When It's in the Heart

by Raymond S. Spears

When It's in the Heart

BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS
Author of "Hoarded Assets," "The Ripe Peach," etc.

THE leading hardware store in Mosstown carried a line of guns, rifles, and side-arms. The proprietor was Jim Malden, whose business constancy was such that from the day he inherited the store from his father to the twentieth year of his trade, he had not missed a full week's time at a stretch. He would go into the woods three or four days, deer-hunting, in the autumn; he would fish for a day or two during the trout season; and occasionally he would steal away on snowshoes to dog rabbits.

Because he had a gasolene-pump on the curb and a line of automobile accessories, including tires, he was as hard-working on Sunday as on any other day. He was married, and had three children, two boys and one girl. So far as any one knew, he was a happy, contented, and successful man. He had no record laid up against him by the hook-beaked gossips.

The gossip of the outdoor world rang in his ears. He heard of the flocks of quail, of jack-rabbits, of coyotes, and of deer, bear, moose, and wild fowl. More than these things, he met the interesting people who come to a gun store—always to some certain gun store in every community.

Talking about entertaining angels unawares! Who could be more interesting than those who come walking or rolling up to a hardware store, some with one eye looking over the shoulder, some with camping-outfits, some to buy 22s for target practice, and some to buy 30-30S, or 45s, for business? There were men everybody knew, and men nobody knew.

Jim Malden leaned against his counter till 10.10 o'clock one night. Two men who had gone to school with him twenty-five years before were with him; there was a stranger who walked in after dark, and stood with his face in a shadow for an hour, leaning against the counter, but taking no part in the conversation, except as a listener.

This stranger was a tall, slender man, smooth-shaven, with hard, weather-darkened face, with eyes whose brightness sparkled under the brim of his floppy hat; and he wore clothes that fitted him comfortably—bagged knees, uncreased legs, an old, unnoticeable coat, rather dusty, and some kind of a negligée shirt. The two friends. Bill Gays and Rob Michael, remembered that the stranger seemed to be a cowboy, or at least gave the impression of being a man of the far range of prairies, or something like that. They remembered that, just a few minutes before the store closed, this stranger leaned over the counter and said something to Jim, as the storekeeper noted the cash-register figures and rolled up the bills which represented the day's business in cash, gross receipts. Malden went to the cartridge shelves and took down a box, but whether 44s, or 38s, or what caliber, they could not remember, for they had looked without seeing.

The stranger strolled away; the three friends stood a moment on the store-step and sidewalk, looking at the sky, wondering if the trout wouldn't be biting good at grizzly kings or yellow sallies the next day, for this was in middle May, when the streams were just beginning to warm up, and the trout were liable any day to begin to jump good.

Bill and Rob turned down the street, toward their homes; Jim turned off the gas-pump light, locked in the hose, and—vanished.

That is all there was to it. Jim Malden disappeared from the face of Mosstown and all that vicinity. No one knew what had become of him. His wife tried to call up the store about 1 o'clock in the morning. She called up police headquarters at 3 o'clock; by 8 o'clock the following morning every one in Mosstown knew that Jim Malden, genial, steady, good-natured, without any bad habits, and one of the best fellows in the country, had gone.

"He must have had several hundred dollars," the investigation revealed. His cash-register, when examined by an expert, disclosed the fact that during that day $345.67 had been taken in; when this fact became known a cold chill crept through the backs of Malden's friends.

"Who was that man who leaned against the counter and saw him take his money?" Bill Gays and Rob Michael asked.

The police sent out an alarm for the arrest of "the unknown." They couldn't take a chance on letting the murderer of Jim Malden escape. They found a clew. One of the city boys who was just coming home from visiting a girl remembered seeing Malden walking along East Agate Street with a tall, slender stranger, who wore a broad-brimmed hat and whose eyes sparkled distinctly. Agate Street was beyond Gresham Street, where Malden lived. The end of Agate Street was a stone quarry, beyond which was a rough, second-growth timber ridge.

With aching hearts the friends of Jim Malden went up into that cut-over and ransacked the brush, searched every nook and cranny, and viewed with suspicion every footprint in the soft ground and every scrape on the rocks. They found nothing to explain the disappearance of the man.

