BE STILL THERE'S HEED F ME WALTERK,!)/ X CARRIE L THE STRAIGHT ROAD CALIFORNIA BAIRD THE STRAIGHT ROAD WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY C. E. CHAMBERS NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1918, 1017, BY THE McCLURE PUBLICATIONS, INCORPORATED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA SRLH CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE DOOE I SHUT BEHIND MB ... II. THE FLIGHT 35 III. THE DOOE THAT OPENED To ME . . . 48 IV. A STALLED Ox 59 V. HAEVEY WATKINS 76 VI. AT THE ROADHOUSE 97 VII. THE TUENING OF THE WHEELS . . .111 VIII. THE GAP IN THE HEDGE 132 IX. Miss CHANDLEE'S POINT OF VIEW . . 149 X. DELIA'S ADDEESS 160 XL A WOMAN'S JOB 181 XII. ADVICE 190 XIII. THE CHANCE I GOT 204 XIV. A BEEACH . 211 XV. CHLOEODYNE 224 XVI. A GEY FOB HELP 243 XVII. LAS PALMAS HOP RANCH 263 XVIII. THEEE DAYS . 279 XIX. THE COMMITTEE 289 XX. THE RIOT 305 XXL "SAFE" 319 XXII. MAN'S JUSTICE 327 XXIII. BELSHAZZAE'S FEAST 339 XXIV. A WITNESS . 348 ILLUSTRATIONS CALIFORNIA BAIRD Frontispiece PAGE THERE WAS A HOARSE, STARTLED WHISPEB, " JOE !" I SAW A YOUNG WOMAN STANDING JUST INSIDE THE WINDOW LOOKING WILDLY AT ME ... 72 I SHOVED AT HIM DESPERATELY WITH MY DOUBLED FIST, AND WITH THE OTHER HAND REACHED BLINDLY OUT AND TURNED THE KNOB . . . 106 "TRUST YOU ?" SHE SAT UP SUDDENLY FROM HER LOLLING POSITION. "WELL HOW ABOUT YOU ? Do YOU FEEL THAT YOU CAN TRUST ME ?" . . 152 "HUH NOT MUCH OF A HAND," HE SAID IN A QUEER, HUSKY TONE. "N"OT MUCH OF A HAND TO EARN A LIVING WITH" . 184 I RAN AND GOT HOLD OF DR. RUSH'S ARM AND HE SAID TO ME OVER AND OVER! "ALL RIGHT. I WON'T HIT HIM AGAIN" 236 JOE ED AND I TOILED UP TO THE CAMP IN THE BLISTERING HEAT 270 "HOW WAS IT WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, JOE ?" I ASKED. "WE'VE BEEN SO UNEASY ABOUT YOU" . 294 THE STRAIGHT ROAD THE STRAIGHT ROAD CHAPTER I THE DOOE I SHUT BEHIND ME IT BLEW to with a slam behind me. Only a few weeks beyond my twenty-second birthday I was leaving my husband's house, my only home since I came into it five years before, a bride of seventeen. For a moment the shut- ting of that door reverberated through all my universe; then the child pulled at my hand and questioned in a small, excited voice, "Where we going, muvver ? Is f aver coming, too ?" The answer I gave my four-year-old, there in the dark of my little front yard, pungent with the keen odour of the big eucalyptus trees by the fence, covered the case so far as I, Callie Baird, then saw it. "I don't know for sure, dearie. Way off on the railroad. Father's not coming with us. You're mother's big man now." I spoke in a whisper, listening all the time for a sound from inside the house. Had the slamming of the door waked my husband? In the dark about me I could scarcely see the bits of plants and vines I had put out; the smell from my petunias from the honeysuckle at my kitchen window made my heart all at once sick and faint. But the door was shut; the die was cast. The note in there on the kitchen table told Oliver that I intended to leave him and get a divorce. I felt a kind of pitiful pride in this letter ; even yet it seems to ine a bit out of the com- mon for a woman of my age and in my situation to write. 9 10 THE STRAIGHT ROAD It admitted with humility my sense of personal failure ; it explained that I was going away because I felt our living together to be immoral, and that I would take care of my- self and the child if I were allowed a divorce in peace. My trunk was left ready packed with my few precious books, my own and Boy's clothes; I would send for it when I knew how to answer that question of his. The letter was the last of a number of such, which I had thought over, agonised over, written, and then burned. The definite intention to go took shape in my mind four months earlier when I was crawling up from the desperate illness that followed the birth of my little girl. The child lived only long enough to show me what my marriage meant from the point of view of motherhood. Boy had brought me no such accusation. Boy was all mine. I named him John Boyce, and I saw in him always my own father; not the father an ignorant, childish mother had given him. My father had always understood me, because we were alike mentally; he would have equipped me for life. If he had lived I should not have been afoot in the night, unable to tell the child where we were going, shabby, heartsick, with scarcely a cent in my pocket, and only the prospect of eleven dollars and sixty-five cents cream money that I meant to collect at Flegel's grocery and butcher shop on my way to the station. I was ten years old when father died. The cattle ranch where I was born and raised, there in the Oregon hills above Stanleyton, near the California state line, was a big property, and my mother was no manager. By the time I was fifteen we had nothing and were living down in the village, her whole anxiety to see me old enough to marry. She had been an uncommonly pretty girl; she had mar- ried early, to become the petted wife of a strong man. Her outlook on life was the sheltered woman's. All its harsher, fundamental facts were indecent in her eyes; she kept from me what she could and indeed that was THE DOOR I SHUT BEHIND ME 11 nearly everything. Peace be to the poor little pretty mother who thought she had done her part so well by me when she manoauvred me into the marriage I was now run- ning away from, and saw that I went into it as ignorant of what it meant, almost, as I would have been at seven instead of seventeen. I never could be quite sure as to whether or not she understood the failure of that marriage. She lived right there in the house with it till after Jacky-Boy was born, and given father's name. On the small dairy ranch above Meaghers, we two women worked hard together, but we didn't talk much over our work. She seemed to be failing. When the baby came she used to sit by the hour holding him, rocking a little, never saying a word. Six months after that we carried her back to the ranch to lay her be- side father in the little family burying ground that had been reserved there. And I attacked alone the problem of life with a man I had not wittingly chosen at all. Do not think I blame my mother. She could never have married me to Oliver Baird if it had not been for the shipwreck of a boy-and-girl love affair between me and Philip Stanley. A boy-and-girl love affair authority holds it cheap, and speaks easily of "breaking