SCOT TALKS ON MOTHER LOVE
The weeks passed, became months. Spring browned to summer and summer crisped to autumn. Hugh and Scot saw nothing of each other. The younger brother had given up riding and joined a gold rush to a new camp; the older was still dealing faro at the Crystal Palace.
The Dodsons were yet camped on the outskirts of Virginia. The man of the family spent most of his time hanging around saloons and dance halls. Rarely he did a day’s work. Usually he secured food and drink for himself by acting as janitor at some of the places which he frequented. For weeks at a time his wife never saw him.
Scot McClintock no longer visited the dugout beside the prairie schooner. The last time he had seen Mollie Dodson was the day when he had thrashed the bully to whom she was married. He did his kindnesses by proxy now. The missionary from Buffalo, New York, Calvin Baird by name, was his deputy in supplying the needs of the Dodson family. Sometimes Vicky reported to him, but he saw very little even of her.
Then, one day, Vicky came to him at the International Hotel, where he lived, and sent up word that she wanted to see him. Scot came down and found the face of his little friend wan and tear-stained.
“What’s wrong, Vicky?” he asked, slipping his arm round her shoulder.
She began to sob, and through her broken words he gathered the story. Dodson had come home drunk while his wife was getting a bucket of water, had flung himself on the bed without seeing the baby, and had fallen at once into heavy stertorous slumber. When Mollie got back the child was dead, smothered by her own father.
Scot borrowed a horse and rode out at once to the camp. Dodson had temporarily disappeared, frightened at the horrible thing he had done. The accident had taken place twelve hours earlier, and the tears of the mother were for the moment spent. She was dry-eyed and wan, in that deep despair which is beyond expression, almost beyond feeling. With a tenderness that set flowing in Scot a wild river of sympathy she drew back the cotton handkerchief that covered the baby face. For an instant his heart beat fast. Except for the pallor Virginia looked so natural she might have been asleep. He half-expected to see the lashes tremble and the blue eyes open.
McClintock took on himself all the arrangements for the funeral. He dragged Dodson out of a grog shop, soused his head in a horse trough, and when he became sober saw that he remained so until the burial.
The day after the interment Scot called on Mrs. Dodson. Her husband was not at the camp.
Presently he came plump to the purpose of his visit. He was never a spendthrift of words.
“What are you and Vicky going to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” the bereaved mother answered listlessly. “Vicky ought not to stay here. It’s not right. But I’ve no place to send her.”
“Mr. Stewart and I have discussed that. We’ve talked with some of the business men of the town. If you’re willing we’ll divert the baby’s fund to Vicky and send her down to Miss Clapp’s school at Carson. She’ll be well taken care of there. Miss Clapp is a fine woman. Does it seem to you a good idea?”
Tears brimmed to her eyes. “You’re good. I can never repay you. I—I’ll be awf’lly lonesome without her, but if you think it best——”
“It’s not what I think but what you think,” he said gently.
“Could I see her sometimes?”
“As often as you like. She would spend her vacations with you, of course.”
The lump in her throat began to ache again. Her gaze travelled beyond the cañon below, across the Twenty-Six Mile Desert and the Forty Mile Desert to the Pine Nut Mountains. There it rested for a long time. She drew in her breath with a deep ragged sigh that was almost a sob. “She’d better go. This is no life for a little girl. I want her to have a chance to—to—be happy and live with good people.”
“Is it any life for a young woman to lead?” he asked, his blue eyes fixed steadily on her.
A faint flag of colour fluttered in her wan cheeks. He had never before broken down the outposts of her reserve. She felt her pulse beating. His impersonal friendliness had suddenly become a close and vital thing.
“Why speak of that? I made my choice years ago,” she said. She thought, but did not say, that the hard and bitter facts of existence cannot be talked away. They are as immovable as the Sierras.
“We have to make fresh choices every day,” he told her. “Do you think your life can go on now the same as it did before? It can’t. There’s a gulf between you and—him. Have you any hope that it can be bridged?”
“No.”
“Or that you can do him any good by staying with him?”
“No.”
“Then why should you make deliberate shipwreck of your life—or let him do it for you? Just now you don’t care what becomes of you. But you have to keep on the best you can.”
He spoke quietly, his words unstressed, but just for a flash she caught in his eyes an expression that told her his emotions were a banked volcano. Mollie found herself trembling.
“No—no. I married him, for better or worse. I’ll stay with him.”
“Can you stay with him when he doesn’t want you, when he won’t stay with you?”
“Perhaps he’ll change,” she murmured.
The knuckles of his clenched hand were bloodless, she noticed.
“Men of his age don’t change. They’re what they have made themselves. They can’t be anything else. Would you waste your life on such an impossible chance? Don’t do it. Begin again.”
“How?” she asked.
“There’s work at Virginia for a hundred women. You can mend clothes or cook or keep boarders—anything for a start. Afterwards——” He let the future take care of itself.
In spite of her dependence Mollie had a capacity for dumb resistance. Scot left her knowing that he had the empty victory of having convinced her judgment but not the deep instinct in her born of habit and tradition.
He walked down the grade past dugouts, shanties, and lean-tos. Occasionally he could hear the blast of dynamite. He passed bull teams hauling hay from the Truckee Meadows, the drivers cracking long-lashed whips with short hickory handles. Freight outfits, wood haulers, and ore wagons filled the road. Everywhere was the bustle and activity that go with the early years of a new and prosperous mining camp. He was aware of it all only subconsciously, for his mind was filled with thoughts of the woman he had just left.
