A shadow darkened the morning sunlight in the doorway. There on the threshold, a black blotch against the brightness outside, stood Fred Ross, staring at the man who sat on the edge of the bed and stared back at him. Shea saw only a man-the man responsible.

"Did you--" He paused, licked his lips, and continued thickly. "Did you give me whiskey? Did you?"

Ross stepped into the room.

"Yes, I did," he began, roughly. He did not finish.

Something shot from the bedside, something large and thick, something white and heavy, that left the hand of Thady Shea like a bullet. It was the thick, heavy crockery cup. Shea flung it blindly. It struck Ross over the ear with a "_whick!_"

Fred Ross looked vaguely surprised. His knees appeared to give way beneath him. He caught at the table and seemed to swing himself forward, half around. He fell, and lay without moving. The heavy white crockery cup, unhurt by the impact, rolled in the doorway.

Relaxing on the edge of the bed, Thady Shea gave no more attention to Fred Ross, but lowered his face in his two hands. They were big, strong hands; they clutched into his hair and skin until their knuckles stood out white. Shea sat motionless, thus, as though he were trying to produce some exterior which would quell the anguish within him.

His voice rang with a sonorous bitterness as he spoke aloud. The rec.u.mbent Ross moved, then sat up with a lithe, agile motion; but Thady Shea did not stir. He was lost in the words that seemed wrung from his very soul.

"I've tried, I've tried! How have I been weak, how have I failed? Yet I have failed. I've been drunk. I always fail."

His speech was heavy, slow, words coming tenuously to his numbed brain.

He did not hear the slight sound made by Ross in rising erect, in stepping to the wall. He did not see Ross at all, nor the hand of Ross that plucked a revolver from a holster suspended on the wall. He spoke again, the words coming with more coherence.

"Always an unseen hand blocks me. Is it your doing, oh, G.o.d? Before, it was my own fault, for I was weak. This time it was not my fault; I knew nothing about it. G.o.d, are You trying to turn me back into the old shiftless life, into the old vagabond, aimless existence? G.o.d, are You trying to make me a drunkard again? Are You trying to rob me of all purpose?"

He paused. The breath came from his lungs; it was a deep and uneven breath, a sobbing breath, the breath of one who is fast in the grip of terrible emotion. At him stood and stared Ross. Inch by inch the revolver lowered. The keen, alert, battling eyes of the rancher were filled with perplexity, with comprehension, with a strange gentleness.

Again Shea spoke, his face still in his hands:

"I've done my best, G.o.d knows! I've put whiskey out of my life, stifled the craving for it, forgotten about it. And now-now! Why is it that even this one purpose is denied me? Is there no help-is there no help? Is there no help for--"

His fingers clenched upon his iron-gray hair, swept through it. His head came up. His blazing black eyes stared into the gaze of Ross. For half a moment the two men looked at each other, motionless.

Then, abruptly, Ross pushed home the revolver into its holster.

"Pardner," he said, casually, "let's have a cup o' coffee."

He went to the stove in the kitchen, raked up charred black brands, opened the draft, and put the coffeepot over the kindling embers. He set two thick crockery cups upon the boards of the table. He got out spoons and sugar and "canned cow." Then he turned to the other room and with a jerk of the head invited his guest.

Thady Shea rose, very unsteadily, and came.

CHAPTER X-MRS. CRUMP SAYS SOMETHING

Over the rough table Fred Ross delivered himself.

"Something about you I like, Thady Shea," he said, level-eyed. "The old man who fetched you here told me your name. Don't know anything more about you. Didn't know whiskey was bad for you; anyway, it cured the fever. First I knew about you was in yonder, when you talked. d.a.m.n good thing for you, pardner! Savvy? Yes.

"Tell you somethin'. I used to be range rider-a puncher, savvy? Forty a month. No future. Never mind the details, but it come to me that if I didn't get somethin' to work for, I might's well quit livin'. So I took up this here quarter section and started in. It cost me dear, I'm tellin' you!

"I sweat blood over every inch o' this here land. Folks said it was no good. I put up this shack, put it up right. I set in to raise crops. I put my body into it. I put my heart into it. I put my livin' eternal soul into it-and by the Lord I'm goin' to win! I had somethin' to work for, that's all."

Ross leaned back. The flame died from his eyes. He surveyed Thady Shea critically, appraisingly, generously.

"When I heard what you said, in yonder," he pursued, "I seen all of a sudden that you were a man like me. Savvy? Yes. I don't blame you, now, for lamming me over the ear like you done. My Lord! Ain't I talked to G.o.d like you done in there? Ain't things come up to rip the very guts out o' my soul? Well, it's like that with all folks, I guess, only it comes different. Savvy? Yes. I gave you whiskey, and I was a d.a.m.n fool.

That's all."

