Wanderlust Creek and Other Stories (14 page)

Owen drew a deep breath, as if trying to
steady himself from the memory of the anger. “I got up before dawn
next morning—I hadn’t slept much—and packed a camp outfit to ride
out on my own. I’d done it before when I needed to cool off from a
temper—stayed out for a day or two, and shot a rabbit or something
for dinner—he knew that. I left early, before any of the men in our
bunkhouse were up.

“I rode for a few hours, alone, out in the
open, and then I circled around so I came on one of the roads
nearby. I ran into a friend of mine, Bill Anthony, on the road. He
looked surprised to see me, and asked if I knew what’d happened. I
said no, what? He’d just come from our place—he said my father had
gotten up that morning and found five hundred dollars missing from
the safe in his office—supposed to be our month’s payroll and more.
Bill said my father was raging mad; he was sure I’d taken it—he
said he’d set the sheriff after me. He was leaving for town to do
it when Bill left.” Owen bit his lip. Then his face hardened again.
“After I left Bill I cut over the hills to the nearest railway
siding and got on the train there. I left my horse; I knew if they
were looking for me someone would find him and take him back. I had
a little money and the stuff in my saddlebags…I figured I’d get to
Denver, it’d be harder to find me there.

“That was yesterday morning, and I haven’t
eaten or slept since—till tonight. I changed trains twice. Nobody
was going to catch up with me. You see why I couldn’t sleep out in
the wagon yard…somebody might find me there easy. That’s why I had
to have this room.”

“Well, it seems to me like a stupid thing to
do,” said Andy, with the wide-eyed candor that seemed to disarm the
possible offense of his remarks.

Owen lifted his head, and frowned at him.
“Why?”

“Well, if you didn’t take the money, seems
to me it’d be pretty easy to prove. You haven’t
got
the
money, and I suppose anybody could have broken into the safe
and—”

“The safe wasn’t broken open,” said Owen in
a low, tired voice. “It was unlocked. The only ones who knew the
combination besides Dad were me and our foreman, Joe Nader. Dad
trusts him completely, and anyway he wasn’t even there—he’d gone
with a shipment of cattle we sold and wasn’t going to be back till
the day before the Fourth.”

“Oh,” said Andy. He added, “So you got
scared—and ran?”

“I wasn’t scared!” said Owen with sudden
vehemence. “I didn’t take the money. I could have proved it. I
wasn’t worried about that. I was angry. I wasn’t going to be
arrested and taken back there and humiliated over something I
didn’t do—something he ought to know I didn’t do. I’m not going to
give him the satisfaction of pointing fingers and saying, ‘See,
I’ve been telling you you’re behaving rotten, and this proves it,’
when I don’t deserve it.”

“Well, yes, but, with the safe being open
like that, you can’t really blame him for jumping to
conclusions—”

“I’m his son!” said Owen fiercely, sitting
up again. “He raised me. He taught me right from wrong—drilled it
into me. I’ve never done anything to shame him. But he was ready to
believe in an instant that I’d steal from him, without even
thinking there might be another answer. He couldn’t even come
looking for me himself first and find out if it was true, instead
of going and blazing it up and down the county that his son was a
thief and a sneak. He didn’t think twice about yelling it out for
everybody who was there to hear.”

“Sounds like he was mad,” said Andy
pensively.

This mild understatement did not seem to
require a reply. Owen lay back on his side, propping his head on
his hand. When he was silent, the expression on his face was more
bleak than bitter. With the dark shadows under his eyes and the low
lamplight touching his curly hair, he looked very young and
forlorn.

“I still think it was a pretty dumb idea
running off like that,” Andy resumed. “You act like you wanted to
make yourself look guilty. If you haven’t got the money, you could
have walked right back to him before he ever got near the sheriff
and said so.”

Owen lifted his chin from his hand and
stared at him. “You’re not even sure I’m telling the truth, are
you,” he said, disbelievingly. “You think I’m making all this up
for
your
benefit? I didn’t have to tell you anything, you
know. Your mouth would have been shut anyway because of this
room.”

