A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories

But their quest was fruitless; McCloud met them at the gate with a repeating-rifle, knocked the game-warden down, took away his revolver, and laughed at Byram, who stood awkwardly apart, dazed by the business-like rapidity of the operation.

“Road-tax?” repeated McCloud, with a sneer. “I guess not. If the roads are good enough for cattle like you, pay for them yourselves! I use the woods and I pay no road-tax.”

“If you didn’t have that there rifle – ” began Byram, sullenly.

“It’s quite empty; look for yourself!” said McCloud, jerking back the lever.

The mortified game-warden picked himself out of the nettle-choked ditch where he had been painfully squatting and started towards Foxville.

“I’ll ketch you at it yet!” he called back; “I’ll fix you an’ your ice-box!”

McCloud laughed.

“Gimme that two dollars,” demanded Byram, sullenly, “or do your day’s stint on them there public roads.”

McCloud dropped his hands into the pockets of his ragged shooting-jacket.

“You’d better leave or I’ll settle you as I settled Billy Delany.”

“You hit him with a axe; that’s hommycide assault; he’ll fix you, see if he don’t!” said Byram.

“No,” said McCloud, slowly; “I did not hit him with an axe. I had a ring on my finger when I hit him. I’m sorry it cut him.”

“Oh, you’ll be sorrier yet,” cried Byram, turning away towards the road, where the game-warden was anxiously waiting for him.

“We’ll run you outer town!” called back the warden, waddling down the road.

“Try it,” replied McCloud, yawning.

II

McCloud spent the afternoon lolling on the grass under the lilacs, listlessly watching the woodpeckers on the dead pines. Chewing a sprig of mint, he lay there sprawling, hands clasping the back of his well-shaped head, soothed by the cadence of the chirring locusts. When at length he had drifted pleasantly close to the verge of slumber a voice from the road below aroused him.

He listened lazily; again came the timid call; he arose, brushing his shabby coat mechanically.

Down the bramble-choked path he slouched, shouldering his wood-axe as a precaution. Passing around the rear of his house, he peered over the messed tangle of sweetbrier which supported the remains of a rotting fence, and he saw, down in the road below, a young girl and a collie dog, both regarding him intently.

“Were you calling me?” he asked.

“It’s only about your road-tax,” began the girl, looking up at him with pleasant gray eyes.

“What about my road-tax?”

“It’s due, isn’t it?” replied the girl, with a faint smile.

“Is it?” he retorted, staring at her insolently. “Well, don’t let it worry you, young woman.”

The smile died out in her eyes.

“It does worry me,” she said; “you owe the path-master two dollars, or a day’s work on the roads.”

“Let the path-master come and get it,” he replied.

“I am the path-master,” she said.

He looked down at her curiously. She had outgrown her faded pink skirts; her sleeves were too short, and so tight that the plump, white arm threatened to split them to the shoulder. Her shoes were quite as ragged as his; he noticed, however, that her hands were slender and soft under their creamy coat of tan, and that her fingers were as carefully kept as his own.

“You must be Ellice Elton,” he said, remembering the miserable end of old man Elton, who also had been a gentleman until a duel with drink left him dangling by the neck under the new moon some three years since.

“Yes,” she said, with a slight drawl, “and I think you must be Dan McCloud.”

“Why do you think so?” he asked.

“From your rudeness.”

He gave her an ugly look; his face slowly reddened.

“So you’re the path-master?” he said.

“Yes.”

“And you expect to get money out of me?”

She flushed painfully.

“You can’t get it,” he said, harshly; “I’m dog poor; I haven’t enough to buy two loads for my rifle. So I’ll buy one,” he added, with a sneer.

She was silent. He chewed the mint-leaf between his teeth and stared at her dog.

“If you are so poor – ” she began.

“Poor!” he cut in, with a mirthless laugh; “it’s only a word to you, I suppose.”

He had forgotten her ragged and outgrown clothing, her shabby shoes, in the fresh beauty of her face. In every pulse-beat that stirred her white throat, in every calm breath that faintly swelled the faded pink calico over her breast, he felt that he had proved his own vulgarity in the presence of his betters. A sullen resentment arose in his soul against her.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said; “I also am terribly poor. If you mean that I am not sorry for you, you are mistaken. Only the poor can understand each other.”

“I can’t understand you,” he sneered. “Why do you come and ask me to pay money to your road-master when I have no money?”

“Because I am path-master. I must do my duty. I won’t ask you for any money, but I must ask you to work out your tax. I can’t help it, can I?”

He looked at her in moody, suspicious silence.

Idle, vicious, without talent, without ambition, he had drifted part way through college, a weak parody on those wealthy young men who idle through the great universities, leaving unsavory records. His father had managed to pay his debts, then very selfishly died, and there was nobody to support the son and heir, just emerging from a drunken junior year.

Creditors made a clean sweep in Albany; the rough shooting-lodge in the Fox Hills was left. Young McCloud took it.

The pine timber he sold as it stood; this kept him in drink and a little food. Then, when starvation looked in at his dirty window, he took his rifle and shot partridges.