RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
ALWAYS there was a short hour of beauty those summer nights in New Hope when twilight turned to dusk. Moonlight made this magic, changing the flour-gray dust of our street into a luminous, silver-rippled streak, softening the gaunt outline of our unlovely buildings. Peace and ease came then, and the voices of people rose from the front porches with a slow resonance, and heat released itself from the earth, and a small wind lifted from the west, bringing in the crispness and wildness and mystery of a thousand miles of plains. This was 1881, and I was a boy of twelve. Judith Grand and Chad Colpitt, pacing arm in arm along the walk, turned in at our gate. Their faces were dim to me, but I could see Chad's rash, reckless grin, and I could see Judith's soft smile.
"Well," said Chad Colpitt, "we are to be married."
My mother's rocker quit its squealing, and her murmur was as though a heartfelt relief came to her. Father rose and removed his cigar. He shook Chad's hand. "It is a thing we have all hoped for. When is it to be?"
Chad Colpitt's voice was like him, gay and pleased; for this man loved all the sensations of life and had neither fear nor quiet in him. "I have bought into Billy Ormes's freight business. I leave Monday with a wagon train for Dakota. It will be as soon as I return."
My father replaced the cigar between his lips. I knew that he was stirred by some thought deeply, for the tip of the cigar was a bright glow. He said: "You have come a long way since you were a wild boy of fifteen, Chad."
Chad Colpitt's laughter made a clean, strong wave through the twilight hush; and I could see Judith Grand's face, round and firm and fair in these shadows, tip toward him. Afterward they turned out of the yard, swaying in slow time as they went down the walk. It is strange how some memories die and some grow clearer as the years run on. The picture of those two, standing at the foot of our porch that summer's night, remains unforgettably with me, like the vision of a high-burning, signal fire on the back trail. There was laughter in Chad Colpitt, and a certainty of his own strength; and Judith Grand's silence, I know now, was a silence of pride. These people were in love.
My mother said in a strange, quiet way: "It is so good to know."
"Sometimes," my father answered gently, "life forgets to be cruel."
"Why, Tod!"
I REMEMBER being puzzled by that remark. I remember it sounded
odd to me, violating my own youthful thoughts of life. But time
has made it bitterly clear, and now my youth is a golden dream of
long ago. Nevertheless, that phrase stuck with me like a burr,
and next morning, walking down St. Vrain Street, I had it in my
mind, silently repeating it in the way a boy will do—to get
the sense out of it—when a voice stopped me, saying: "What
would be the problem, Tod?" And I looked up to see Mr. Stanton in
front of the Wells Fargo office, gravely interested in me.
I recall a feeling of swift satisfaction, for young as I was I knew that Mr. Stanton, too, had been calling on Judith Grand, and there was in me a boy's zealous and faithful worship of Chad Colpitt. That difference was between the two men. Everybody loved Chad, wild and laughing and indifferent as he was to so many things in those days. It was his way to bind people to him; it was his way to make people find excuses for him. I do not think Mr. Stanton was a day older, but I never saw him laugh, and in his presence I always felt exactly what I was—a boy. I remember that I felt a little stab of jealousy that morning as I looked up to him; for even in my prejudice I admired the solidness of his shoulders and the dark and wide and definite lines of his face. He was physically a bigger man than Chad, and I resented that. I can look back now and understand how unfair I was, for the years have taught me that Mr. Stanton was the kind of a man the world always unjustly deals with. Slow and steady, he had no way of binding people to him. All that he was lay beneath the quietness that covered him.
I said: "Nothing, sir."
He spoke carefully: "Don't grow up sober faced, Tod. You will come to regret it. Let others do the worrying. You have your fun."
I recall being unexplainably embarrassed. I stood there, not speaking. And then Judith Grand came out of the doorway of the New York Store, and Mr. Stanton wheeled and removed his hat. What stays with me these long years is the straightness of his body that moment, and the darkness of his eyes, and the softness of his voice that was like sadness.
"I have heard of God's good fortune, Judith," he said. "I wish you both all the happiness you may find."
THE hot sun was shining down, and people were moving past us on
the walk, and a line of freight wagons came creaking up from the
river landing, the heavy horses straining against their collars.
Dust came about us, and the voices of the teamsters were round
and sharp and bold. I heard a steamboat, whistling hoarsely
beyond the housetops of New Hope. Kit Maloney, who had been a
scout with Custer just five years before, came riding by on his
black mare. I thought then—and never have ceased to
think—that Judith Grand was a beautiful woman. She faced
Mr. Stanton and lifted her head with a slow, half smile, and I
know now that she was sorry for him and that her eyes were
telling him so. They were two fine, vigorous people with a grace
and a binding honesty in their slow ways. Her lips were broad;
they were generous; and there was a sweetness in them. Her hair
was a fresh yellow.
