The Arrow-Point Estate/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
Skookum pulled himself up against the wall of the bunk-house and fumbled the latch of the door; opened it, and looked in. There was a step to go down inside, and he hesitated to attempt it. While he stood, a man raised to an elbow on the nearest bed, seemed to take in the situation at a glance, and came forward, limping. One arm was in a sling, but he held out the other hand and steadied Skookum so that he could get in. When Skookun, still with that fixed look of murderous rage, sat down on a box, the man regarded him keenly
“Could a fellow help you out of a hole, old-timer?” The tone invited confidences. “If I was in the habit of wearing crutches, seems like I’d want to stick to them—something like old friends, I should think they’d be. I don’t believe I’d try perambulating around much on my hands and knees.” Plainly, the man had gaged the general character of Skookum, and was wise; hence the term “old-timer,” which the boy liked, because it was mannish and made him feel very old.
“She took ’em,” flared Skookum, his eyes dark and shining. “I wouldn’t let her in, and she” He choked over the humiliation of it. “She’s a great big, fat woman. I’ll bet she could lick Rhody or Chub, or—anybody, except Burns and—and you, when you're well. And she—shoved me aside{{bar|2}”} Skookum’s cheeks went red at the misleading term.
The man’s eyes were on him gravely. “And you lost the crutches?” he prompted politely; but Skookum caught the note of unbelief.
“What I meant to say,” he corrected honestly, “was she picked me up and set me in a chair—she’s awful strong for a woman—and she went in the house with ’em under her arm. I hate her! I want Burns. Burns’ll fix her a-plenty for that. She’s got to go away. Burns has got to make her go. She sha’n’t take care of me and call me Davy, and her boy. I ain’t her boy. She played a brace game with dad—Burns said so—and she wouldn’t have the nerve to come here if dad—if dad—wasn’t” Skookum swallowed, and blinked his long lashes fast for a minute. “She needs killing!”
“Go easy, pardner. Men can’t fight women, you know, nor shoot them up—no matter if they do insult a man. That’s the advantage of being a woman. If it was a man that had insulted you, why, I could go and take it out of him proper; and I would. As it is” —he smiled engagingly into the wrathful, brown eyes—“I expect we’ll have to overlook it. What do yuh think? Can’t yuh set it down to bad manners on her part?”
“She called me Davy; and she wanted me to—to kiss her. I wisht I was big as you or Burns. I’d fix her.”
“Among real men, Skookum,” said the other slowly that the boy might feel the force of it, “any fellow that fights a woman is considered lower than a snake in a forty-foot well. You don’t look to me like a rounder; the way it looks to me, all you can do is pass her up like a States-Settlement dime.” Then, as an afterthought, he put the question: “Who is she? Not your sister?”
Skookum, repeating to himself the phrase: “Lower than a snake in a forty-foot well,” that he might make use of it on some future occasion—Skookum was, unconsciously, something of a plagiarist—answered with less venom.
“Naw, uh course it wasn’t Lorrie. Lorrie is more of a diplomat than that; she’d know darn well that I’d retaliate at the first opportunity.”
The man raised his hand suddenly and concealingly to his mouth; it would never do to laugh openly at Skookum. When he could trust his voice:
“Who, then?”
Skookum opened his lips to reply; closed them, and turned his face away. A dull, red glow came into his cheeks.
“Of course, you needn’t tell—I’d no business to ask. Let it go; and I beg your pardon for being a chump.”
“Oh, I was going to tell. It’s just because you’re supposed to—to like your mothers better than anybody. In books it’s that way, always. Mothers and fathers are supposed to be liked, ain’t they? Is it”—he looked appealingly at the other—“is it lower than a snake in a forty-foot well to hate your mother, when your mother gave your dad the double-cross, and you don’t remember her, and then she comes and takes your crutches away?”
The man meditated a moment, looking at Skookum’s wistful face. “Well, that depends,” he said guardedly. “Mothers aren’t always like those you read about in books; if they were a fellow couldn’t help thinking a lot of them, could he? Not knowing the details, in your case I can’t say. But I know your dad was a mighty nice man, Skookum, and would do the square thing; anybody that dealt crooked with him did so without provocation. So it was your mother, eh? Don’t you think your language was pretty strong, under the circumstances?”
“She hasn’t got any right to come here and take care of me. Burns says she pulled out when I was six, and never came back. Burns says she didn’t like me because my foot’s twisted all around so I can’t use it. I ain’t to blame for that, am I? Mothers in books like their kids better if anything's the matter with ’em; it makes ’em sorry. But she didn’t, though. She pulled out. And she can’t come and take care of me now, and call me darling and Davy. I don’t need any more taking care of than a cat. If I’m her darling, and all that, what made her take my crutches? I wonder,” tentatively, “if it would be much trouble for you to go and get them for me? Creeping hurts my hands.”
