. Her round face was strong and attractive, and, under the spell of it, Jamie was guilty of evasion. He said he had just left a hospital where he had been for a year. He gave the impression that the doctors had discharged him. He did not say that he had discharged himself, that he was a fugitive. He did say that he was looking for work and that he would be mighty glad to ride with them until he reached a location where something promising offered for men newly mustered from the service and weak from illness.
The driver said that he was William Brunson from Iowa; that he and his wife and daughter had been touring California in their car during the winter, but now they were going to the north part of the state to visit friends until it came time to head for home as they must reach Albion in time to put in the crops.
And Jamie, fearing that in starting his Great Adventure he might get into the papers, neglected to say what his name was, but he did say that he would be wonderfully glad to ride with them as far as they were going in his direction.
He was glad to ride, but he was not half so glad to ride as he was when the car stopped and in the mouth of a canyon near the road a camp was made. He hoped no one saw that he staggered or how short his breath came as he tried to help in unloading the car. He had to be careful because the one big thing for which he was thankful beyond words had happened. He had only looked toward the hills. He had only thought about asking the Lord for help. He wondered vaguely if there might be a possibility that God had been looking in his direction at that instant, if He had seen his need, if He had sent these kind, hearty people who were offering supper, a bed roll for the night, and a lift on his journey for the morrow. That was that much. And so he put up the very best bluff that he could at being a whole man and a sound man while he gathered wood for a night fire, and prospected for a place to spread the beds and find comfort. He had a feeling that he did not quite deserve the thing that was happening to him. He had been wondering if he would be forced to crawl away among the bushes like a whipped dog and in the chill of the night find a certain but painful release. This was not exactly as he had expected things to happen. He was going to have a supper of hot food and a blanket. In deference to his white face and shaking hands, he had been offered a choice location close to the camp fire, so there was no reason why to-morrow should find him any worse for the experience.
Ann Brunson was a jolly soul. She was everybody’s friend. She persisted in calling Jamie “You Mr. Soldierman,” and when she saw how very white and uncertain on his feet he was, she mercifully gave him a seat and set him to peeling potatoes, while she left her daughter and her husband to do the rougher work of completing the camp.
As he had made his way down the driveway from the hospital to the road, it had occurred to Jamie MacFarlane that for a man in his condition to walk out of the only shelter on earth to which he was entitled without a penny in his pockets was a Great Adventure. As he sat peeling potatoes for Ann Brunson while her daughter and her husband showed him all the tricks that could be concealed in and around the body of a five-passenger car, the neat little cupboard on the running board for dishes and food, the tiny refrigerator, the two-plate gasoline stove for boiling the coffee and cooking the meat and potatoes, the possibility of getting many things into an amazingly small compass, he thought that his adventure was going to be homelike and common and that the country was full of kindly people who had not forgotten their soldier boys. There was a bare chance that he might find some light work that he could do, that something might happen which would at least be better than permanent retirement to the City of the White Plague. So he tried to be very careful and peel the potatoes thin and handle them as he had been taught by his thrifty mother when he helped her in a kitchen of childhood. As he worked it did not appeal to him that there might be an adventure each minute drawing nearer. He had taken the precaution to place himself behind the car so that any passer-by might not see him, and after supper was finished and the beds made up, he had lifted a pair of eyes trained to scouting and had seen a flickery light, far above but slowly descending, so he had said that he would take a short stroll.
He had left the Brunsons and slowly and quietly had made his way back through the canyon among thickets of holly and live oak, looking for a spot where he might rest for even a short time and watch that uncanny light, be alone and try to plan for the morrow. One thing he felt imperative to his flight, and that was as speedily as possible to get rid of his uniform. If the officials really missed him from the hospital, if they sent out a general call, his uniform would be the thing which would quickly identify him. Every man in uniform would be scrutinized; there would be radios, telephones, newspapers against him. He must think what he could do and how he could do it.
So he went up the canyon until he left the light and the voices of the camp behind him and when he found he was tired, he sat down in the white moonlight and looked up for the light and it was gone. Foolish of him to be uneasy. Someone had lost a trail and had now found it. He did not realize that the rock upon which he sat so blended with the overhanging branches of a live oak that he was invisible. He did not realize it until in one breath of soft breeze sweeping down the mountain at his back he found himself face to face with plenty of adventure and of sufficient size to satisfy him. He did not realize how long he had sat figuring on what he could possibly do. What aroused him was a Something coming down to the canyon on his right, and as he looked steadily in that direction, he saw the figure of a large man emerge from the bushes and begin carefully making his way, with as little sound as possible, straight toward him.
As the man cleared the shadows and stepped into full moonlight Jamie could see that he was tall, bareheaded, in his shirt sleeves, wearing boots and breeches. There was a heavy belt filled with cartridges around his waist, and when he turned to look over the path that he had traversed and to listen, Jamie MacFarlane could see the big gun on the right hip convenient to the man’s hand.So his breath came very softly ,and as stilly as in No Man’s Land he wormed farther back among the overhanging branches.
The reason a great adventure is an adventure is because the things that happen are so very simple and so very natural. Why it is great is merely because one has not expected it, not because it could not very well have been expected had one’s wits been working. A formidable man with a big gun headed down the canyon toward Jamie, he reflected, might constitute something of an adventure. The might grew to large possibilities when the ears of Jamie, who had done quite a bit of scouting and much work on his stomach between firing lines, realized that down the mountain to the left of him there was coming a Something else that was alive, Something that was slipping, that was using the utmost caution, and yet slowly and surely was coming his way.
The adventure loomed large enough to suit Jamie’s wildest ideas of adventure when a second man, not quite so large as the first but still formidable, a darker figure since he wore a coat and hat, who carried an ugly revolver in his right hand, slowly parted the bushes and stepped into the canyon slightly to the left.
