 | The Man Who Interfered |  |
THE MAN WHO INTERFERED
BY JOHN OSKISON
UNTIL long after midnight Jim Freeman sat reading a battered, graceful old volume containing "Troilus and Cressida" and "Julius Caesar"—a book bound in leather for a Gentleman of Virginia in 1771, and strayed from its mates of the set generations ago. Its type was bold and clear, fit for failing eyes to peruse.
Hoof-beats sounded in the square, clattered across the frozen mud; a horse stopped at the sidewalk; Jim put down the book, changed his spectacles, and waited. The rider dismounted, crossed the sagging boards outside the door, but there came no knock. Jim threaded his way among the type-racks and piled miscellany of his small printing shop to confront his visitor.
As he came into the starlight, he could discern only that it was a woman who stood there.
"Howdy!" he greeted. She shifted a little, but did not answer.
"Step inside—seems chilly out here, but I've got a little bit of fire left in the stove." Jim opened the door wide; in his words had been neither surprise nor question.
The woman came in and sat down on the other side of the battered walnut desk from his own. Jim sat down, too, and began to finger the book.
The editor of the Circletown Round-Up was fifty-four, spectacled, and dingy. He lived alone in a room partitioned off from his printing shop, and after supper every evening, by the yellow glow of a big oil lamp, he gave a concert on his fifteen-dollar music machine for the men who came to the post office next door for mail—every evening except Friday. On Friday the Round-Up was printed; and the job of wrapping it ready for Saturday's distribution to its four hundred subscribers lasted into the night.
He was a pioneer of the tiny Oklahoma town; he had come upon it when it was first taking shape as a yellow, pine-board blot on the prairie, and he loved it. To the editor, Circletown was not what it seemed—merely a forlorn, drab outpost of civilization. Rather, it was a spot of splendid promise. Some day a railroad would come, and some day, too, twenty-five hundred feet or so below the grass roots, somebody's oil rig would strike
"Sometimes I sit up late reading," Jim remarked after a long silence.
"I am Lizzie Squirrel," said the woman finally. She spoke very quietly. "I am 'Wolf' Harper's wife."
"Yes; I knew you as soon as you came into the light. In trouble?"
She nodded.
"About 'Wolf'?"
"Yes—I am leaving him."
"I saw him going out of town this evening." Jim opened the book, fingering the leaves; after a moment he spoke:
"You got to the end, I reckon?" She nodded. "Well, it had to come. Where you bound for?"
"Back to my home—my people live over yonder." She bent her head toward the East.
"In the Spavinaw hills—yes. It is thirty-five miles—a long ride."
"First I want to speak to my brother. I saw your light, and I thought maybe you would go and wake Billy. He is hard to wake."
"Yes, Billy is hard to wake!" Jim's mind held a picture of Lizzie Squirrel's brother, the Indian pool-hall loafer, as he had lurched home to his shack that evening.
"So, you put 'Wolf' to bed and pulled out?"
"No." Lizzie Squirrel turned to study Jim Freeman's face by the light of the big lamp. She was of the erect Indian breed, strong and comely; at thirty she still bore herself proudly and, in spirit, all but unscarred by the brutality of her husband. Six years of alternate joy and humiliation had driven the light back from the front of her eyes, but had not extinguished it. She wore a man's heavy overcoat, buttoned close under her chin, and a thick woolen scarf was wrapped about her head, almost concealing her black hair.
"Listen!" She loosed the coat at her throat. "When 'Wolf' got home this night he tried to beat me, but I fought with him; and because he was weak from drink I choked him until he lost his senses. Then I tied his hands and locked him in the stable. In one hour he came back to his senses and called to me to come and let him out. But I did not—I was afraid. So, I sat and thought what to do."
The woman's tight-balled hands were resting on the desk; she was leaning forward to watch the effect of her words on Jim Freeman. He did not speak, but in his face Lizzie Squirrel read sympathy and a wish to understand. Presently her hands relaxed, and she spoke calmly.
"So, I thought and thought about what to do, and at last I could only see one way—I will go back to my people in the hills. There I will have peace. Though I have not lived with my people since I went away to school as a young girl, I know that they will take me in. They will take back the 'white girl'—you know they call me that because I went away to school among the whites and married a white man. But they are good people, and they will give me peace anyway!"
"Peace!" echoed Jim Freeman. "Yes, that would be good—but only for a while."
"Will you go and wake Billy now? I must tell him to ride out and turn 'Wolf' loose."