“Sure, I'll go and get them. You stay here, and I’ll be back in no time.” He put out his well hand to pat Skookum on his curly head; realized instantly that it would be taken as an insult, and slapped him gently on the shoulder instead, in the friendly way of men to men. “Don’t you worry, old-timer,” he reassured. “I'll get them—unless I have to fight her, which a gentleman couldn’t do. Anything else?” Skookum looked up at him steadily. “If you could make her go away, Man-from-nowhere, I’d be much obliged. And,” he added, “so would Lorrie. Lorrie skiddooed into the house when she saw her coming; but I stayed to have it out with her. Only,” he sighed, “she’s such an awful big, strong woman, and—men don’t fight women anyway; not unless they’re rounders.”
“So I’ve got a new name, have I? All right—it suits me fine.”
“I asked Burns, and he said you came from nowhere, he guessed. And he didn’t know your name, so I told him I was going to call you that, and Burns said all right. Will you make her go away? She’s liable to make Lorrie cry—and I’ve got to take care of Lorrie. And she took my crutches, and she called me darling. I hate her!”
“You're sure a bad man when you're all stirred up,” remarked the other evasively, and limped away before Skookum could force him into any rash promises.
As he neared the house, angry female voices came to him through the open window. At the steps, one harsh, high-pitched voice struck him familiarly and unpleasantly, so that he stopped and stood, with eyebrows pulled together, trying to remember.
“You can rear and tear all you're a mind to,” declared the voice. “You’re like your father from the ground up. But I ain’t one to be bluffed by no chin stuck in the air like you owned the earth. I’m here to stay, and you can make up your mind to it. David belongs to me—yuh can’t get around that, I guess. And if yuh don’t act white and behave yourself and treat me decent, I sh’ll take him away.”
“You’ve no right!” came Lorrie’s voice indignantly, but with an uneasy note underneath which was not lost upon the woman—nor upon the man listening. “The court gave father the custody of Skookum; you deserted him, and you didn’t even appear to claim him. You've no right! Father left him in my care.”
“David ain’t horse or a cow that he can be willed away,” retorted the unpleasant voice. “What’s the matter with me being appointed guardian? I guess you don’t know what you're talking about, Lorrie. I’ve got a lawyer back uh me, yuh see. I’m willing to stay here and look after his interests and learn him some manners, the impudent little tyke!—or I'll take him back to Butte with me. If you go putting on any airs with me, and trying to run things, that’s what I sh’ll do. I’m boss, from now on.” This last in a challenging tone.
“Beg pardon—but Skookum would like his crutches.”
Both women turned, startled, to the door; Lorrie with white face that held a world of trouble and perplexity, and the other with a stare that became a glare the longer she looked.
“What you doing here, Reid Holleman?” she demanded blusteringly. “You”
“I might put that same question to you,” returned the man calmly—more calmly, perhaps, than he felt. “The last time I saw you—do you remember the last time, Belladona?” His eyes met hers levelly, with a mocking light in their hazel deeps. Her own flickered and turned away to where the boy’s crutches lay across a chair.
“There’s the crutches, take ’em and go,” she said sullenly.
He took up the crutches, slid them under his arm and stood where he was. In his high-heeled boots he could look down into the woman’s face, even though she was, as Skookum had complained, “an awful big, strong woman.” “There’s another thing Skookum would like,” he went on placidly. “He would like to have you go away; and Skookum,” he added meaningly, “always gets what he likes. I think we won’t make this any exception to the general rule. The man hasn’t unloaded your trunk yet, I see; too lazy to do it alone. So there’s no reason why you should wait.”
Her face purpled, and she lifted a gloved fist to strike; she was that kind. But his steady gaze disconcerted her, and before she had thrown off the hesitation his voice was going coolly on:
“I think you are too wise to stop where you’re not wanted. I think—you—will—go. You won’t make it necessary for me” He stopped and let his eyes carry his meaning.
“I could make you a lot uh trouble, yourself,” she defied, but weakly, as if not quite sure of her ground.
“Are you sure? Do you want to stay—and chance it?” Still his eyes mocked.
Again her hard eyes flinched from his. Involuntarily she moved a step nearer the open door. Lorrie, wide-eyed and wondering, watched them both.
The eyes of the man were unwavering and unpitying. “I think Skookum would want you to go—at once,” he hinted.
“Oh, since you're the big chief! You can all go to”
“There’s a lady present,” he cut in sharply, flushing a bit. The mockery had left his eyes; they were ominously calm, threateningly cold.
The woman could no longer face them; she went doggedly out and down the steps; turned as if to fling back a burst of viperish anathema.
He forestalled her speech. “If you’re sensible, you'll forget to come back again,” he suggested, from within the room.
She glared, swallowed the words she would like to say, and went on to the gate, where she immediately began to curse the man who had driven her out from Fallen Rock. In another minute they were whirling dust-clouds behind them on the trail to town.
Not till then Reid Holleman turned and met the grateful, still wondering eyes of Lorrie.