Then Jamie sat in open-mouthed wonder while these two men met because of the signal light he had seen and the big man told the other that he had been down to the road to see what the smoke and the fire meant; that there was a party of tourists, a mere mouse of a man, they could risk his being unarmed while either of them could handle him with one hand. The turnout looked as if undoubtedly a few hundred dollars could be depended on somewhere about the man, or one or the other of the women, or the car.
The second man had straightened up and said slowly: “One man and two women. Are the Janes young and likely looking?”
All the blood in James MacFarlane had rushed to his head, and then back to his hands and feet, where fighting blood is most at home. He was no longer a sick soldier dependent on the mercy of a passing stranger. His stomach was fortified with the potatoes and the meat and the coffee and the bread that smiling Ann Brunson had shared with him. He had drunk the water that laughing little Susan had brought to him, and bathed his tired face in it. He had no doubt but money to pay the expenses of the journey was in the pockets of one of the party. They had earned it by hard work on a farm. They had gone pleasuring as was their right, and so far they had had a pleasant time, but if they were to be robbed of their money, if William Brunson were to be beaten to insensibility or killed, if the women who had befriended Jamie were to be left to the mercy of these two in the canyon before him, then there was something very worth while in the world remaining for him to do, or at least to give what life he had left in attempting to do.
So, like a snake over the stones, he drew himself together and felt with a long arm for a big piece of loose rock, and when the precise moment arrived at which the big man drew near to the smaller one to hear what description he would give of the women of the camp, softly, under cover of the oak branch, at one and the same time Jamie MacFarlane did two things. With his right hand he reached for the revolver in the holster on the back of the big man; with his left he smashed the jagged rock squarely into the face of the man who was slavering over the description of a sweet young girl. When the big man wheeled he found his own revolver in his own face, and there was nothing to do but to back away with his hands in the air as he was ordered, while Jamie MacFarlane, even taller and more massive of frame, slid down from the rock and extricated the weapon from the fingers of the bleeding and half-senseless bandit. With the two guns in his possession, Jamie put sufficient distance between himself and the men for safety.
Then he said to the bigger one: “Throw me your cartridge belt and your shoes and trousers.” In reference to the smaller man he said: “Peel off his coat and throw it to me, also his hat.” When he had these garments in his possession, he backed still farther away, and then he laid one of the guns very conveniently and with the other shifting from his right hand to his left, he managed to shed the uniform of a soldier of the United States. He got out of the boots and the breeches and the coat, saving nothing but his identification tag and valour medal, and he put on the things that he had accumulated.
Then he kicked together in a bundle the things he was leaving and with both guns and the belt in his possession he backed his way down the canyon until he had put sufficient distance between himself and the two bandits so that he dared to turn and make his way as speedily as possible back to camp.
In the darkness made by the shadow of a branch, he awakened William Brunson as quietly as possible and explained his change of wardrobe, and he thrust into the hand of his host one of the guns that he carried. In the fear that there might be accomplices who might follow with the bandits, camp was broken hastily, everything piled into the car, and speedily many miles were placed between themselves and the men who preyed without discrimination upon the purses and the happiness of others.
When the car moved away with its load, Jamie MacFarlane leaned back and rested his head against the supports of the car top and laughed weakly.
“After all,” he said to the Brunsons, “army training is not so bad. If I had never been a soldier, I doubt seriously if I could have made myself invisible or if at one and the same time I could have taken the gun of one man and smashed the face of another. And as for collecting their wardrobe, I understand that our government does not desire soldiers who have been discharged to use their uniforms for any great length of time, so it is well to get rid of mine the first day I become a plain American citizen.”
Exactly what William Brunson and his wife and daughter might have thought of this in the safety of an Iowa farm, where time for thinking occurs frequently, is one thing. What they thought of it as they fled down a California road with two guns in the car, two irate bandits behind them who might possibly overtake them in a speedier car at any minute, and possibly a third bandit with them, was a different proposition entirely. Susy Brunson sat on the front seat and held the revolver that had been given her father convenient to his reach. Mrs. Brunson sat on the back seat with her eyes round and a heart full of consternation. William Brunson stepped on the gas and turned at every crossroad he encountered. He did not in the least care where he went. All he wanted was to lose proximity to where he had been. He had a feeling that the lights of any small town that California proffered would look very good to him at that minute.
As for Jamie MacFarlane, he had enjoyed his supper; he had clothes that would not identify him as the man who was missing from the Arrowhead Hospital; he knew where he hoped to get his breakfast, he considered himself lost to the world of hospitals, and if he could achieve this adventure during his first day of freedom, there was every hope that he might be able at least to hold his own on the morrow. And so, through utter exhaustion, his head began slowly to sink down and over. Mrs. Brunson, dubious about the clothes, studied him as intently as she could by the night light. He looked exactly like any decent American of Scottish extraction, debilitated by illness. Finally she whispered to her daughter, “Susy, can’t you dig out a pillow for this poor boy? You can see he has been awfully sick and he is plumb tired out.”
Susy managed to get the pillow from the end of a roll on the running board, and Mrs. Brunson laid it on her shoulder and against the back end of the car and pulled Jamie’s head over on it, while Susy knelt on the front seat and with tears of thankfulness still wet on her young
face, tucked a blanket over the shoulders of Jamie Mac Farlane as she said, “I tell you, Ma, from what he said to Pa, we have had a pretty close call, and I believe we better ship the car and get on the train, and go north by the quickest, safest route.”
But Mother Brunson, being made of sterner stuff, replied: “Oh, I guess not. We will just keep closer to the towns when night comes. We will stop this sleeping beside the road. We’ll keep the gun your Pa’s got and get some cartridges for it at the first stop. I think we can make it all right and finish our trip.”