"Yes, in a minute." A conviction that he ought to stop this woman from going back to the hills, and to a family who would not understand her failure to find a niche in the white man's world was in Jim's mind, and he was searching for the reasons which lay behind it. There was, of course, the general good which comes from preserving the social order; but beyond that was another argument, if he could only get it. He looked across at Lizzie, at her puzzled, unmarred face. Suddenly the argument came to his mind; she had not been beaten.
"Tonight," he asked, "did 'Wolf' hurt you?"
"No; I told you I whipped him and choked him—it was easy."
"Why then, you're leaving just when you don't have to!" Jim Freeman smiled, as if a great load had been lifted.
"But 'Wolf' would kill me if I went back!" Lizzie said it calmly.
"Maybe—this time. But never again."
The woman's face lighted, and she laughed.
"Once would be enough!"
"No, no," Jim, protested, laughing too, "I mean, he might try this time, but never again. And I will go with you."
She shook her head.
"Don't you see! You beat him this time; you've got him tamed. He'll be a good old work horse after this. After this, when he wants to go out and kick up his heels, go along with him and see that he don't bust things. In your place, instead of running away, I'd sure stay and make a man out of 'Wolf' Harper."
Again the woman shook her head and spread her hands in a gesture of despair.
"Anyhow," Jim Freeman went on, peering at Lizzie earnestly, "you ought to go back with me, and tell him why you're quitting him. Going off this way won't do—he'll follow you and make trouble for your folks. What do you say—we'll not bother to rouse Billy, but you and I'll ride out now?"
Lizzie's gaze met Jim's steadily, then she rose, buttoning the coat with shaking hands.
"Yes, I think I ought to tell him."
"Good! We'll go and get a couple of horses out of Dick Grayson's barn."
Jim scrawled a note to be pinned to the door of Dick's stable, put out the light, and the two went into the cold, star-lit night.
Inspired by the dingy, lonely man who rode beside her, a battered derby crushed down almost to his spectacles and a knitted scarf about his throat to keep out the cold, Lizzie rode toward her home with the first genuine uplift of hope she had felt in years.
It was a raw November night, with high clouds driving before the wind. Jim was cold and uncomfortable; he hated horseback riding. He preferred a double-seated buggy, with two sedate horses jogging along at six miles an hour. Astride Grayson's big sorrel, he looked grotesque and old and frayed, the literal Jim Freeman; but, underneath, lived another Jim Freeman, one who talked gaily, wisely, to Lizzie Squirrel, and who seemed to her as peaceful as the hills for whose shelter she yearned. Jim spoke of the stars, in a strain to outrage an astronomer:
"Now, you take the 'Dipper'—it's my special, favorite constellation. Round and round the North Star it goes, like a cup on a chain pump, dipping up a little drop of life every day and spilling it out over the world. One day it's a storm, or a big fight somewhere in heathen parts, and next day it spills over us such a cupful of good luck (sunshine, or a baby boy, or a good price for the fat hog we've got to sell) that we forget the sorrow it brought up yesterday. That's how it seems to me—it's a symbol of life."
Other constellations and particular stars Jim pointed out as they jogged over the frozen road. After a time Lizzie interrupted:
"I do not know the stars; maybe I do not look up enough."
"You've got to look up if you take the 'Dipper' for a mascot. What it has for you must be spilled in your face, not on top of your head! Study it if you want to find out what comes up out of the well of the world."
They rode through a depression, where the cold struck in and set them shivering; they crossed a mile of prairie which rose like
As they came close to the little weather-beaten house on the prairie where "Wolf" Harper and his Indian wife lived, Jim Freeman heard maudlin sounds coming from the log stable. They were the cries of the enraged brute, sickeningly familiar to the man who had spent his life among people of primitive passions. Men like "Wolf" Harper had almost shaken Jim Freeman's faith in his fellows—almost.
"I'm cold," said Jim Freeman, as they rode up to the gate of the wire-fenced enclosure, in which the house and barn stood, and dismounted. "Could you just make a cup of coffee, while I go down and let 'Wolf' out?"
"Maybe I better go, too," suggested Lizzie, but Jim Freeman shook his head and said:
"No, you stay here; and while we drink some coffee, you and I and 'Wolf' can talk things over."
"Then you take the lantern," advised Lizzie, as she lighted it.