it up" ; yet I believe that there are men and women who go all their days, face over shoulder, looking back to that place in the way where real love, who had been of their company, left them. It seemed to me when my time came that no item of pain and humiliation was spared, no mercy was shown me. They tore down my gossamer-spun dwelling of dreams as an energetic woman, sweeping her house, drags down a cobweb with the broom. Every least little detail stands out in my memory ice and fire. For years I was burnt or frozen whenever my mind touched a corner of it. Philip was the only son of the richest people in the vil- lage. Back in father's time when I, a small girl, used to 12 THE STRAIGHT ROAD ride my pony down to school, Philip was the terror of the primary grades, his offences passed over because everybody was afraid of his father. Fine-looking, fastidious gentle- man that he was, L. C. Stanley's outrageous temper had brought him into more than one fist fight on the public street. People who were getting along with Mr. Stanley admired him very much ; and I'm sure Philip, if he liked you, could be very .kind ; when he loved you, he was sweet- ness itself. But the place was full of gossip about the Stanley home life, the continual clashes of father and son, whippings that went on there, till the boy was a young athlete big enough to turn on his tyrant, so that the mother was frightened, and stood between them. I knew the worst about all these things ; for from the first I had been Philip's chosen, from whom he kept back nothing. And on my part, I can't remember when I wasn't so in love with him that it was like a religion, a conversion, an apoth- eosis. The mere sight of him in the other classroom of a morning making everybody else look cheap and poor would leave me happy for all day. He was four years older than I, but he had been so unruly, and so irregular in his attendance that high school found us still in the same Latin class. Nobody else knew it, but I was the reason for Philip's being in that class. He was with a tutor that year, getting ready for Stanford ; but he held to this one period in the Stanley ton public school, because it gave him a chance to see me every day, and carry my books home. He didn't want anybody else to come near me. It wasn't any trouble for him, a high school boy, to send Harvey Watkins, a young man already out in the village world attacking affairs of his own, to the right-about when he tried to be a bit sentimental over me. And what a wonderful-looking boy he was a young prince among the others! He wore his faults like orna- ments; it just became him to be so haughty and harsh and THE DOOR I SHUT BEHIND ME 13 secretive. Nothing was too good for him; he was reck- lessly extravagant, and I suppose his parents thought that the only way to hold on to their formidable son was to shut down on the money. He never had an allowance, so that what he spent much or little could always be a cause of quarrel. Philip had awful times with his father over tailor and livery bills, and the expenses of his vaca- tion trips. When the other boys were getting class pins at two dollars apiece, he had his mounted in platinum and with a real diamond, so that it cost seventy-five. The year that he was twenty and I was sixteen, he made bills so recklessly that his father threatened to advertise in the paper that he wouldn't be responsible for them. That didn't stop Philip. He justified himself said that his father was rich and he the only heir that the money he spent was really his. In a sense that was true. But then he did something, I never knew just what, that made him liable to the law, and they had the worst scene of all over that. He didn't tell me a word of this till afterward not because he was ashamed of it; Philip was never ashamed of anything he did but because this time the quarrel concerned me. I realise now that mother hoped everything from that childish attachment. She had begun asking me about Philip if he had kissed me, if he said he loved me, and if marriage had ever been mentioned between us. I was overwhelmed with shame. It seemed like conspiring against him to think of such things. And yet, so curiously is the human heart made, I be- lieve my mother's words precipitated matters, for the af- fair between Philip and me came suddenly to flower. I couldn't get away from the thoughts she had put in my head, and it was as though he read them in my eyes and took fire from their suggestion. I don't remember when or where it began, but all at once he was talking to me about being married to him, and we had kissed each other 14 THE STRAIGHT ROAD and knew that there could never be anybody else for either of us as long as we both lived ! First love, boy-and-girl love, is such a fiery, innocent thing, unconscious of its real power, yet proposing to re- build the whole world for its dwelling. In those days oh, how few, how few they were! it was not merely a look at Philip that set me trembling with happiness for hours; if we could get a moment out of sight it was a kiss a boy's kiss, snatched, clumsy, but with the flame, the swimming ecstasy of youth in it. Oh, the mem- ory of such a love ought to keep a woman from those spiritual compromises which are the beginning of moral death. I didn't tell my mother, but of course she guessed. She dressed me BO carefully, and told me again and again how pretty I was growing. She knew what lit my eye and painted a new bloom on my cheeks. Then came a day when the first moment I looked at Philip across the school room, I was conscious of a change, of deep disturbance, in him. He whispered to me as we were filing from study hall to recitation room for our Latin that he must see me that evening. Silently, infected by the hidden excitement of his mood, I walked beside him out to Kesterson's pasture after school, where we sat nn- der a big live-oak by the creek. He seemed strange, and that made me feel strange, too. But he had never been so openly my lover. He wanted to have me in his arms, to kiss me every minute. I would have been crazy with joy if I hadn't been so frightened all the time at the chance of our being seen. "What is it, Philip ?" I whispered, at last "Callie," he said, taking hold of me again, "we've had it out at last, up at our house. Father threatened to send me to jail this time. I told him to go ahead and do it and then he wanted to lick me." The muscles of the best football player on the team THE DOOR