Jim's wife was a fine, competent woman. She immediately took charge of the store. Her oldest son, Tom, eighteen years of age, returned from college and took his place behind the counter, where he had long served an apprenticeship in salescraft. Business went on as usual. There was no break in it, and the commercial travellers coming through discovered that the boy and mother, between them, knew very nearly what the trade wanted, and that they bought to advantage.

An inventory of the store revealed a fine stock; the books balanced, except for the several hundred missing dollars. The business paid a profit of several thousand dollars a year, and the frugal and competent mind of Jim Malden had provided fully for his family.

"I can't imagine why he should go," Mrs. Malden said. "He must have been—something must have happened."

But no trace of violence could be found. The hunters of the region who knew Jim ransacked the hiding-places. They searched up and down for miles. They decided that, whatever had happened, it must have been an automobile that carried the victim away—whether willingly or not none could know for certain.

Bill Gays and Rob Michael argued the matter between them. Once assured there was no local crime discoverable, the two friends split on the subject of what had happened. Jim might have gone crazy. He might have been hit on the head and gone away, a victim of aphasia. He might have done any one of many things.

"He was always talking—you know that!" Bill said morosely.

Jim Malden, sitting in his store or leaning against his counter, had ranged the earth for information. He had read hundreds of books and took a dozen hunting, trapping, fishing, and travel magazines. He was the best-posted man anywhere around those parts. He even knew where certain English pheasants flocked, and where certain gray squirrels ranged, and none knew better than he did where to fish to find certain big, cunning, and scrupulous trout swinging in eddies on quivering fins. Moreover, he was unselfish; he told every one the best of his information.

"I tell you, something's wrong with that man!" Rob declared.

"Oh, sure!" Bill assented. "Something had to be wrong, for him to pass out like that!"

The description of Jim Malden said he was 5 feet 11 inches tall, dark complexion, brownish-gray eyes, dark hair slightly streaked with gray, and that he weighed 230 pounds. Sitting and lounging in his store for years, with rare intervals of exercise, he had grown fat and sluggish of physical manner, but he had given no sign of any mental aberration.

Two years had gone by, to a week. Tom Malden, the son, was sitting with Rob, Bill, and two other local sportsmen in the store, which had lost none of its prestige as a centre, once it was learned that Tom welcomed them and that Mrs. Malden did not mind tobacco smoke nor an occasional cuss-word. Mrs. Malden seldom remained late, often not coming to the store at all after supper. This night she happened to be in the store.

A stranger strolled in. He was tall and slender, dressed unnoticeably, and with his hat drawn down over his eyes. He was soon leaning against the counter with his back to the light and listening to the talk, that was running to fishing, for this was the fishing season again, when trout would be jumping on the rifts.

Suddenly Bill Gays started slightly and glanced at Rob Michael. Then Bill glanced at the calendar. This was Wednesday night. It was the second week in May. Two years previous Jim Malden had disappeared. Mrs. Malden, perhaps noticing the interchange of glances, perhaps feeling the current of their thoughts, glanced at the calendar, too. She caught her hand against her bosom, bit her lip, and turned her eyes from the light. Tom, her son, noted the sudden emotion and divined the cause.

"I can't see what became of him!" Mrs. Malden suddenly cried out in the agony of her spirit. "Two years—and no word!"

"It's beyond everybody—" Bill shook his head. "Jim Malden was the finest man that ever lived. Who'd hurt him—who'd want to hurt him? Well! I'd like to lay hands on that man who was here that night. That's what I'd like to do."

"What's the idea?" the stranger asked. "I don't catch the drift——"

"Jim Malden, who used to keep this store, disappeared two years ago to-night. He just walked up the street there, and nobody has seen him since. There was a stranger in the store that night—fellow saw him take about $350 out of the cash-register. Jim was seen with him out on Agate Street by young Nelson. That's the last anybody's seen or heard of him."

"He disappeared that night?" the stranger exclaimed. "Was that the night we were talking here about trout-jumping? I bought a box of 22s for an automatic pistol——"

"What! Are you that man?" Bill rose, and Rob stood to back him.

