Together they lived in the house which through all their married life they had called “home;” together they worked side by side through all their years of youth and middle age. But not farther are we from the farthest star than were these two apart in their real lives. Yet she was his wife; this woman for whom he had no dearer name than “Marth’,” and to whom—for years—he had given no caress. She looked the incarnation of indifference and apathy. Ah! but was she?
A few years ago there came a mining expert from San Francisco to examine the Yellow Bird mine; and with him came a younger man, who appeared to have no particular business but to look around at the country, and to fish and hunt. There is the finest kind of sport for the hunter over in the Smoky Range; and this fellow, Baird—Alfred Baird was his name—spent much of his time there shooting antelope and deer.
He was courteous and gentle mannered; he was finely educated—polished in address; he spoke three or four languages, and was good to look at. He stayed with the Scotts for a time—and a long time it proved to be; a self-invited guest, whether or no. Yet all the while he did not fail to reiterate his intentions to “handsomely remunerate them for their generous hospitality in a country where there were so few or no hotels.” He assured them he was “daily expecting a remittance from home. The delay was inexcusable—unless the mail had miscarried. Very annoying! So embarrassing!” And so on. It was the old stereotyped story which that sort of a fellow always carries on the tip of his tongue. And the wonder of it all was that Scott—surly and gruff to all others—was so completely under the scamp’s will, and ready to humor his slightest wish. Baird used without question his saddle and best horse; and it was Scott who fitted him out whenever he went hunting deer over in the Smokies.
By and by there came a time when Scott himself had to go away on a trip into the Smoky Range, and which would keep him from home a week. He left his wife behind, as was his custom. He also left Alfred Baird there—for Baird was still “boarding” at Scott’s.
When old Fred Scott came back, it was to find the house in as perfect order as ever, with every little detail of house work faithfully performed up to the last moment of her staying, but the wife was gone. Neither wife, nor the money—hidden away in an old powder-can behind the corner cupboard—were there.
Both were gone—the woman and the gold pieces; and it was characteristic of Old Scott that his first feelings of grief and rage were not for the loss of his wife, but for the coins she had taken from the powder-can. He was like a maniac—breaking everything he had ever seen his wife use; tearing to pieces with his strong, sinewy hands every article of her clothing his eyes fell upon. He raved like a madman, and cursed like a fiend. Then he found her letter.
“Dear Fred:—
Now I’m a going away, and I’m a going to stay a year. The money will last us two just about that long. I asked Mr. Baird to go with me, so you needn’t blame him. I ain’t got nothing against you, only you wouldn’t never take me nowheres; and I just couldn’t stand it no longer. I’ve been a good wife, and worked hard, and earned money for you; but I ain’t never had none of it myself to spend. So I’m a going to have it now; for some of it is mine anyway. It has been work—work all the time, and you wouldn’t take me nowheres. So I’m a going now myself. I don’t like Mr. Baird better than I do you—that ain’t it—and if you want me to come back to you in a year I will. And I’ll be a good wife to you again, like I was before. Only you needn’t expect for me to say that I’ll be sorry because I done it, for I won’t be. I won’t never be sorry I done it; never, never! So, good-by.
Your loving wife,
Martha J. Scott.”