"Why shouldn't Tod be grave, Charley?" she asked, changing the subject.
Mr. Stanton shook his head. "I should hate to see him play that part, Judith. I know it too well, for it has always been my part. There's no fun in it."
She wasn't smiling then. Her voice fell lower. "We cannot help being what we are, Charley. We can't help the things that happen to us."
"I wish you all the luck," he said.
She watched him a moment, and I thought she meant to speak again. But, instead, she turned and walked on toward Custer Street. Mr. Stanton stood quite still until she vanished around the corner, whereupon he wheeled away. He had forgotten me. He went on with his head down, not seeming to know where he was going. I continued on and came to the corner of Custer and saw Judith and Chad Colpitt, standing in front of the Emporium. He had his back to the wall and was leaning against it, with a negligence and a laughter that I clearly remember. People were coming up to speak to them, and all the group seemed very gay. Judith Grand stood quietly among them, her eyes on Chad in that still, proud way that seemed to fill the street with something strange and steadfast.
YOU must see New Hope as I see it now. A raw and prosperous and
unlovely town sitting on the Missouri's bank with its face to the
long, wild swoop of the western plains. You must feel its burning
wind, its bitter dust, its isolation from the soft and pleasant
memories of the East. For a boy it was always a place of wonder,
of bold change. But as I call to mind the faces of my elders and
remember the thin sweep of their lips and the settled gravity of
their eyes, I at last understood they were afraid of laughter.
There was a hunger in them they dared not express. The land, I
think, had made them that way, for they had seen so much of
tragedy and want, and their lives were so full of bitter work and
sadness that they had steeled themselves to disappointment. And
so the love affair of Judith Grand and Chad Colpitt was wonderful
to them, a fire lighting and warming their own dark and half-
forgotten dreams. Well, it was the story of youth and romance
come to a proper ending. It had made my mother cry for gladness;
it had made my father say that life sometimes forgot to be cruel.
This was what the whole town felt. New Hope made that affair its
own.
I saw them again that evening, walking through the soft shadows of our street, the echoes of their steps falling gently in time, and I heard Chad Colpitt's voice rise to soft, easy amusement. And then they were lost somewhere in the farther darkness. My mother said, in a way that was faintly displeased: "Why does he have to take that wagon train into Dakota? There's plenty of wagon bosses to be had for the hiring. I wish they were married first."
My father said: "Charley Stanton took the evening stage for a visit to Omaha."
My mother was a gentle soul. "I feel sorry for him, Tod."
But my father's tone was rather gray, rather grim. "Men like Charley were built to stand punishment. You'll hear no crying from him."
"I wish," repeated my mother, "Chad wasn't going to Dakota."
"He will always be doing things like that," my father told her. "And there's the difference between the two. Charley Stanton plows his furrow faithfully, but Chad has got to be forever seeing what this world is made of."
"Judith will change him," said my mother. "She'll bring patience to him."
My father didn't answer, and now I understood why. He was always a realistic man who saw the ways of men clearly; and I know that he felt Chad would never change.
THIS was on a Saturday. On the Monday next I went out to the
western edge of town to see the freighters pull away. They made a
long line on that smooth, sandy plain; great wagons with their
canvas tops glistening under a fresh sun, and the heavy mules
stirring up the flour-gray dust. They were ready to go, and
nothing held them except the crowd formed there to wish Chad
Colpitt good luck. I saw him standing beside his roan gelding
with his hat lifted and his red hair shining and all his face
alive with the glitter of high excitement. I feel it now, that
powerful appetite for life that boiled in him and came out of him
to agitate and lift the spirits of all those around. Judith Grand
faced him, tall and still in this confusion, and then he reached
forward and kissed her. He was smiling when he swung into his
saddle and lifted his hand by way of signal. All the wagons
groaned into a forward motion, with the lash of whips and the
sound voices of the mule-skinners rising. He waved at the crowd
and looked again at Judith Grand. I saw the excitement fade
momentarily from him. He spoke softly to her—so softly: "It
will seem a long time, Judith. The days will be very long." And
then he trotted away to the head of the wagon line. There must
have been in me as a boy a preternatural sharpness of
observation, for my eyes returned to Judith Grand, and I remember
how straight and sober she stood and how her eyes darkened as she
watched him go. He made a gallant figure on the horse; he made a
picture. New Hope loved that man. I think it was because he
represented the freedom and the gaiety the people of our town
hungered for and never could find.