I SHUT BEHIND ME 15 laughed under mj cheek as Philip said that. He shook me a little in his arms. "Mother put in her oar. We've compromised. I'm go- ing to San Francisco Wednesday, to be gone for a month." "To San Francisco for a month!" I clung to him. "Oh, Philip why?" "To get a job. If I had a job you and I could be mar- ried," he said, unsteadily, and his heart plunged so that I could feel it where my head rested against him. Philip hunting a job so we could be married! One idea was as bewildering as the other. I looked at him. He had always poured out his heart to me; but now he was keeping something back, and I dared not question him. With his arms around me, his lips thrilling against mine, I was afraid to be told. Our parting had been so tumultuous that it was only after he was gone I realised he had said nothing of our writing to each other. This seemed strange, for we used to exchange notes very often, living here in the same town. But I thought of course he would write and send me an address; then I'd get a letter every day and have the chance to write to him daily. I waited in a tremor of expectation for that first letter. Monday, Tuesday, Wed- nesday by the middle of the week I was uneasy. Thurs- day, Friday, Saturday I was wild with anxiety. My nerves were jerking at every little start. I would jump and scream at every sound. I could not keep from steal- ing past the Stanley house, though it was a square out of my way to and from school. That month was an age-long, agonising strain. No letter came. I had nobody I dared tell. My mother suspected, I suppose, and I was grate- ful to her for not speaking out. Then, on the last Friday morning, when I was slipping past the hedge by the Stan- ley place on my way to school, furtively watching the win- dows, Philip's mother stopped me and asked me to come and see her the next afternoon. She seemed to have been 16 THE STRAIGHT ROAD working at her roses, with gloves drawn over her white hands and a broad hat on; she offered me some flowers as we talked. She was a fine-looking woman, always perfectly dressed, and her likeness to Philip made me ready to lay my face in the dust before her and worship her. The revulsion from despair to hope was almost more than I could bear- I felt myself blushing hotly. I could hardly speak. I had never exchanged more than a dozen words with her before ; there was no social relation between our little house and the Stanley place. My whole being was tremulous with the thought that she had been watch- ing for me her invitation must mean that everything was all right. Oh, supposing Philip was expected home the next day, and she wanted me to meet him! I got through the Friday classes somehow. I was almost glad that Philip had not written me during the month. The outcome would be all the more splendid and rapturous for the misery I had passed through. When I got home to my mother, she, though she knew so much less than I did of how far things had gone, jumped at once to the con- clusion that Mrs. Stanley wanted to get better acquainted with me because of Philip, and that she wasn't unfavour- able. Mother washed my white shirt-waist after ten o'clock that night, and the last I knew as I went to sleep was the sight of her sitting by the lamp darning a rip in my skirt. Next day she fussed a long time over getting me ready. I ought to look just perfect, but still I mustn't seem too much dressed up. Mother kissed me when I left, and called me by Philip's name in a whisper. It made my face flame and that made her laugh a little shaky laugh that was al- most like crying. Mrs. Stanley met me with friendly courtesy, yet, in- experienced village girl as I was, I missed something in that reception. Its chill fell on me as we crossed the porch THE DOOR I SHUT BEHIND ME 17 she had been waiting for me on the front steps. I knew before I was seated in the handsome parlour that things were not going to be as my mother and I had hoped. I can never go over that interview with Mrs. Stanley in my mind completely ; I get confused before I come to the end of it, and it is just one recollection of pain and hu- miliation ice and fire, as I said. She began with real feeling: Philip was their only son; she and Mr. Stanley were very ambitious for him. I tried to answer with rea- sonable calmness that everybody knew Philip was going to be a great man, and there wasn't anything too good for him. In my confusion I must have spoken as though that brilliant future of his would be concerned with mine, for the first thing I knew she was telling me that nothing could be more ruinous to Philip than trying to tie him up now with a childish love affair. She looked at me sitting there twisting my handkerchief between my hands; I thought she pitied me, for she said, hastily: "I'm considering you, too, as well as my boy. I'm glad you realise that Philip has the makings of a big man. I've lived longer than you, my dear girl ; I've seen many a man go ahead in the world, outgrow the woman he married too young too young long for his freedom, or maybe take it ; and then there's nothing but misery in it for both." " Engagement " I choked. "Oh," cried Mrs. Stanley, impatiently, "how little you realise ! That would not be fair to you. I am not willing to see my son absorbing all your attention during these years in which you might be making a suitable match, only to fail you in the end." She seemed sure that he would fail me in the end. "What do you want me to do?" asked a voice that I hardly recognised as my own. "Well, Mr. Stanley thinks that you ought, if you are a right-minded girl, to return any signed letters you may have of Philip's. The boy's not of age of course his sig- 18 THE STRAIGHT ROAD nature doesn't count but we feel that vou ought to do that. The gifts you might keep." "All I'll send them all," I said, in despair. I was going ; I was giving up ; but through the window I caught sight of Philip himself, walking in the side yard under the trees, sending glances toward the house, as though he were waiting for me. Instead of the rapture I had looked forward to after that awful month, I felt only a strange sinking of the heart longing, fear, pain. Yet I turned and came back. "Mrs. Stanley," I said, "did you know that Philip went to San Francisco to get work so that we could be married ?" She laughed out angrily. "I should think that I did know: we sent him. If he can support a wife, he may choose one for himself. If we've