The subtle irony conveyed in the doctor’s last words had not been lost on their hearer.
“Aye! ‘The Man with the Muckrake,’” he soliloquized. “That was just it. Also, it was characteristic of Charley that he should have interpreted the impression in such fashion, too.”
It was Sunday, and the sound of the church bells tolling for evening service, interspersed with the merry voices of children in their play, fell unheeded on the ears of the man who, with mind sunk in far-away thought, still remained in the same attitude, with his arms resting on the window ledge, gazing out over the unbroken vista of rolling prairie.
That stern, bandaged face, framed in the open casement, its brooding eyes fixed, seemingly, on the beyond, with the whole setting bathed in the blood-red flame of the sunset’s afterglow, might have impressed one as vividly suggestive of that striking example of the late Sir John Tenniel’s art, in his depiction of that scene enacted in far-off Khartoum twenty-three years before—of one—who, wounded and desperate, gazed day by day from a window in the citadel out across the sun-scorched desert towards Metemmah, his despairing eyes forever vainly seeking that help which came not.
The evening shadows began to fall, but still Ellis remained in that deep reverie while, as if in a dream, visions of his past life rose up in his mind with strange reality.
As if it were only yesterday he recalled that last stormy scene which clinched his determination to leave home. The scornful, accusing face of his step-mother, and his father’s angry, worried countenance, as he (Ellis) gazed steadily and defiantly back at the woman whose continual petty spite had contrived to make his life at home unbearable.
Both of them were still alive and well, old Major Carlton had mentioned in his last letter. No—they never spoke of him. He was an outcast from his family of his own accord. Yes, that might be, but never a prodigal, or a remittance man, despite his birth and early breeding.
No, he could never be classed with such as they, thank God. Ever since he had shaken the dust of England off his feet he had earned his living honestly with the toil of his brain and body, as a man amongst men. He had done nothing to shame his manhood, and his life was his own to live out as he saw fit; so, come what might, unless by their express behest, his people should never behold his face again, whether in life or death.
Then, tripping fast over one another, came flashes of the wild, free life on the range that had followed his emigration. That evening he arrived at the Circle H—only a boy in his teens, hungry, foot-sore, and moneyless, after tramping all the way from Billings. The rough, morose face of “Big Jim Parsons,” as he sneeringly asked him his nationality, and finally flung him a job, as a bone to a dog. That worthy’s kindness to him afterwards, in recognition of his proven courage and adaptability, and the unspeakable language the foreman was wont to use in his clumsy attempts to gloss over any generous deed. Poor old Jim. His had been the kind of friendship that counts. Too bad that horse had killed him like it did, after all his years of riding. The fun they had when they blew into town after the round-ups. The trivial arguments that so often ended in death, and the blind, unquestioning sincerity with which they espoused their bosses’ and friends’ feuds over the sheep-grazing infringements and other grievances of cattle men. The smell of scorched hide and the bawling of cattle in the corrals on branding days. The riding and steer roping at Cheyenne and Red Butte on gala occasions. Aye, that was the life. Why hadn’t he stuck to it instead of becoming by turns, prize-fighter, soldier and, finally, Mounted Policeman? getting, in the latter vocation, as he had previously remarked, a taste of everybody else’s worries in addition to his own.
Then followed brief memories of his pugilistic career. That scrap on the open street in Butte that night, which had been the thin edge of the wedge of his subsequent entry into professional fighting, when he put away “Bull Blatzsky” for chasing that girl. The piteous appeal in her frightened, pretty face as she sought his protection, and the contemptuous sarcasm of the formidable prize-fighter, telling him to “beat it back to th’ farm.” The tingling in his veins, and the exultation that he had felt surging through him as he beheld his opponent weakening, and the yelling plaudits of the crowd as he fought himself out of that last clinch and landed the final punch that ended matters. He had knocked out men enough since then, Lord knows, at one time and another, and perhaps might do the same for many more, but that hot, proud flush he would never feel again. That fight in which he had defeated Gus Ahrens at Madison Square Gardens in New York, and received a thousand dollars as his long end of the purse. The terrible month’s spree that followed. And then—the low-down, insidious propositions that various promoters and managers kept putting up to him from time to time which, finally, decided him to forsake the ring. Yes, begad! the average standard of prize-fighting morality was rotten to the core. He could vouch for it from personal experience. It was a good job he’d quit it in time before the crooks got him; but, at any rate, he could always look back to those days with the clear conscience of one who had never “put anything over” on the public. Fought on the square at all times, and given the best that was in him for the spectators and those that had backed him. Whatever they might have said or thought, it surely was not flagging endurance or courage that caused his departure for South Africa.