Andy hastily tried to make a disclaimer.
“Well, no, I didn’t—”

“
If
. You keep saying
if
. You
think I’ve got the money? Try me. I dare you to look for yourself
and see.” He struck out with one leg and kicked the saddlebags off
the bed onto the floor, where they fell in the middle of the
braided rug.

Andy considered them for a minute, looking
rather as if he were making up his mind what to have for breakfast.
“Well, you don’t seem like the type to bluff,” he said at last,
“but—”

He got out of his chair and knelt down on
the rug, and proceeded to unbuckle the saddlebags. He unpacked the
contents deliberately: socks, shirts, shaving materials…When it was
all piled on the rug he shook the empty leather bags, peered
inside, and then began to put the things back in as methodically as
he had taken them out. Owen watched him with a touch of foggy
bewilderment from the edge of the bed—in his overwrought state of
mind, he did not seem able to comprehend Andy’s unruffled
attitude.

Andy glanced up from his task, and met
Owen’s eye. “Sorry,” he said, awkwardly.

Owen looked away, as if stung with shame.
“You’re a stranger,” he said. “You’ve got every right not to
believe me.” He added, “I ought to be the one apologizing for all
the trouble I’ve given you.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Andy. And he
added, “I did believe you, anyway. I just thought I’d check.”

Owen gave something that might have been a
faint laugh. Andy stood up, and slung the saddlebags around the
bedpost at the foot of the bed.

“Well,” he said, “what are you going to do
now?”

Owen looked steadily across the room at the
table where the envelope lay. “I’m going to mail that letter,” he
said, “and I’m going to take the first train for Denver in the
morning.”

Andy hesitated. “You’re sure that’s what you
want to do?”

“That’s what I’m going to do,” said Owen. He
added, a little more sharply, “Will you mail the letter?”

“I’ll mail it,” said Andy, not with the best
grace. He picked it up off the table.

He glanced round the room before going.
“Anything else I can get you?”

Owen laughed again, off-key with strain.
“‘Anything else I can get you?’ You’ve got the hotel business down
all right. No, there’s not much more you can do for me.”

There was a pause, and his eyes met Andy’s
again. “Sorry. You’ve been darned decent to me.” He offered his
hand. Andy accepted it willingly and they shook hands.

“Well, goodnight,” said Andy. “I’m going to
call you pretty early—reserved room, you know. Better get some
sleep now.”

Owen was already lying back on the pillow,
his eyes half-closed; he nodded drowsily. Andy tapped the letter
against his hand, and turned around and went out—forgetting, in his
abstracted mood, to turn out the lamp.

He went downstairs, still fingering the
envelope. Of a serene temperament himself, he was vaguely disturbed
by the tides of strong emotion that lashed round the Moores, though
he had only felt the storm at second hand. And the lack of
resolution made him unhappier. If the father was anything like the
son, the acridity and accusation that he had no doubt the letter
contained would be only so much tinder to the flames.

Andy tapped the envelope sharply against his
fingers again as he reached the desk, looking at it as though
reproving it; and then slid it into the space reserved for outgoing
mail. He went behind the desk and sat down, threw up one foot
across his knee, pulled his book to him and opened it. The swivel
chair seemed uncomfortable. He glanced at the clock—a quarter to
eleven.

At ten minutes to twelve, a hotel patron
came down the stairs with a grip in his hand, still rubbing sleep
from his eyes, paid his bill and went out into the now sharply cool
night to catch the midnight train. Andy put the money in the till,
and then he took out the scrap of paper with “John Smith” scrawled
on it and examined it again. He found another sheet of paper and
tried copying the handwriting, practicing it several times over. A
conscientious forger was Andy; to his mind even an ultimately
meaningless alias ought to look right on the hotel register.

The midnight train came and went while he
was thus occupied; the station was almost too far across town for
him to hear the faint whistle. Andy was still bent over the paper
imitating individual letters when a step on the floor just beyond
the desk startled him. He straightened up and hastily brushed the
papers off the desk out of sight—a guilty action, but the man did
not appear to have seen; he was looking down and his hat shaded his
eyes.

“Can I help you, sir?” said Andy, trying to
regain his jumbled composure.