got her to support, Mr. Stanley and I think we ought to have something to say about who she shall be." "And he and he " I faltered. "Perhaps you'd better go and talk to him," she inter- rupted. I whirled and ran. I blundered down the steps, across the trim, gravelled walks and brilliant, crowded flower beds, my starved heart crying out for Philip. He did not take one step toward me ; he had drawn back, and stood so that we came together in a little alley of the grounds. Tall trees walled in a seclusion overlooked only by the an- gels of God from the sky ; yet my impetuous boy lover of a month ago made no motion to touch me. His head was up, but the face he showed was white. The month had left him worn and hollow-eyed. I knew in the first mo- ment that he hadn't wanted to see me; he had put me outside the barrier. He didn't speak. I had to begin. "Oh, Philip!" It burst from me, though I was des- perately anxious not to offend. "Whv didn't you write to me?" ' THE DOOR I SHUT BEHIND ME 19 "Promised not to." His first word and in what a strange voice ! "Why didn't you let me write to you, then ? I'd have been glad." "Promised that, too." He was staring straight in my face. I had seen him look at other people that way, and wondered how they could stand it. "He wouldn't let me have the money to go unless I'd give my word. I had to have money. Even with it " He stopped a moment ; an agony of crimson came up in his haggard, arrogant young face "I couldn't get any job." "Oh, Philip I didn't want you to Not for me not for me !" He didn't seem to hear me "What did mother say to you in there ?" he asked, very low. "She made me promise to give you up for always. But you won't If we After a while " Philip stood and looked long on the ground. When his gaze at last came up to mine, I wondered what I had done to him to make him look so terrible. "What's the use ?" he demanded, huskily. "We'll have to give it up. They've got us. She didn't tell you. Cal- lie, you know what I said about his sending me to jail ? I tried to get enough that time for us to marry on and he's got the proofs. Not that I'm ashamed or sorry he's the one to be ashamed it's all his fault. But he's got the proofs; and he'll send me to penitentiary he's just mad enough unless I unless we " "Oh, we will we will anything " It was all that I could say. Again he stood looking on the ground, bitter and piti- ful, that haughty lip of his set hard to steady the trem- bling. I ought to have gone then, but I couldn't drag my- self away. I thought there would be something more 20 THE STRAIGHT ROAD some kind of good-bye. Suddenly he looked up at me and burst out: "They said it would be just like it was with Uncle Milt. Huh, Milt's a boob! But, at that, he'd have done well enough if they hadn't thrown him down. They wouldn't have thrown him down if he hadn't married " "Don't oh, please don't!" I whispered, covering my face. When Philip's Uncle Milton, Lucius Stanley's younger brother, married a waitress at the Depot Hotel, it set every- body talking about the poor thing's reputation, that had never been very good. Of course, the family was furious. Milt Stanley hadn't amounted to much. Now, with his brother against him, he went down terribly. He worked at such odd jobs as he could get about town; sometimes he did house-cleaning. She was worse talked about than ever, though it could be seen that more than half the time she kept bread in their mouths. To this squalid village shame a possible marriage with me was compared. I had no heart for resentment. I wasn't the least bit angry. Philip's only way of meeting this defeat and hu- miliation was to put me outside and keep me outside, be- cause the sight the thought, even of me now was still more wounding and humiliating. But I could see that he was suffering, in there where he would not let me come. There was a dull wonder in my mind that he should not care for even a good-bye kiss then a sort of terror that this was so ! Was that all there would be to it ? Was love like this? I turned; I had to go away and leave him standing there, looking strange and sort of desperate. All I knew was that I didn't know anything about him any more. I went out to Kesterson's pasture it was the only handy place where I could be sure of being alone and walked up and down and up and down in a dumb, blind agony for a long time, looking away from the big live-oak THE DOOR I SHUT BEHIND ME 21 where Philip had held me in his arms and said he was going to get a job and marry me, thinking how was I ever to go home to mother with the story. Finally I started, very slowly. When I came in sight of our little rented house, there was mother at the gate, gazing up and down the sidewalk for me, because in getting back from Mrs. Stanley's I might come from either direction, according to the cross-street I chose to take. I looked around me; I would rather have died then and there than to keep on and meet her questions. We got into the house some- how, and there I broke down and cried so that I scared her I even believe I screamed some. Perhaps it was best so. She had to stop questioning and soothe me; and I felt after a while that I must con- trol myself for her sake. She got me to drink a cup of tea ; she put my feet in hot water, and we two disappointed, discredited things finally crept to bed. When, next day, it came to making the little packet to, send to Philip, she stood by protesting : "I wouldn't do it, Gallic. I wouldn't do that, dear." "I promised," I said, holding my head down. I couldn't tell her that Philip himself had failed me. "Promised!" she echoed with all a primitive woman's contempt. Poor little mother, she had no business sense; she lost the ranch ; we owed bills in every direction. But she did not lack instinctive womanly wisdom; she would have fought for her hand; she would have tried tried des- perately and at all costs to keep her lover. I let him go. But when he was gone I couldn't have been said to be disappointed in love I was disappointed in life I was just killed, dead and buried. Nobody knew my mother least of all as nobody had known how dreadfully I was in love with him. There was a year be- tween me and my graduation. At first mother had to get me up and dress me and help me off to school as though I 22 THE STRAIGHT ROAD had been an invalid. But after a while I took hold of my school work for comfort, and when the year had gone by I was even not offended at mother's efforts to make