"If that's the night he disappeared," the stranger replied, "I came through then, same as I am to-night. I was just in from the Rockies, where I'd had a trap line, but cut loose as soon as I could get over the roads. I went down East, to fish salt water, commercially, during the summer. He disappeared that night?"

"Yes, sir. What did you know about it—talk about that night?" Bill asked.

"Let's see. I was up on the corner. He came and joined me. I told him I was camped over at the stone quarry, and he walked over with me. We sat down in my tent; smoked a pipeful or two. He wanted to know about the roads, and I told him I was touring up and down, and living trapping, fishing, and swapping some.

"He wanted to know how much it cost to travel in a jitney, and what a fellow could do to earn a living on the road. I told him all I knew. We talked, probably, about an hour or two. Then he said good-night. It was a nice warm night. I remember that, for it'd been cold all along till about that time—cold and wet. I stepped out and looked at the skies. We talked a minute or two, nothing special. I never forgot, though—he said he was sick of living the way he was, never running around any, not to speak of, and when he walked away he turned down the path toward the main road, instead of going back on the street, toward where he said he lived."

The people who had known Jim Malden looked at one another. The stranger had thrown his hat back. He had shown his face squarely and honestly; his eyes were clear and gem-brilliant; his face was the kind that any man can trust. For two years the memory of the shaded face and the silence had made a suspicion of this man, but when he told his story the suspicions vanished. They closed the store, and they all walked out to the stone quarry. There was the automobile and the tent of the stranger.

They walked down the cross-path to the main road. In two years they had added two hundred yards to the distance they had been able to track the missing man. But they had added something else.

Mrs. Malden, as the vision grew clearer with the few words the stranger had said, turned to her husband's two most intimate friends.

"Boys," she asked, "don't you suppose Jim just couldn't stand it any more? He couldn't stay in the house any longer. You know how he loved the outdoors! Perhaps—it may be——"

"I bet—probably he did blow up, Mrs. Malden!" Rob Michael said.

"Looks like it to me!" Bill Gays exclaimed.

"Then why—then why—" Mrs. Malden asked.

"Well—probably he—you know the kind of a man he is! He'd be ashamed of it—not being able to help breaking loose, the way he did!"

They all returned to the store. They could not let the matter rest there. They could not wait till morning, or for some other time. The friends and family of Jim Malden sat down to consider the matter. Just to know that he was probably alive was something. Where he was they could only guess.

For an hour, for two hours, they called back the life of Jim Malden. Through their memories ran, with increasing vision, the stories that Jim had told, the things that he knew so much about. With this new discovery of Malden's mind, they reconstructed his whole life. They all knew his patient, his steady, his plodding business in the store. Now they pieced together the other part of him.

He had talked about moose-hunting in Canada, about muskrat-trapping down the Atlantic Coast marshes, about bird-shooting in the great migration routes, all with enthusiasm. By his discourse he revealed the mind that longed with increasing desire for the far and the wild places. Yet which far land would call him most?

"He dreamed about the desert," Mrs. Malden said thoughtfully. "I don't know how many times he would start up in his sleep, saying that he was terribly thirsty, that he was lost in the waste of sand—that kind of dreams. Of course, he used to say he'd like to see the desert, but nobody would really like that kind of a place. Still, he might—perhaps he might have gone there——"

Thus they patched out of what they knew a sort of crazy-quilt pattern which showed what they hadn't suspected about Jim Malden. For days they studied the problem. The stranger who was Ed Douglas, originally of Michigan, remained over three or four days. He was in no hurry; he didn't have to hurry; no devil of time could pursue the likes of him.

"Tom," Mrs. Malden said a week later, "I think perhaps you'd better go find your father, don't you?"

"I was just thinking that," Tom said. "I can go to the desert, and ask around!"

He took the store-delivery car, rigged a bunk for a bed, and took on an outfit. He started for the desert. He knew it was somewhere west of the Rockies; he understood the desert was in Utah; this was the Great Salt Lake Desert. He was a little puzzled, however, by the memory that Death Valley, a desert, was in California. He didn't stop to straighten out this bit of detail. He had been going a week before he began to revise any of his ideas. When he stopped in the beautiful tourists' camp ground at Omaha, he sat on a big timber, listening to a man who was telling about coming out of San Diego by the Imperial Valley, Yuma, and angling up across Arizona and New Mexico, into the Arkansas River valley.

