A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories

Now, for years he had been known as a dealer in game out of season; the great hotels at Saratoga paid him well for his dirty work; the game-wardens watched to catch him. But his ice-house was a cave somewhere out in the woods, and as yet no warden had been quick enough to snare McCloud red-handed.

Musing over these things, the young fellow leaned on the rotting fence, staring vacantly at the collie dog, who, in turn stared gravely at him.

The path-master, running her tanned fingers through her curls, laid one hand on her dog’s silky head and looked up at him.

“I do wish you would work out your tax,” she said.

Before McCloud could find voice to answer, the alder thicket across the road parted and an old man shambled forth on a pair of unsteady bowed legs.

“The kid’s right,” he said, with a hoarse laugh; “git yewr pick an’ hoe, young man, an’ save them two dollars tew pay yewr pa’s bad debts!”

It was old Tansey, McCloud’s nearest neighbor, loaded down with a bundle of alder staves, wood-axe in one hand, rope in the other, supporting the heavy weight of wood on his bent back.

“Get out of that alder-patch!” said McCloud, sharply.

“Ain’t I a-gittin’?” replied Tansey, winking at the little path-master.

“And keep out after this,” added McCloud. “Those alders belong to me!”

“To yew and the blue-jays,” assented Tansey, stopping to wipe the sweat from his heavy face.

“He’s only cutting alders for bean-poles,” observed the path-master, resting her slender fingers on her hips.

“Well, he can cut his bean-poles on his own land hereafter,” said McCloud.

“Gosh!” observed Tansey, in pretended admiration. “Ain’t he neighborly? Cut ’em on my own land, hey? Don’t git passionate,” he added, moving off through the dust; “passionate folks is liable to pyralyze their in’ards, young man!”

“Don’t answer!” said the path-master, watching the sullen rage in McCloud’s eyes.

“Pay yewr debts!” called out Tansey at the turn of the road. “Pay yewr debts, an’ the Lord will pay yewr taxes!”

“The Lord can pay mine, then,” said McCloud to the path-master, “for I’ll never pay a cent of taxes in Foxville. Now what do you say to that?”

The path-master had nothing to say. She went away through the golden dust, one slim hand on the head of her collie dog, who trotted beside her waving his plumy tail.

That evening at the store where McCloud had gone to buy cartridges, Tansey taunted him, and he replied contemptuously. Then young Byram flung a half-veiled threat at him, and McCloud replied with a threat that angered the loungers around the stove.

“What you want is a rawhide,” said McCloud, eying young Byram.

“I guess I do,” said Byram, “an’ I’m a-goin’ to buy one, too – unless you pay that there road-tax.”

“I’ll be at home when you call,” replied McCloud, quietly, picking up his rifle, and pocketing his cartridges.

Somebody near the stove said, “Go fur him!” to Byram, and the young road-master glared at McCloud.

“He was a-sparkin’ Ellie Elton,” added Tansey, grinning; “yew owe him a few for that, too, Byram.”

Byram turned white, but made no movement. McCloud laughed.

“Wait,” said the game-warden, sitting behind the stove; “jest wait awhile; that’s all. No man can fire me into a ditch full o’ stinging nettles an’ live to larf no pizened larf at me!”

“Dingman,” said McCloud, contemptuously, “you’re like the rest of them here in Foxville – all foxes who run to earth when they smell a Winchester.”

He flung his rifle carelessly into the hollow of his left arm; the muzzle was in line with the game-warden, and that official promptly moved out of range, upsetting his chair in his haste.

“Quit that!” bawled the storekeeper, from behind his counter.

“Quit what – eh?” demanded McCloud. “Here, you old rat, give me the whiskey bottle! Quick! What? Money to pay? Trot out that grog or I’ll shoot your lamps out!”

“He’s been a-drinkin’ again,” whispered the game-warden. “Fur God’s sake, give him that bottle, somebody!”

But as the bottle was pushed across the counter, McCloud swung his rifle-butt and knocked the bottle into slivers. “Drinks for the crowd!” he said, with an ugly laugh. “Get down and lap it up off the floor, you fox cubs!”

Then, pushing the fly-screen door open with one elbow, he sauntered out into the moonlight, careless who might follow him, although now that he had insulted and defied the entire town there were men behind who would have done him a mischief if they had dared believe him off his guard.

He walked moodily on in the moonlight, disdaining to either listen or glance behind him. There was a stoop to his shoulders now, a loose carriage which sometimes marks a man whose last shred of self-respect has gone, leaving him nothing but the naked virtues and vices with which he was born. McCloud’s vices were many, though some of them lay dormant; his virtues, if they were virtues, could be counted in a breath – a natural courage, and a generous heart, paralyzed and inactive under a load of despair and a deep resentment against everybody and everything. He hated the fortunate and the unfortunate alike; he despised his neighbors, he despised himself. His inertia had given place to a fierce restlessness; he felt a sudden and curious desire for a physical struggle with a strong antagonist – like young Byram.

All at once the misery of his poverty arose up before him. It was not unendurable simply because he was obliged to endure it.

The thought of his hopeless poverty stupefied him at first, then rage followed. Poverty was an antagonist – like young Byram – a powerful one. How he hated it! How he hated Byram! Why? And, as he walked there, shuffling up the dust in the moonlight, he thought, for the first time in his life, that if poverty were only a breathing creature he would strangle it with his naked hands. But logic carried him no further; he began to brood again, remembering Tansey’s insults and the white anger of young Byram, and the threats from the dim group around the stove. If they molested him they would remember it. He would neither pay taxes nor work for them.

Then he thought of the path-master, reddening as he remembered Tansey’s accusation. He shrugged his shoulders and straightened up, dismissing her from his mind, but she returned, only to be again dismissed with an effort.

When for the third time the memory of the little path-master returned, he glanced up as though he could see her in the flesh standing in the road before his house. She was there – in the flesh.

The moonlight silvered her hair, and her face was the face of a spirit; it quickened the sluggish blood in his veins to see her so in the moonlight.

She said: “I thought that if you knew I should be obliged to pay your road-tax if you do not, you would pay. Would you?”

A shadow glided across the moonlight; it was the collie dog, and it came and looked up into McCloud’s shadowy eyes.

“Yes – I would,” he said; “but I cannot.”

His heart began to beat faster; a tide of wholesome blood stirred and flowed through his veins. It was the latent decency within him awaking.

“Little path-master,” he said, “I am very poor; I have no money. But I will work out my taxes because you ask me.”

He raised his head and looked at the spectral forest where dead pines towered, ghastly in the moon’s beams. That morning he had cut the last wood on his own land; he had nothing left to sell but a patch of brambles and a hut which no one would buy.

“I guess I’m no good,” he said; “I can’t work.”

“But what will you do?” she asked, with pitiful eyes raised.

“Do? Oh, what I have done. I can shoot partridges.”

“Market-shooting is against the law,” she said, faintly.

“The law!” he repeated; “it seems to me there is nothing but law in this God-forsaken hole!”