a match between me and a man who had rented one of our rooms. He was a good deal older than I, and was look- ing about for a little dairy ranch. If Philip and I were not to marry, it didn't matter what became of me. With him vanished out of my life, for the time, not only love, but every gleam of girlish am- bition. Mother couldn't bear the thought of my standing in a store, or even teaching school. She craved for me the woman's ancient heritage of husband, home and chil- dren. And when Oliver Baird finally did ask me, and I accepted him, she was so pleased; she was so proud that the white dress I had for high school graduation should also be my wedding gown. I was seventeen; I took the man I could get or that she got for me took him, I may say, thankfully, and in whole-hearted ignorance of what I was really doing. I told him honestly that I could not love him, that I be- lieved love and I had parted ways forever. He was will- ing to have me on those terms ! He had finally bought his dairy ranch at Meaghers, just across the State line in Sis- kiyou County; we were married and went to live there, mother going with us. Crossing into California seemed to me somehow like getting nearer to father ; he had come from there, he always loved the State, and named me for it The reason that I could tolerate Oliver Baird in the in- timacies of courtship and marriage seemed to be that he was at all points the opposite of Philip. He was as apart from that boy lover of mine as though they had not both been human males. A man who had reminded me of Philip I could not have married; but this one never breathed that air of young love's region ; he never walked there. Without ideals, or illusions; inert, negative; he THE DOOR I SHUT BEHIND ME 23 wanted only the lees of mating, and he resented the intru- sion of a child that roiled those dregs and brought me enough womanhood to feel that whatever such a marriage might be to Oliver, to me it was an unhallowed, a wicked thing. It was John Boyce's birth that showed it to me first; and after the little girl, who only lived long enough to let me see that she had her father's loose mouth and ungainly hand, I knew that my crime was not against myself alone. I had never heard of eugenics. In my marriage I had hugged the dream of children. Mine was always a hungry heart. It was not alone being loved that could comfort me ; I yearned always for something that I could love ; but the tragic outcome of this meddling with the source of humanity, this bringing children into the world who should never have been born, ah 1 to medicine a heartsick girl's pain, came to look to me almost as terribly wicked as it is. I suffered. In those days if anybody had asked me what was the matter, I should have answered like an ailing child, "Everything." I ached in every member of my life. There was nothing, it seemed, that did not hurt me. When we are young we wonder what our humiliations and our agonies are for. Mine had driven me thus far. Their whip was on my back that April night as I bent to pull the gate shut after me, setting down the suit-case to do it, hooking the chain over to make it fast, though it came to me painfully that to-morrow there would be no- body to care if the pigs and cows got in and destroyed all the flowers I had worked so hard over. As I got Boy through the gate there was a metallic clank. I reached down to see what he had. "Bud'n go 'long bud'n wants to go," he exclaimed, de- fensively. Bud'n the word was Boy's way of saying bug was a brass paper-weight belonging to the child's father. Why 24 THE STRAIGHT ROAD Boy should have been so infatuated with it let the psychol- ogist of childhood explain I never could tell. The thing was clumsy, heavy, ugly a realistic representation of a gigantic fly, whose wings lifted up, allowing the hollow body beneath to be used for a pen box. Perhaps Boy's determination to possess and play with this thing was made so strong because his father ordered him to let it alone. Certainly Oliver and his son remained strangers to the last. This trumpery toy had been the cause of more than one battle royal between them. I had meant to leave it safe on the table ; but I could not for the life of me turn back and carry it in now. I would drop it on the garden walk. "No !" Boy resisted when I attempted to take it away from him. His raised, shrill little voice set my heart thumping with apprehension. "No! I will carry my bud'n. Bud'n wants to go, too." "Sssh !" I cautioned, and we set out, Boy with his bud'n, I with my suit-case. There had been a little new moon at sunset, but it was gone now. The hills made a dark rim all around the horizon; on their slopes I could see here and there winking lights homes of small ranchers like ourselves. Looking at them, my thought coloured by my own experience, I wondered if any one of those roofs cov- ered a sort of domestic inferno. It must be so. I couldn't be the only one who had made a mess of life. But I knew I was the only one who was escaping to-night. Halfway down the hill Boy gave out. First he handed me his bud'n, then took it back jealously, hugged it to him, and insisted that I must carry them both. I argued a bit, but the outcome was that I shouldered my baby, picked up my suit-case and went on toward the valley, Flegel's and the station. I must hurry or the grocery would be closed, and the Flegels gone upstairs for the night. I had to have that money to take me and the boy to San Vincente in one of THE DOOR I SHUT BEHIND ME 25 the valleys of the California fruit belt. I had had a girl's reason for selecting San Vicente. Nearly seven years be- fore, Delia Rogers, from there, had visited our next-door neighbours. She was a rather full-blown young lady, own- ing to twenty-five, and bluntly announced by her aunt as older, and I a little past fifteen. They were a childless couple, and despite the disparity in our years, I was called on to help Mrs. Rogers out when she wanted to entertain young people for Delia. In those days I was poor only in money. Delia soon spent most of her time at our house, sleeping in my little bedroom more often than at her uncle's. It was the year before Philip went east. "Down at Callie Boyce's house" was the synonym for a lively frolic among the Stanleyton young people, where all ages gathered indiscriminately to make up a circle. Harvey Watkins was so much older than the rest of the boys that, till the San Vicente visitor came, there was no one