“Well, I’m sorry. It was her place to tell you. Your father is buried out west, in Oregon.”
“Yes, I know.”
“He’s not buried in a cemetery. He’s buried on a hill. He bought the tract of land himself.”
I waited. The noises of the camp came cheerily through the cabin windows. There was a strong smell of pine wood and resin and of bacon frying somewhere out of doors.
“Your father broke his neck falling down the elevator shaft in a New York hotel. The verdict was accidental death, but it was not an accident. Your mother knew, and I knew.”
I stood up, staring at him stupidly, holding the letter in my fingers, then quickly turned and went out. I crossed the camp and struck off into the woods. In a quiet place I sat down and opened the letter. It began, “My dear daughter Jane.” I know it by heart. This is the letter.
“My dear daughter Jane: It is time for me to go. A man is free to choose his time. This I believe, not much else. I am sorry to leave you, but you are only five years old and you will be better off with your grandmother in St. Mary’s Plains than you would be with me. Your grandmother and your aunts will take care of you. They are good women. It’s not their fault that they don’t like me. The truth is, Jane, that I’m not their kind. I’m nobody’s kind and I’m awful tired of being alone in a crowd. This world is getting too full of people for me. I want space and I guess I’ll find it where I’m going.
I wouldn’t leave you so much money if I knew what to do with it. It never did me any good. It was only fun getting, not having. At first I worked with my hands—in the earth—then I found gold. I bought land and more land, built a railroad or two, and then Wall Street got me. That was like the poker table I’d known when I was a boy working on the Chippevale Ranch. That was just excitement, no good to any one, but fun for a spell.
When you are thirty years old you’ll have as much sense as you’re ever going to have. Perhaps you’ll do better than I did. Perhaps you’ll know how to spend. I didn’t. I’d like you to enjoy what I’ve left you. It would console me some.
I’m not a believer in the Cross of Jesus and I don’t want it on my grave, but I’m not sure there isn’t something over yonder on the other side. I hailed from the far West. It’s spoiling now, but a wide prairie and a high sky are the best things I know, that and working with your hands.
Good-bye, little girl Jane, you’re the only thing I mind leaving behind. I’d kind of like to know what you’ll be like when you get this.
Your Uncle Bradford’s an honest man, there aren’t many, you can trust him. He’ll give you this and explain that there was no disgrace. Only I didn’t feel like living any more. There are too many people hanging round. I want to get away. If I’m doing you a wrong by quitting I ask you to forgive me.
“Your loving father,
“Silas Carpenter.”
I worked it out that night with maps and time-tables. I had just enough time to go to Redtown and get back to New York to catch my boat. I left the next morning. My aunt went with me. Uncle Bradford’s steam launch took us down the lake. We caught a train at a place called Athens and joined the western express the middle of the next day. It took us three days and three nights to get to Oregon. We crossed the Mississippi river early one morning. The next day we thundered through the Rocky Mountains. The plains beyond were immense and stupefying.
I visited the grave alone. A block of granite, reminding me of a druid’s stone, marked the spot on the hill where he was buried. It stood up stark and solid on the bare ground. It looked as if it had been left there endless ages before by some slow, gigantic movement of nature, some glacier travelling by inches from the north, or some heaving of the earth’s surface. One side of it was polished and bore an inscription cut into the stones:—
“here lies silas carpenter, who was born in this place before it was a town and who died in new york on January 5th 1885.”