The man nodded. “I’d like a room, if you’ve
got one,” he said, in the distant, dispirited voice of a midnight
traveler.

“Just one,” said Andy, glancing toward the
cubbyhole which held the key just returned by the man who had
checked out. “How long do you want it for?”

“Just for the night. I’ll pay in the
morning.”

“Very well, sir. If you’ll sign right
here…”

The man picked up the pen and scribbled at
the register, then put it down with a sigh and rubbed his hand over
his eyes. Andy turned the register around and gave it his customary
glance. His brain registered the signature, and then gave a violent
jolt. The name on the last line was Ira Moore.

Andy gave him a quick wide-eyed look, which
Ira Moore, looking down still, did not see. The resemblance to his
son was not obvious; he was of stockier build, his face was more
square; but the likeness was there in faint glimpses—something
about the coloring and the shape of the head. He lifted his head
resignedly and looked across at the clerk, and Andy saw the
weariness in his eyes. It was the same man he had heard about, and
yet a different one. It was easy to read in his face a man who had
raged and been angry, and now, in a later, quieter hour, was tired
out and rebuked by his own anger and the trouble it had caused.

Andy said, hesitantly, “Is there anything
else I can get you, sir?”

Ira Moore smiled half-heartedly. “No,
there’s nothing else you can do, son.”

Andy Brown turned around to face the rows of
cubbyholes on the wall and raised his hand toward the one with the
key he wanted. And then suddenly a daring thought came over him. He
paused, staring at his own uplifted hand, and then he did perhaps
the only audacious thing he had ever done in his life. He took down
the spare key to the reserved room.

He turned and pushed the key across the
desk. “Upstairs and to your left,” he said. “All doubled up
tonight, I’m afraid; we’re always this full over the Fourth.”

Moore seemed to have only half heard; he
nodded absently and pulled the key off the desk. He turned and
walked toward the dark stairs.

He climbed them slowly and turned to the
left at the top of the flight. He went along the hall: unlike Andy
Brown, making no attempt to soften his already heavier, though
slower footsteps. At the door, he fumbled a few seconds with the
key, rattling it, before realizing that the door was not locked. He
shook his head as if to clear away his own dullness, twisted the
knob and pushed the door inward.

He took one step in and half halted at the
unexpected glow of lamplight revealed by the door’s swinging
open—and then he stood stock-still, unable to move or speak. Owen
Moore stood opposite with his back against the wall, only a few
yards away—his face, half in shadow, was set and desperate, his
eyes haunted, and there was a gun in his hand. It was pointed
toward the door.

Ira Moore did not move. He looked slowly
from the gun to his son’s face—his eyes watchful, as he tried to
gather his wits. He noted the boy’s strained, pallid face, the way
he leaned back into the wall, and how the hand that gripped the gun
was unsteady. His father realized that in the wrong speech or
movement there lay actual danger.

There was only one way he could possibly
think to begin, and the word came cautious and a little husky from
his throat: “Owen—”

“Don’t come any closer,” said Owen—through
his teeth, but the words shook a little. “Do you think I won’t
shoot? I’m not going back with you. I won’t be taken back—and
humiliated any more. You’re not going to lay a hand on me.”

“Owen,” said Ira Moore again—his face full
of distress, but still not daring to move— “now don’t—”

Owen tried to laugh, but his voice cracked
and made it sound like a hysterical sob. “I’ll bet you’d like me to
shoot—and hang for it. That’s what you think I deserve, isn’t
it?”

Moore was silent half a minute, looking at
him, trying to decide what to do. Then he gathered his nerve and
began to speak slowly.

“I made a mistake,” he said. “I know you
didn’t take that money.”

“You believed I did.”

“You were angry enough to do something
reckless, and I was angry enough to believe for a minute that you’d
do it. I thought you’d know that.”

Owen’s voice grew harsh, as though he were
choking back emotion. “You wouldn’t have gone to the sheriff if you
hadn’t believed it. You never bothered to ask. You could have come
after me yourself, instead of letting everyone in the county
know—exactly what you thought of me.”

“If I’d been in my right senses—that’s what
I would have done,” said Ira Moore, his forehead knitting
painfully. “Can’t you at least allow for a mistake?”