any- where near his age to pair him off with. Harvey was a little set apart in our crowd, too, from the fact that he was a widower. He had made a very young marriage, and his bride had lived only five or six months. He showed Delia Rogers a good deal of attention. He afterward went to San Vicente himself, entered a law firm there, and mar- ried her. I hadn't heard from either of them since the marriage, yet I hoped they would both befriend me now. It was hard work carrying that baby and suit-case down the hill; I tried several times to get Boy to walk, but he was very sleepy, though I'd given him an extra long nap that afternoon. It got worse and worse; my arms felt as though they would drop off. Again and again I had to stop and rest; and when I finally got down to Flegel's I was soaked with perspiration and shaking all over, glad enough that my old grey sweater was a sleazy thing. I could have cried when I found the store closed. Everybody knew what Mrs. Flegel was; an ill-natured woman with a bad tongue, and crazy jealous of her hus- 26 THE STRAIGHT ROAD band. Women being jealous of their husbands was a thing that had never troubled me up to this moment. But when I stood in front of the store and wanted to get that money, I found that I dreaded to meet Mrs. Flegel. I knocked half reluctantly on the store door, in hopes that Flegel himself would answer. Nobody came. I knocked again, louder. Boy roused and looked around wonderingly. "Where are we, Muwer ?" he asked, drowsily. "At Flegel's grocery store, dearie." "You goin' to get Boy candy ?" He showed sudden in- terest. "Not just now." I walked around to the back stairs and stood there looking up at the light, listening. "Dear," I said, "will you be a brave boy and stay here with the suit-case while mother goes upstairs? She can look right down on you all the time." "Will I get the candy if I stay ?" "After we get on the train, Boyce, if you'll be a big, brave boy." "Uh-huh Boycie stay." I left the little figure on the suit-case, and, shrinking from the sound of my footsteps, from my shadow on the stair, I dragged myself up to that back door. The burden of dread and shame that was on me made the weight of the child and the suit-case that I had been carrying seem light. It was ten-year-old Gusta Flegel who answered to my knock. "Could I see your father a minute ?" I spoke very low. The child didn't answer me at all. She just turned her head over her shoulder and bawled : "Maw here's a woman!" This was worse than I had expected. Gusta knew me well enough. Mrs. Flegel came across the kitchen, wip- ing her wet hands on her apron. "I wanted to see Mr. Flegel," I said. THE DOOR I SHUT BEHIND ME 27 "What for?" I couldn't get out a word. Choking, ready to cry, I stood pulling down the cuffs of my sweater. "Wellf" Mrs. Flegel's broad form blocked the door. She and Gusta were both staring at me at my dress, my hat, my shoes. I was thankful that Boyce and the suit-case were downstairs out of their sight. Finally, when I didn't say anything, the woman spoke again: "Is it anything I can tend to ?" "No," I blurted. "Mr. Flegel the cream money I need I've got to " "You want to collect?" She came a step nearer and dropped her voice. "Yes. I've got to have it to-night." "What's that you've got to have to-night?" It was little old Flegel who spoke, coming from the sitting- room, in his stocking-feet, pipe in hand. He looked at me over his wife's shoulder. "Oh, it's Mrs. Baird," he said. "Won't you come in? Why don't you ask her in, Eosa ?" "Thank you, I can't stop," I said. "I only wanted to get the cream money. Can you let me have it to-night ?" For a minute nobody spoke. Flegel looked a little queer ; Mrs. Flegel shut her mouth tight ; she purpled, and seemed to puff up as she stared first at me, then at her husband. "Sure!" he said. "It's eleven dollars and sixty-five cents, ain't it ?" Mrs. Flegel stuck her face up close to his. "You going to give it to her ?" she demanded. "Sure I am. Why not ?" "You paid Baird yesterday. I seen you." The first knowledge I had of what I was doing after that was Flegel pushing his angry wife away and saying kindly to me: "Now, I wouldn't cry. Don't you cry. 28 THE STRAIGHT ROAD I'll let you have what you need against next month's cream." "Next month's cream !" Would Oliver let next month's cream go for a debt of mine ? If Mrs. Flegel hadn't been there muttering insults about his never seeing the colour of his money again, I should have told the kind little man exactly how matters stood, and asked him plainly to lend me the money. As it was, I couldn't think of anything but my own necessities. "I've got to have as much as ten dollars," I burst out, scarcely knowing what I said. "Well, I can let you have ten dollars," said Flegel. "Rosa, be still." Funny, square little old Flegel when I was a child at home on the ranch, and we were comparatively rich, and he was just starting his grocery and butcher shop, father used to sell him beef on credit. I remember his coming all the way to Stanleyton for a calf or a sheep that he could get and pay for in his own time. I was inheriting the goodwill of those days now. I hoped he would go downstairs to the cash register to get my ten dollars, and still give me a chance to explain out of Mrs. Flcgel's hearing that I was leaving Meaghers for good and would send the money back as soon as I got work in San Vicente. But he put his hand in his pocket and gave me a gold piece from his worn purse. I took it without a word. As the door shut and I started 'downstairs, I could hear the quarrel still going on. To- morrow, when what I had done Avas .known, Mrs. Flegel would make the story twice as bad. She would say that I had obtained money from her husband under false pre- tences. I knew a person could be arrested for that. At the foot of the stairs I had half a mind to turn back, but loud voices still sounded above. After all, I had to have the money, and they would know in due time why. Boyce was sound asleep in a soft little lump, partly on THE DOOR I SHUT BEHIND ME 29 and partly off the suit-case. I picked him up and brushed off his suit carefully it was the only nice thing he had; I had made it myself from the cloth dress that was in my wedding outfit. I found the station all lit up and empty. The clock showed nearly an hour till train time. Boyce slept soundly. I made him comfortable with my cloak over him on the bench in the women's room, got out the paper and stamped