Ross rose and began to clatter dishes into the dishpan. Thady Shea rose and went to the doorway. He stood there, looking up the east-running canon toward the morning sun. He did not see the half-plowed flat, he did not see the horses and plow; he did not see the pinon trees and the trickle of water. Tears were in his eyes. For one blazing moment he had seen into the soul of Fred Ross, the iron soul, the gentle soul, the brave soul of Fred Ross.

Suddenly he turned about, feeling upon his shoulder the hand of the other man.

"Shea, you asked a while ago if there wasn't no help. Well, maybe there is-if you want it. Do you?"

"Yes," said Thady Shea, huskily.

Upon the following morning he started in to work; he was a bit weak, but he insisted upon working. He dared not do without working. He began to clear another flat farther up the canon, ridding it of brush and scrub oak and pinons.

As he worked, Thady Shea thought much of that wicker demijohn, back in the cupboard of the shack. Once, when he came in to luncheon ahead of Ross, he opened the cupboard. He looked at the clean wicker demijohn, the new demijohn, the demijohn which hung so heavily and lovingly to the hand; as he looked, a sunbeam struck the gla.s.s behind the woven wicker and made it seem filled with rich thin blood. Thady Shea shivered-and shut the door. But he could not shut that demijohn from his thoughts.

He prayed, every hour he worked, that Ross would hide away that demijohn. He said nothing to Ross about it; he felt vaguely ashamed to let Ross know of his struggles with himself. He shrank from revealing how he was tempted.

Days pa.s.sed. Twice, now, Thady Shea had come in from work merely to open that door and look at the demijohn. The first time, he had forced himself to be content with the look. The second time he hefted it; then he reached for the cork, trembling-but just then the step of Ross approached, and Shea replaced the demijohn. He knew that he had been saturated with liquor, that in his involuntary carouse his body had seeped up the whiskey as the thirsty earth seeps up water. The craving was there, the wicked craving of the cracked earth for water.

Terrible were the first few nights. Despite weariness, sleep would not come. On tiptoe Thady Shea would sneak out of the shack, out into the bitter cold night, out under the white, cold stars. He would stride up and down the cold earth until the chill ate into his bones; then, shivering, he would tiptoe back and roll up in his blankets, thinking how a drink would warm him.

As the days pa.s.sed, he worked harder. He slaved until, at darkness, he would nod over his pipe. He did not shave, remembering the words of the ancient, and his gaunt face became filled and strengthened by an iron-gray beard.

All the while he cursed his aimlessness, his lack of purpose. He was looking out, beyond the present; he was looking over the horizon. He was thinking of Mrs. Crump. He prayed under a sweat-soaked brow that some great flaming purpose would come into his life. The word "purpose" had become to him a creed, a mania.

He did not realize, except very dimly, that for him life had already centred upon one immediate and tremendous purpose: to avoid, to shrink from, that clean wicker demijohn in the corner cupboard! Unawares, the purpose had come to him.

And then, upon a day, Fred Ross patched the broken flivver and went to Datil for grub. Thady Shea was left alone, alone with the ranch, alone with the pinon trees and the horses, alone with the shack, alone with the corner cupboard and the clean wicker demijohn. Fred Ross did not seem to perceive any danger in leaving Shea thus alone.

Fred Ross reached the store at Datil about noon, after a long pull.

Datil lay on the highway, where lordly Packards and lowly Fords wended east and west, between California and St Louis. Datil was nothing more than a frame store-hotel-post office. In the rear of the long building were sheds, relics of the days when the far ranchers came in on horseback, of the days when burros and bearded prospectors and unrestricted Indians roused talk of great and blood-stirring events.

A mixed company lunched that day in the long dining room. Ross was too late for the first table, and he stood waiting in the adjoining room, smoking by the huge cobbled fireplace, talking with other men who had drifted along too late for the first serving.

The talk struck upon Thady Shea and the huge joke of which Abel Dorales had been the victim. Ross listened and said nothing, as was his wont. He heard that Thady Shea had skipped the country; had, at any rate, not been found-must have gone over the Arizona line.

"Too bad," commented a st.u.r.dy rancher from Quemado way. "He must ha'

been a right strapping guy, eh? And what he done down to Zacaton, when Ben Aimes give him a drink-say, ain't ye heard 'bout that? It's sure rich!"

The speaker recounted, with many added elaborations and details, the story of Thady Shea and his axe helve. Fred Ross listened in silence.

Fred Ross thought of that heavy white crockery cup; reflectively, he rubbed his head above his ear, and grinned to himself. He was not the only one who had suffered for giving Thady Shea a drink, then!

When the talk turned upon reprisals, Fred Ross listened with more attention. Charges had been sworn out against Shea, it appeared; they had been sworn out by that fool Aimes, but had later been withdrawn.

Abel Dorales had seen to it that they had been withdrawn. Abel Dorales had come to Magdalena; there he had half killed three drunken miners who had ventured to taunt him, and for the same reason he had taken a blacksnake to a sheepman. Abel Dorales had given out that he, and he alone, intended to deal with Thady Shea whenever the latter was found.

It was a personal matter, outside the law. This att.i.tude met with general approval.