When Tom Malden had rolled more than two thousand miles and saw the Rockies rising before him, he saw the sage and alkali stretching into the limitlessness of piedmontaine prairies. He had listened to a score of tourists who had made the transcontinental; the desert was often on their lips.

Not till he was beyond the Rockies did he suspect the truth; then, by chance, his travel-quickened ears caught the phrase, "the deserts of Colorado."

"Deserts?" he repeated. "How many are there?"

"Well," the proud tourist in a dusty car from Oregon replied, "let's see—Carson Sink, Great Salt Lake, Mohave—that's down on the Santa Fe trail—Blue Valley, and all those valleys in western Colorado that don't have any particular names, but are deserts, and Death Valley, and western Arizona, and the Colorado Desert, but you might say it's mostly one desert right after another, counting the Idaho lava beds, and the same in Arizona, New Mexico, and the Bad Lands, up in the Dakotas——"

"And—and they're big?" Tom Malden asked.

"Oh, yes! Take it out of Salt Lake, now, and you're in about three hundred miles of Salt Lake Desert proper; that's across, and if you go south, then you hit southern Utah, and there are some deserts down there, one desert, if you count it that way. Probably there are fifty or a hundred deserts, not counting the little ones, and separate valleys."

Tom Malden went to his cabin-car and sat in the seat, the stunning fact at last plain in his mind. Not one desert, but scores; and he had come looking for his wandering father where, as he spread the map, he now realized there were a million square miles of land, bare, beautiful, and cut up into glorious valleys by vast mountain ranges. How could he find any man in that land, especially a man hiding out?

He despaired, but he did not quit. Instead, he tried to rise to the magnitude of his task. He now knew things about his country no geography ever impressed on any pupil. He came down into ranches and, stopping, asked the men if they had seen a man like this one whose picture he showed? He left handbills giving descriptions of his father at these places, and in the scattered county-seats, each of which had a weekly newspaper if not a thriving daily.

When he swung south from Ely into Bakersfield he met tourists, and he told them, in the camps at night, about his quest. He skirted the edges of the great agriculture regions of California, dipping into the orange groves and grape vineyards, but swinging out again down the Coachella, down the Salton Sink, and into the southern Colorado desert, where they have turned a patch of gyp lands into Imperial Valley.

He drove north into western Washington, he cut back into Oregon; he traversed Idaho and, before advancing winter, retreated into the edge of the Mexican deserts and down the Big Bend country of Texas. He heard of men, strangers, and circled forth or back to catch sight of them. Twice fugitives pulled down on him with their guns, and backed away to escape what they thought was the detective service—and men threw up their hands to surrender to him, thinking he had them covered.

A desert hobo came into his camp just out of Amboy, in the Mohave, and when he told this man his story the grizzled old fellow wiped a gyp-cut hand across a sun-withered face.

"My boy," he said, "I'm not your father—but I'm—I'm somebody's father. Probably my children feel about me the way you do—and no man's a right to make his flesh and blood think so—worry so—and they can thank you. I'm going home!"

Tom Malden ransacked the deserts till he had seen a thousand valleys. He knew that any day he might find his father. But he might search for ten years and not have that good fortune. He might never find him, or discover trace of him. He was glad to think that he could do this much, though it was but a flower laid on the memory of a man he would always love. He knew now what had come through the books, through the stories, through the maps to his father, fascinating him. The desert was a wonderful and a fascinating place. Not all the sufferings it gave a stranger, from the stinging of cactus spines to the deadly thirst, but were welcome if one could but see the mirage, the sunrise, the sunset, the pitilessly beautiful glare of midday sun— things which once seen are never to be forgotten.