envelope 1 had provided myself with for this purpose, and, with the suit-case for a desk, wrote to Ben Frawley, the expressman, to go up to the ranch and get my trunk and bring it to the station. He was to show the let- ter to Oliver as an order. I didn't think my husband would make any trouble about the trunk. I enclosed a silver fifty-cent piece from a very little hoard of coins I had, and posted the letter in the station box. It was the best arrangement I could think of. Anyhow, it was the only one. After that I stayed outside, walking up and down in the dark. I couldn't be still a minute. My own face in the glass there in the waiting-room had looked strange to me, excited and wild, with red spots like paint on my cheeks and all the rest pale, the eyes big and black they're only a sort of hazel. I stayed outside but watched all the time for the ticket window to be opened. A buckboard drove up while I stood there. At the sound of the wheels my heart first stood still, and then began beating till it seemed I would choke. I don't know what I feared; my instinct was to get into the station and to Boyce. I hesitated, afraid to cross the light; then ran ahead and almost bumped into a man get- ting down and having two dogs and some suit-cases handed after him. Well-dressed, gloved just some stranger nothing to be afraid of. I went back to my walking up and down while the boy carried the luggage inside and stayed with it. I soon for- got all about the man, and it was not till a good while later 30 THE STRAIGHT ROAD that I realised he was walking up and down out there, too, smoking, the dogs at his heels, and that he continually met me, "accidentally," in the full light of the door or win- dow. I took a good look at him with the light directly on his face as he went in to put the dogs on leash and leave them with the boy. I recognised him. In the hills above Junction City there were several magnificent moun- tain camps and bungalows belonging to rich people. A year ago Alvah Pendleton's son had spent his honeymoon in the finest of these, built by his father. The pictures of bride and groom were in the papers, and a San Francisco weekly came as near making open mention of various scandals connected with Alvah Pendleton, Jr., the groom, as it could without being sued. I recognised the odd little forward duck of his sleek, dark head as, coming back, he lifted his hat and said : "It's a fine evening." "Yes," I responded nervously, and turned in at the door. He came in after me. I went across to the ticket win- dow and stood there with my back to him. Then all at once I was ashamed of the way I was acting. Why shouldn't any man say to me that it was a pleasant even- ing? When he spoke again I was ready to answer him civilly. What he said this time was : "Your ticket man at Meaghers doesn't open his win- dow till just before the train comes." He threw his cigar- ette away, strolled up and leaned an elbow on the little shelf. "Not used to travelling ? You get over being ner- vous about little things when you go as much as I do. What's this ticket of yours going to be ?" He smiled, and his dark eyes, lazy, yet keen, travelled over my shabbiness and came back to my face. "A local or a through ?" I drew back a little, hesitating. "Why, what difference " He laughed out now, but not unpleasantly; he didn't seem to be making fun of me. Yet when a woman has THE DOOR I SHUT BEHIND ME 31 been for years continually called fool, openly or by im- plication, she is shy of being laughed at. There is a sore place where there used to be reasonable acceptance of good-natured joking. "It takes a short time to make out a local ticket, and a long time to make out a through," he explained. "San Vicente," I said. "Is that local or through ?" "Local. That's where I'm going. I live there." "Well," I looked at the clock, "he'll only have two tickets to make out." He shook his head. "Not even that. I've got mine already. In fact," he finished, on a lower tone, after a little hesitation, "it hap- pens that I've got two tickets to San Vicente," and left it at that. I hardly knew what to say. I couldn't accept the ticket outright; but if he would let me buy it at a reduction, it would help ever so much. Even without a Pullman berth that I did want for Boyce's sake my fare would be six dollars. When I didn't speak, he pulled out his watch and glanced at it. "Anyhow," he said, "what's the use of hanging around ? This old ticket window isn't going to be open for ten min- utes." He smiled straight in my face. "It's awfully close in here. You look warm and tired. Come on outside." He took hold of my arm easily. It was as though with the words and gesture he crossed over on to an acknowl- edged footing of friendliness. There seemed nothing to do but go with him. Yet at the door I held back. "I oughtn't to leave the window now," I said. He laughed, and pulled me along. "Don't I tell you I've got two tickets to San Vicente I If I make you lose the chance to get yours, what's the mat- ter with your using this extra one of mine ?" I was too confused, too inexperienced, to clear matters between us. I knew fairly well that I ought to tell him I 32 THE STRAIGHT ROAD recognised him, yet if I did that, I should have to give my own name and I was afraid to. He continued to hold my arm as we walked up and down the long platform, with its patches of light just in front of the station, the abrupt darkness swallowing up everything beyond its edges. He dropped the matter of the ticket as though it were settled. As we threaded our way among baggage trucks and piled boxes, and circled around the stack of milk cans at the farther end, I tried in vain to find some excuse for loosening that uncalled for hold on my arm; and I could no more ask him, in so many words, if he would sell me the ticket, and what the price would be, than if I had been dumb. He talked right along in his smooth, careless voice, not seeming to notice anything out of the way about me. Finally he pulled up in the light of the door, and suggested easily : "Suppose we introduce ourselves ; here's my card." "I haven't any card," I said, twisting the bit of paste- board between my fingers, without looking at it. He smiled suddenly. "Of course you haven't nor any name, either! Oh, I've got you spotted, kiddo. You're running away from home." "What" I gasped "What makes you say that ?" He chuckled at my face of dismay. "Why, it sticks out all over you, girlie! You'll