“First thing,” said Morgan Valentine, when the story was completed, “is this: How d'you feel about it yourself, Charlie?”
His son was disturbed and showed it.
“I dunno,” he said cautiously, and he watched his father with troubled eye. “Point is, if I don't go in, folks maybe will think I'm afraid of Jud Boone.”
“You'd be a fool if you weren't,” answered his father. “I know Jud Boone. I've seen him work. I'm afraid of him myself.”
“Then you think I'm right to stay home?” And Charlie sighed, immensely relieved.
“I leave it to you,” said his father with his usual unperturbed manner. “When it comes to life and death, every man is his own best judge.”
“If he was an ordinary kind of man,” complained Charlie, “I'd take a chance as quick as anybody. But a professional murderer—” He shuddered. “You say you're afraid of him, and I guess it ain't wrong for me to say the same thing.”
“All right, son. You stay here tomorrow, and I'll go in and get the saddle for you.”
“Dad, if you go, they'll most likely take it out on you!”
“And you've already said that you wouldn't like to meet Jud Boone.”
“I wouldn't like to, but I'd do it.”
Silence fell on the group. Charlie Valentine moistened his colorless lips.
“I'll tell you something,” went on the father in his calm manner, which had now a deadly interest for the younger men. “One time my brother John got mixed up with a ruffian in the early days.”
He paused to collect his thoughts, and the hush upon the others became deeper; for when Morgan Valentine, once in a year, mentioned the name of his brother, it became a breathless moment.
“I forget the name of the gun fighter. He was a gent with his notches in his gun—and he was the kind that talked about 'em. Well, John crossed him. The gunman was drunk, and he was too clever to fight while he was drunk. He waited till he was all sobered up and then he sent word to John that he was waiting for him.
“I was with John when the news came.
“Well, John waited for an hour or so, thinking. Then he sat down and wrote out his will as good as any lawyer could have done. Then he climbed on his horse and went down to the town. I tried to go with him, but he wouldn't let me.
“He didn't come back that night. I waited until dark and then I follered him. When I come to town, it was full of the fight. John had met the gunman, and the gunman had beat him to the draw. He knocked John down with the first bullet through the shoulder—the left shoulder. And while he lay on the floor, he shot John again, and the bullet ripped up the flesh along his ribs. But John lay there and lifted his own gun, slow, took a good aim, and then he fired. That bullet went through the gunman's heart.”
There was a pause, but no one spoke, for it was evident from the lifted, tense face of Morgan Valentine that he would speak again.
At length: “When I see John, he was pretty badly done up. He took my hand. 'Thank Heaven it's over, Morgan,' he says to me. I says: 'John, it was a glorious thing to do. The whole town is talking about how brave you are.'
“ 'It wasn't bravery. It was fear,' says John. 'I was afraid of that fellow as if he was death. But I'm more afraid of shame than I am of death.'
“I ain't asking you to follow the example of John, Charlie. I'm simply showing you the way one man faced the same sort of thing that you've got to face.”
Charlie was white, as though the bullet of Jud Boone had already pierced him.
“All right,” he said huskily, “then I'll—”
“Don't make up your mind now,” said his father gently. “Go off and sit down by yourself and think it over. If you go into Salt Springs, you'll meet Jud Boone. If you meet him, the chances are one out of four that you'll kill him and four to one that he'll kill you. You're a young man, Charlie. You got a lot of things ahead of you. It's hard to pay that price. But keep this thing in your head, too. That if you don't meet Jud Boone, the time may come, sooner or later, when you'll have another thing to face. It may be different. And when that time comes, you may say to yourself, 'Is it worth it? Is what people may say about me worth the money that I'll have to pay to keep my name clean?' And you may remember how you kept away from Jud Boone and then lived down the shame of it. But go off by yourself and think this thing out.”
He left them, and the moment he was gone, Mrs. Valentine, staggering, ran to her oldest son.
“You ain't going to go, Charlie. Oh, tell me you ain't going to go?”
He pushed her away, almost rudely.
“You take my nerve when you talk like that,” he said. “Gimme a chance to play the man, Mother! Gimme a chance to think it over!”