It was not always easy to send mail home from those back places. The mood to write a letter, for one thing, grew less frequent. Tom Malden hated to send word that he had no news. He would stop to trade a little, or to work a little, or to speculate a little. He had a trader's abilities, and thus he grew self-supporting, and he had less need of the letters from home, speaking financially. He sometimes forgot to send an address ahead, or he sent an address but took another trail. He sometimes forgot where he had said he would go.

Before he realized it he was an auto-mobo, an automobile hobo, gathering up abandoned tires for the rubber and carrying other junk to town to sell, and going into the far places, with jack-knives and trinkets to trade or sell. He picked up furs and pelts; he found a pocket of beautiful agates, and, recognizing their beauty, he gathered up what he could and sold them to a jeweller, to be made into curio trinkets—a hundred dollars' worth.

Always, though, he left handbills here and there, as he could. This he did, not only at the ranches and desert towns, but he would post them on rocks at the corners in the desert, at the springs, and at the mountain passes. He followed the main highways till he had been over them all; then he turned from the famous trails to go out to blind-canyon trails, which ended at ranches or mountain-settlement mines. He took his old machine over faint wagon roads, having grown expert in dragging himself out of holes and washes by using blocks-and-tackle.

He excused himself for thus becoming a vagrant by saying that he was looking for his father. In his heart he knew that this was merely an excuse for doing what he wanted to do. He cringed before the accusation of his conscience. He wrote, two or three times, asking his mother if he hadn't better come home and go to work in the store. But he never went to the addresses he gave her, for fear she would tell him to come.

He ranged from Milk River to San Diego; he ranged from El Paso and Brownsville to eastern Washington. A thousand times he confronted the perils of desolation and the extravagances of arid lands. Thus he rolled one day out of nowhere in particular toward everywhere in general, and camped for the night at Fish Spring, in the Salton Sink. East of him the vanishing sea heaved like dull lead before a faint wind. Mesquite grew luxuriantly where the water was sweet to its roots. The ancient waterline of a forgotten ocean led level along the sides of the mountains to the westward. A coyote howled mournfully in the gathering darkness.

It was one of a thousand camps, and yet it thrilled the wanderer as none of all his other desert camps had done. He loved this waste of arid land, this plenitude of color and thirst, the carelessness and forgetfulness, the fact of utter lack of responsibility—his conscience soothed by the thought that tacking up the notices which asked his father to come home, or for information which would lead him to find his father, was enough.

He went to the tall reeds around the deep, bitter-salt pool of water, Fish Spring, and tasted it. The stuff was undrinkable. He returned to his can of much less salt water to take a real drink. He sat on his running-board, listening to the things that emphasized the desert quiet.

He heard shuffling footsteps. Coming across the waste of rising slope from the west, where rose the water-marked mountains, the Sierra Madre, he heard a human stumbling. Then he heard a low voice.

Out of the glow of night a man emerged.

"Howdy," Tom greeted him.

"Howdy!" the other answered. "Any water, stranger?"

"Yes, sir! Lots of it!"

When the visitor had swallowed a quart without pausing, he asked another question.

"Any grub?"

"Lots of it!" Tom replied, and brought forth of his sustenance to feed the ragged, unkempt desert hobo.

This service done, the hobo sat cross-legged, leaning against a tree. He did not speak for a time, apparently digesting and absorbing his stomachful. Tom, too, well-fed, was in no mood to talk. He watched the stranger narrowly, however, for he knew the temptation an automobile and outfit would be to a fugitive, or a lawless, desperate tramp.

"Where going?" the visitor inquired, "if it's any of my business."

"Down the line—Yuma," Tom replied.

"Where from?"

"Reno and up north—those parts."

"Reno? There myse'f a while back. Cross by Eureka, Austin—all around there. Great country! Carson Sink—hell in hot weather! Nice season, now."

"How long you been out?"

"Oh—quite a while—don't remember—five-six years. And you? How long you been out?"

"Three years."

"Anything special? None of my business, understand."

"Oh, yes! Mother sent me looking for her man—my father."

"Sho-o—" the tramp exclaimed.

For a long time the tramp said no word. Then he grunted, drew himself up with his chin on his knees, like a coyote, lying on his side, and soon he was asleep. In the morning the tramp begged more water and something to eat. He was a shaggy, lank, and faded man, his hair bleached by sun, his whiskers bedraggled and long.

