Told in the Hills: A Novel

by Marah Ellis Ryan

"Not so bad as that, Jack," broke in Stuart, who was watching in a sort of misery the harsh self-condemnation in the restless face and eyes of Genesee. "Don't be so bitter as that on yourself. You are unjust—don't I know?"

"The hell you say!" was the withering response to this appeal, as if with the aid of profanity to destroy the implied compliment to himself. "Your opinion may go for a big pile among your fine friends, but it doesn't amount to much right here. And you'd better beat a retreat, sir. The reputation of the highly respected Charles Stuart, the talented writer, the honorable gentleman, might get some dirty marks across it if folks knew he paid strictly private visits to Genesee Jack, a renegade squaw man; and more still if they guessed that he came for a favor—that's what you called it when you struck the shack, I believe. A favor! It has taken you a good while to find that name for it."

"No, it has not, Jack," and the younger man's earnestness of purpose seemed to rise superior to the taunts and sarcasm of the other. "It was so from the first, when I realized—after I knew—I didn't seem to have thoughts for anything else. It was a sort of justice, I suppose, that made me want them when I had put it out of my power to reach them. You don't seem to know what it means, Jack, but I—I am homesick for them; I have been for years, and now that things have changed so for me, I—Jack, for God's sake, have some feeling! and realize that other men can have!"

Jack turned on him like a flash.

"You—you say that to me!" he muttered fiercely.

"You, who took no count of anybody's feelings but your own, and thought God Almighty had put the best things on this earth for you to use and destroy! Killing lives as sure as if they'd never drawn another breath, and forgetting all about it with the next pretty face you saw! If that is what having a stock of feeling leads a man to, I reckon we're as well off without any such extras."

Stuart had sat down on a camp-stool, his face buried in his hands, and there was a long silence after Genesee's bitter words, as he stood looking at the bent head with an inexplicable look in his stormy eyes. Then his visitor arose.

"Jack," he said with the same patience—not a word of retort had come from him—"Jack, I've been punished every day since. I have tried to forget it—to kill all memory by every indulgence and distraction in my reach—pursued forgetfulness so eagerly that people have thought me still chasing pleasure. I turned to work, and worked hard, but the practice brought to my knowledge so many lives made wretched as—as—well, I could not stand it. The heart-sickness it brought me almost drove me melancholy mad. The only bright thing in life was—the children—"

An oath broke from Genesee's lips.

"And then," continued Stuart, without any notice save a quick closing of the eyes as if from a blow, "and then they died—both of them. That was justice, too, no doubt, for they stayed just long enough to make themselves a necessity to me—a solace—and to make me want what I have lost. I am telling you this because I want you to know that I have had things to try me since I saw you last, and that I've come through them with the conviction that there is to be no content in life to me until I make what amends I can for the folly of the boy you knew. The thought has become a monomania with me. I hunted for months for you, and never found a trace. Then I wrote—there."