He went his way, and Mrs. Valentine, after standing a moment with her hands clasped, looking after him, cast a frantic glance over Tom Waite and Louis, and then hurried from the room.
She had remembered that source of comfort which had many times aided her in her problems with advice keen and to the point even if it came out of a younger head. In a word, she went to the room of Mary Valentine, and there she found not only Mary, but her daughter Elizabeth. They had been laughing together, whispering over some small secret. They started up at the sight of the smaller woman. Mrs. Valentine hardly saw her daughter.
“Mary,” she said, “I've got to see you alone.”
And Mary took Elizabeth to the door and then faced her aunt, turning slowly and nerving herself as if for a shock. Not that there was an actual anger existing between the two, but each was from a separate world, and they always looked on one another as from a distance. Mary, now, was forcing a faint smile of interest, but Mrs. Valentine was too distressed to even pretend to disguise her emotion.
“Like as not,” she said, and her voice was softer than her words were bitter, “like as not Elizabeth has been telling you things that only her mother should know.”
“I give you my word, Aunt Maude, that if there were anything really important about it, I'd tell you myself.”
The wan smile of Aunt Maude had no mirth in it.
“It's the same with Elizabeth as it is with the boys. You come first, Mary. And you come first with—Morgan—I think.”
“Hush! Hush! What are you saying?”
“A man likes spirit. Decision. All the things that you have and that I haven't.”
“It's true. You see, I've watched and understood. They come to me just to be around. But when it's a big happiness or maybe a secret or maybe a sorrow—then they go to you. As if they felt I couldn't hold a big thing.”
“I'm only a shock absorber. I simply take the shock of silly things that would bother you.”
“Ah, Mary,” said Mrs. Valentine, and she made a singular gesture of drawing imperceptible things toward her heart. “Don't you know that a mother wants to be troubled by them that she loves? You'll know someday, Mary. The treasures of a woman are the troubles that her family bring to her. It's her secret life. I've got no such life, Mary! They pass by me. They go to you!”
Mary Valentine watched the head of her aunt bow with grief. She made a little movement as though she would go to her and strive to cherish her, but the movement was checked. Between the two was a barrier which even the smiles of Mary and all her ways could not break down.
“I don't complain,” said her aunt faintly. “After all, I suppose it's the call of blood to blood. You're a Valentine—and I'm just about—nothing. I'm on the outside.
“But I haven't come to rake up old troubles. I dunno why I always say these things to you, Mary. You've been fair and square to me, honey. You've never gone about behind my back. You've never repeated things. You've never tried to make bad blood between me and the rest. And Lord knows you could of done it many's the time. They ain't a small part about you, Mary. And—and now I've come the way Elizabeth comes to you, and the way Morgan comes to you, and the way Charlie and Louis come to you. I've come to ask for your help, Mary!”
After what she had said before, there could not have been a sadder confession.
“It's about Charlie. The old trouble that started over Joe Norman. Now the Normans have hired Jud Boone, and he's going to lay for Charlie when Charlie goes into Salt Springs to get the prize saddle tomorrow.”
“Then it all comes back to me. It was for my sake that Charlie fought Joe Norman.”
“But I'm not casting that in your face. I'm only asking you what we can do, Mary.”
“Sit down. You're all of a tremble. Sit down—here—let me hold your hands. Is that better?”
“Yes. You sort of steady me, Mary.”
“I'll tell you what we must do. We must keep Charlie at home.”
“I thought of that. Everybody thought of that first thing. But—Morgan won't have it that way.”
“He says it's better to die than to be shamed.”
“Ah, that sounds like him! But—I'll go and try to persuade him.”
“You could always do more with him than anybody else could, Mary. But this time you can't budge Morgan. Because he's following an example.”
“But you'll try to think of something to do, Mary? You'll try to find some way to keep Charlie from Jud Boone? Ain't there anybody among all the men you know that would help Charlie? You could ask someone—Morgan wouldn't lift his finger to get help.”
Mary Valentine sat very stiff and straight in her chair and stared fixedly at her window, as though she saw a ghost forming against the bright rectangle:
“I've thought of a thing to do,” she said at last. “It won't be easy. Maybe it won't work. But—I'll try!”