just have to use that extra ticket of mine. If you go to buying one, the agent will spot you for a runaway, just as I did." I couldn't speak. "And when papa and mamma get on your track to- morrow, the first thing they'll want to know is where you bought a railroad ticket for." Oh, the gulf between me and that foolish, headstrong girl for whom he took me ! "He knows where I've gone," I gulped. "I told him in the note to San Vicente to get a divorce." THE DOOR I SHUT BEHIND ME 33 "Sa-a-aay !" he whistled softly, and took a new look at me. "We-e-ell who'd have thought it ? a baby doll like you!" Without a word I began to edge away toward the sta- tion door. A long step brought him in front of me. There was a new look in his eye. He was flushed, voluble, like a man who had taken a drink. "See here," his voice was unsteady, "if there's an in- jured husband on your trail, it's the extra ticket for yours. Come now you'll have to !" The whistle of the coming train cut short his speech; next moment its thunders shook the little station. I pushed past him and looked in. The ticket window was open it must have been open for some time. Young Pendleton held me back with one hand. He called to the boy to bring the dogs and luggage. Then to me he whispered : "Honey, I hate to leave you, but I've got to run down to the baggage car and see that these pups get on. Get your things and follow my grips. It's all right it's all right. Section 8, first Pullman. Run along quick. Be a good girl." This is a free country. Any citizen can accept or reject the proposition of any other citizen. What is it then which terrifies a woman so in a situation like this ? I tore from his grasp as though it had power to harm me ; I ran from him, dashed through the waiting-room, and gathered up my baby. As I flew, money in hand, to get my ticket, he met me at the inner door. "What's the matter ?" he was beginning, when he caught sight of Boyce! His astonishment and dismay were almost comical. He stood there between me and the window. "A a child!" he stuttered. "Is that your " "Get out of my way!" I cried, desperately. "Let me buy my ticket." 34 THE STRAIGHT ROAD The boy with the dogs and luggage hung at the outer door and stared. My persecutor backed off. "Take those pups down to the baggage car, you fool," he shouted and rushed away. The throb and jar of that waiting train excited me un- reasonably. No time to buy a ticket now. I would have to pay on the train. I was beside myself. I turned and ran to get the suit-case, and heard them call, "All aboard !" while I was lifting it. When I got out to the platform Pendleton was standing on the car step, the wheels already beginning to grind. I saw his ungloved right hand passing a coin down to the boy who had carried his grips. The wheels moved faster. Alone, I might have climbed on ; but with Boyce and the suit-case I was afraid to attempt it. I stood there and saw the train leave me. CHAPTER II THE FLIGHT STUMBLED back into the station. This man noth- ing to me nor I to him had come in my way with his foolish overtures and lost me my train! Yet at the moment there wasn't room in me for anger against him; all other feelings were swallowed up in the tragedy of that missed train. Boyce slept like a log. I went and beat on the closed ticket window. I could hear the telegraph instrument clicking away in there, but I was afraid that with the going of the train everybody had left the station. After a long time the board shutter was jerked up; there was the agent, his hat on a corner of his head, one arm in a sleeve of the coat he was hunching into. He looked at me very crossly. "Missed your train ? There won't be another till five o'clock to-morrow morning." He was going to slam down the shutter, but I put my hand in at the risk of having my fingers pinched. "Wait a minute," Pbegged. "Isn't there a train that comes through here at twelve? a train that goes to San Vicente, California?" "Yes, there is the Shasta Limited to San Francisco through express. It doesn't stop." Again he was going to pull the window down. Again I stopped him desperately. "Couldn't it be flagged?" "No, it couldn't. Is that all ? It's after my hours, now. Five o'clock to-morrow morning's the best you can do unless you want to try walking to the Junction. Take your hand away." 35 36 THE STRAIGHT ROAD With that, he slammed the window down, indeed. For a minute I stood, holding to the shelf, staring at the white painted boards of the shutter. I heard his heavy, clumping step cross the floor, and the outer door shut, leav- ing me alone in the station. I was like a person who has had a blow on the head. No useful thought or suggestion came to me. I just went and sat down by the suit-case and the sleeping baby. There I sat, in a sort of stupor; and when I tried to think of any plan, there only thumped over and over in my mind the thought that it was all my fault "If I hadn't spoken to that man if I hadn't let him speak to me ! All my fault all my fault !" There was a big clock, and it ticked very loud. I real- ized that the wind had freshened, and was coming through the open door. I covered Boyce mechanically. After all that I had done and tried in these last months, after that final struggle, there seemed nothing to do but sit and wait. And that's what I did, for more than an hour. What finally roused me like a slap in the face was the sight of Flegel's gold-piece still clutched in my hand. The Flegels five o'clock was the milk train they would be down to it. Oliver would have had my note before that; he might be there, too. I couldn't bear it. I got up and lifted the suit-case. Six miles to the Junction. Out of the question to walk that far. I looked at the clock; the hands were close together at the top almost time for the Limited. I became suddenly aware of a queer trembling through me yet I felt strong with it, not weak. My own efforts had failed; now something from outside seemed to take hold of me, and move me about quick, skillful, unhesi- tating. The Shasta Limited, away down below the cut, whistled for Meaghers. I caught up Boyce, took him out and laid him, sleeping as he was, on a baggage truck close beside the track, flew back for my suit-case, set it by him, jerking down a poster from the wall as I passed, ran a THE FLIGHT 37 little way along the track to where the first tall electric light would give the engineer a good view of my figure, and stood there. When the train came out of the