A medley of voices, a whirl of excited men, roused him from reflection as he reached the end of the business part of town. Just now he was not looking for crowds. He turned to make the climb to A Street when a voice hailed him.
“Just in time, Scot. We’re aimin’ to hang Dodson. Come on, old scout.”
McClintock stood rooted. Here was an easy way for Mollie out of her troubles. All he had to do was to keep on walking up hill and the matter would settle itself. It was none of his business. If Virginia City had had enough of the ne’er-do-well the matter was one for it to pass upon. The fellow was not worth a short bit anyhow. Scot’s judgment was that he was better dead.
None the less he found it impossible to keep on up the hill. He walked toward the mob and pushed a way through with his broad shoulders to the cowering wretch with the rope around his neck.
Dodson sank down and clung to McClintock’s knees. “Save me,” he begged, his face ashen gray.
“What’s he done?” asked Scot of the man who seemed to be the leader.
“You know what the drunken bummer did—killed his own baby. Then when Jerry Mulligan told him what for an hour ago he stuck a knife in him.”
“Is Jerry dead?”
“No. Not yet. Doc says maybe he’ll die.”
“Jerry have a six-shooter out?”
“No.”
“He was gonna attack me. It was self-defence,” the grovelling man pleaded.
One of the crowd spoke: “This Dodson’s bad—bad clear to the bottom of his heart. He’s been talkin’ about his wife to make excuses for what he did.”
“Let’s wait, boys,” Scot said. “Maybe Jerry will pull through.”
“No, let’s finish the job, Scot. This fellow’s no good, anyhow. You know it. So do we.” Jean Poulette, the owner of a gambling house, pushed to the front.
“I’m not thinking about him, Jean. I’m thinking about that little mother in the prairie schooner. She’s got trouble enough already, hasn’t she? Do you want to pile on more—to send her through life marked as the wife of a man that was hanged? Ain’t that rather rough on her, boys?”
“She’ll be well rid of him,” a voice cried.
“Sure,” agreed McClintock. “But not that way. I don’t say this drunken loafer is worth saving. But we can’t hang him without striking a blow at her. She’s sensitive, boys. It would hurt her ’way down deep.”
“Sho! Tha’s foolishness, Scot. It’d be a li’l shock at first maybe, but afterwards she’d just naturally be plumb pleased. Any of us would in her place.”
“Say, who started this gabfest?” demanded the man holding the other end of the rope that had been slipped over Dodson’s head. “Let’s hustle this job through. I got a man to meet right soon.”
McClintock met him eye to eye. “You can go meet him right now, Six-Fingered Pete. The hanging’s off.”
“Who says it’s off?” blustered Pete.
“I say so.” Scot spoke quietly, his voice low and clear.
“Someone elect you judge and jury, Scot?” asked Poulette.
“Sorry to interfere, boys. I’ve just come in from seeing Mrs. Dodson. She’s all broke up about the baby. You wouldn’t want to make things harder for her. It doesn’t matter a billy-be-damn whether this fellow lives or dies. Nobody cares about him. He’s nothing. We’ll hold him till we see how Jerry comes out—just stick him in the calaboose.”
If Scot was a dominating figure in the life of the camp it was not because men walked in fear of him. He never looked for trouble or avoided it. He never used his splendid strength and courage to bully those weaker than himself. Even old Tom Todd, the Negro roustabout who was the butt of the camp jokes, always met with respect from the dealer at the Crystal. His influence was born of liking and admiration. It maintained itself without effort on his part because he had the qualities of leadership.
It was a part of his gift that he made men want to follow the path he took. He usually knew exactly in what direction he wanted to go, but he never hectored or was overbearing.
Poulette felt within himself a response to Scot’s warm appealing smile, but he was ashamed to make a direct face about. “Might as well go through now. You can’t ever do justice without hurtin’ some woman somewhere.”
“An’ this bummer ce’tainly is ripe for a rope,” added Pete.
“I wouldn’t lift a hand for him,” Scot answered. “I’m still thinking of that mother’s aching heart, boys. Not one of us here was ever good enough to his mother. We’re a hard, tough lot. We’ve travelled a heap of crooked trails since we were kids at our mothers’ knees. Pete, you hard-boiled old sinner, I met your mother in Sacramento last year, and that little lady began to tell me about what a good boy you’ve always been to her, how you send her money now, and how when you were a freckled runt of a ten-year-old——”
Red as a beet, Pete interrupted roughly: “Oh, hire a hall, Scot.”
McClintock pushed his advantage home. The theme of his talk was mother love. These big, overgrown boys reacted to it because each one of them had enshrined in his own heart the memory of a mother he had many times hurt and often neglected. The point Scot made was that they could now pay part of the debt they owed their own mothers. It scored heavily.
“I reckon Scot’s right,” someone spoke up. “If it’s gonna worry the lady any, might as well postpone the necktie party.”
Mobs are fickle and unstable of purpose. This one’s mind began to veer. Inside of five minutes Scot had the members of the lynching party moulded to his view. They had no desire whatever to hang the poltroon who had stabbed their friend, or, at least, the desire was subordinated to a more imperative one.
The rescued man tried to whine out a blend of thanks and justification to the gambler.
Scot looked him over scornfully and turned on his heel without a word.