A ludicrous sort of a whistled tune marked Jim Freeman's progress toward the stable. Hearing it, "Wolf" Harper broke into a spasm of shouted profanity; before Jim's hand touched the heavy wooden bar which Lizzie Squirrel had fastened across the door, he made out the words of the drunken man's tirade:
"I'm a wolf—that's what they call me! And it's my night to howl! Stand back there, an' let me at him! Let me at him, I say!" Then the man laughed, wildly. Jim Freeman was not fit to tackle a drunken man—he wasn't even sure that he had the courage to tackle one. Sweat stood on his forehead as he fumbled with the bar—Jim Freeman knew that it was the sign of fear! He trembled as the bar was thrown clear and the heavy door of the stable swung open. He understood that he had to go to the drunken man, untie his hands and feet, and then deal with him as the fates directed. He forced himself forward.
The lantern's light flashed in "Wolf" Harper's eyes, and he made a grotesque, squirming effort to leap upon the bearer of the light. Then he saw that it was Jim Freeman who had come. Snarling, he babbled:
"So, it's you, 'Old Four-eyes.' Well, what you goin' to do to me?"
"Going to turn you loose, 'Wolf,'" said Jim Freeman; and by some miracle of self-control the editor's voice was held steady.
"All right," promised "Wolf" Harper thickly, "an' then I'm a-goin' to kill you! Let me at you, you old, four-eyed, interferin'—"
"Keep still till I get these ropes off you!" Jim Freeman bent over the struggling man and began to drive unwilling fingers to the task of freeing him.
First, Jim took the ropes off the feet of the man on the ground; and instantly he had to dodge a sharp boot-heel swung blindly at his head. "Wolf" got to his feet then, standing unsteadily and holding out his hands. Jim got the rope free, and stepped back, picking up the lantern which he had set down close by.
"Now, — you, I'm goin' to clean you up!" cried "Wolf;" he sprang toward the battered man who stood with the sweat of fear beading his forehead. But Jim Freeman did not flinch.
"Wolf" Harper bore the editor to the floor of the stable; as they went down, the lantern rolled out of Jim's hand, but, freakishly, righted itself near the door. Its feeble glimmer shone upon the two as they struggled.
A crashing blow from "Wolf" Harper's fist shattered the editor's spectacles; but a cut on the cheek was the worst of that. "Thank heaven, they didn't get into my eyes!" muttered Jim. He was holding on to the arms of the drunken man with all his strength. And with all the strength and frenzy of the drunken brute, "Wolf" Harper was struggling to get his fists free.
Jim Freeman was a battered man of fifty-four, unused to physical strain; the sweat on his forehead became a sign of exhaustion within a minute. Suddenly he loosed his hold on "Wolf" Harper's arms, and, plunging swiftly, succeeded in getting from under. His fingers sought the other's neck—sought and found an uncertain grip.
He held that grip with the desperation of a great fear and a great necessity. "Wolf" Harper tried to beat him off, tried to fling him off with brutal kicks, tried to brain him with deliberate swings of his doubled fist. But, battered, bleeding, with all but a flicker of consciousness gone, Jim Freeman contrived to hold on until the other was staggering and gasping for breath.
Lizzie Squirrel had lighted a fire in the stove and had put water on to boil before it occurred to her that the two men ought to be there. She went to the door to listen, but heard no sound; she ran swiftly to the stable.
Just inside the door she found the lantern, shining feebly, peacefully, upon two unconscious men. She swung its light across them, and fell back with a startled cry at the sight revealed. She went to hang the lantern on its accustomed nail, then stooped to loosen the grip which Jim Freeman had never relaxed on the throat of her husband. She sobbed as she tugged at the battered man's fingers; and when she pulled him free from "Wolf," the older man rolled inertly to her feet, his bruised and bleeding face upturned in the dim light.
[Description: Digital image of page 563]
Lizzie Squirrel dragged the two men into the cold air and went to fetch water. It was not a time for wailing; she worked with quiet effectiveness. But when the clean, cold dawn came, and the sky grew pink where it met the prairie, only one man saw it.
"Wolf" Harper, sober and shaken, sat against the wall of the log stable gazing fearfully at his Indian wife as she worked over the battered form of the man who had interfered. He said nothing, but, burning deep into his primitive soul, he heard the words which came like a prayer from his woman's lips:
Freeman—he has done it for me—and I was nothing to him!" As the sun rose and showed her the truth beyond the possibility of questioning, she went to lean her head against the door; over her tired, gray face the tears streamed.
—
Jim Freeman had believed in people. To Lizzie Squirrel he had said:
"After this night, 'Wolf' will never beat you again—if I were you I'd sure stay with him and make a man out of him!" Well, she could do that now; and the reconstructed life of a cow-country bum and wife-beater was perhaps the fittest memorial the editor of the Round-Up could have wished.
| The Man Who Interfered | |