Tom fed him and gave him a drink. He looked, by the brightening light of approaching sunrise, at the old hobo. The searcher suddenly caught his breath.

"Pardner," he asked, "’tain't none of my business, probably, but what's your name?"

The man drew up and back resentfully. He glared at the younger man. Yet with that quick, straight look Tom saw eyes that he knew, a face that he remembered above the straggling whiskers and mustache.

"Hello, dad!" he greeted him. "How are you?"

"Tom!" the man exclaimed. "You here—what doing?"

"Looking for you, that's all."

The old man came over and sat down on the running-board. He was twisting his hands. He essayed to speak two or three times, but it was much time before he could say the question that was trembling on his lips:

"How are the folks?"

"Fine!"

"When—when'd you hear, Tom?"

"Why, just the other—um-m—" Tom turned to look away, and at last said in a low voice, "Why, a year ago this winter, dad! Just a little while ago!"

"A year ago?" the man asked. "I s'pose they—they got all through with me now."

"Mother's waited every day—twenty-four hours a day, dad. She's waited ever since. We just heard from that man you talked to—that tourist out to the quarry."

"I just blew up, Tom! I just knew—I just knew I'd never get to go, if I didn't just run away. So I did it. I be'n hiding out, but seein' those reward notices everywhere!"

"I'm— Well, dad, I ain't sorry. It give me a chance, too—to sort of run around. Better start back, hadn't we?"

"All right, Tom. Yes, we'd better. I'll miss the deserts—but—but I've had my share. You think mother—you think she'll really——"

"Sure she will! Kept me out here, looking for you, dad! Now we can go back!"

They packed up the camp outfit. They sat on the front seat of the rattling old light-delivery truck. They struck up north to the corner of the National Old Trails and turned to the right. They rocked and rolled across the Mohave, through the northern part of Arizona, and all the way they argued.

"Better write and tell maw?" Tom would ask.

"All right—to-morrow," the father would say.

They wrote nothing. They kept driving farther and farther each day. They climbed up over Raton pass, coasted off into the prairies of the headwaters of the Arkansas, and as the season waned they hit into the bottoms of the Missouri.

The roads were beautiful, dry, hard, and smooth, so that the old bus could do its best. The last few days they were gain-speeding, and when a tire blew they put on a new one, and kept going. They rolled into Mosstown at the end of a four-hundred mile drive.

They had shaved, they had bathed, they had stopped here and there along, to put on clothes that they bought. Yet in spite of the best they could do, they were weather-beaten, sun-dried, lank desert hoboes, who now shivered in the clammy chill of eastern autumnal weather.

They found the store closed; they went up to the house and there stopped at the curb, whisperless, even. The windows were bright with light within. A phonograph was playing. A tall young woman was sitting reading; a handsome son was holding up a map, looking at it. A woman, the mother, was rocking back and forth in her chair, her hands clasped in her lap, as she stared at nothing in particular.

"Go on, dad," Tom urged.

"You go first." Jim Malden hung back.

"We'll go in together," Tom said, and they held each other by the arm, walked up the step, and hesitated. They did not know whether to ring the bell or walk right into the house.

The mother, however, heard footsteps. She came to look out onto the front porch. As the sitting-room light streamed out upon the two vagabonds, she gave a cry:

"Oh, you've come! At last! At last!"

They didn't deserve that welcome, and they knew it. They were culprits, and they were there not for any rights, but for what in the charity and love of the home folks they might receive. Slowly, in the past thousand miles, they had been coming to their senses. They had grown more and more doubtful of their welcome. They nearly broke down when they found that they had not really forfeited their claim on home and family.

"Why did you do it?" Mrs. Malden sobbed on her husband's shoulder, and he replied:

"I couldn't stand it—I just blew up—if I didn't I knew I'd never see the—the deserts, or anything. Then—then I didn't dare to come back. I didn't suppose—you see——"

"And what of me?" Mrs. Malden asked. "Oh, Jim—why couldn't you have taken me, when you went? All my life—always—always—I've wanted to see the deserts, too!"

Then she broke down.