So he faded into the west, into the deep banks of copper and powder-gray haze lying all asmolder across that hot land. Beyond was the country of the Sioux, and the Black Hills where stormy Deadwood lay. That summer was a hard one, long and burning and bitter. The shapeless sun rose sulphured above the heat murk, and the south wind scorched us and clawed long clouds of dust across the housetops and through the street. By day we took to wearing wet handkerchiefs over our noses; by night we sat on the front porch and waited for coolness that never came. My parents suffered, and all the older ones of New Hope showed the shortness of their tempers and the raggedness of their nerves. Henry Tabor's feed store burned down. Mrs. Palmer took her three children one night and ran away from her husband. Two cowpunchers out of Plum Creek fought a duel, both dying of their quarrel. The Missouri showed its muddy bottom halfway out to Forby's sandbar. By long day I went with my particular boyhood friends to the willow bottoms along the river and lay there, hearing the mourning doves, smelling the rank mud odor of the river rise in steamy waves. To me my youth was golden.
And then Peter Braley rode back through the western haze, six weeks from the time Chad Colpitt's freight caravan had started, to report Chad dead. Somewhere along the banks of the big Cheyenne River, under the shadow of Harney Peak, the caravan had been attacked at night by renegade Sioux. There had been a battle, and Chad had charged out through the darkness and vanished. At daylight they found his horse shot through the head, and beyond was Chad's hat, streaked by blood, with a bullet hole in it. They had not ventured farther to find Chad because the Sioux kept potting at them with good agency rifles. Later a cavalry company had come up from Fort Laramie. But nothing more was to be found.
My father brought the news home that night. He came through the gate and stopped at the foot of the steps, looking over to Mother who saw something strange on his face and stopped her rocking. He told us then, and my own little world came crashing down about me, and I sat stunned. I heard my mother crying; I heard her rise and go into the house. I think I was crying myself, for I was a boy, and Chad Colpitt had been a hero to me. Father came over and put a hand on my shoulder. He said: "Never wear your heart on your sleeve, Tod. It is a thing you must learn."
IT is difficult for me to describe what that news did to my town.
But it was New Hope's tragedy; it was the brutal end of a dream
to all those slow, grave people no less than to Judith Grand. All
that they themselves hungered for was in that pair, the
brightness of youth and love, the desperate hope of a happy
ending that came so infrequently to their lives. But now that was
done, and the ending was dark. It was as my mother said a week
later, so sadly, so wistfully: "it was too good to be true. I
feared for them." That was the way New Hope felt.
I used to watch Judith Grand stroll down our quiet street those long evenings of late Indian summer, passing alone through the shadows where she had often before strolled with Chad Colpitt, and, young as I was then, something filled me to bursting and went away, and left me very empty. I think this summer the shadowy intimations of life's mystery first disturbed my boyhood world. I think it was there and then boyhood's implicit belief in goodness and security went away. She walked alone those evenings, a fair figure in the dusk; and sometimes she stopped at the gate to speak to Mother, and I saw how grave her eyes had become, how still and sober were her lips. And then one night I saw Mr. Stanton walking with her.
They were married in the late fall.
I hated him then, for the loyalties of boyhood do not soon die, and I still remembered Chad Colpitt. And I recall one evening, after Judith and Mr. Stanton had stopped by a moment to speak to us and gone on, that Mother rose from her rocker and looked long at Father. "It isn't right!" she said, and went into the house. I can understand that now. She had nothing against Mr. Stanton. She respected him. But it was the treachery of time she would never forget; it was the swift brutality of life that grieved her. I think New Hope felt that way about it, too. My elders had allowed themselves to believe in a miracle; and they were sad now.
Yet we were a practical people and believed that life was meant for use and for work. In New Hope in 1881 it was proper to grieve and to cry, and then it was necessary to be done with tears. Ours was a land that had little place for single women; it was wives we needed, and children. And so New Hope put away its dream of what might have been, and Judith and Mr. Stanton settled in the big, stone house at the corner of Belle Plaine and Prairie Street. We paid them a formal call soon after they were married, and all uncomfortable in my good suit I sat in their high- ceilinged room and listened to the talk go on. I remember that scene well, with Mr. Stanton standing with one arm hooked to the fireplace mantel, a fine, tall figure of a man browned by the weather, with a slow and silent way about him, with a manner of looking now and then toward his new wife. Long as it has been, I still see the fairness of her features and the sweetness of those long, generous lips, and I still feel the vigor and melody that seemed to flow from her like a tune. One thing I recall my mother said as we went homeward that night. It seemed to be a reluctant admission; it seemed to come out of her under protest. "They make a perfect-looking couple."
My father went walking along with his head down. He had no answer. Mother turned her eyes to him. She said: "What are you thinking?"
He said: "They do not smile." And neither Mother nor Father spoke again on the way home.
INDIAN summer went by, and the wild geese began to go south. I
used to lie awake at night and hear that faint, high, wild clamor
overhead; and sometimes I thought the strange, dark thoughts of a
boy, my mind running out into those windy, gray mists that are
the mysterious boundaries of all our lives, and then I would feel
an echo and a fear—I knew not why—and lie, staring at
the dark shape of the window. We had an early winter, with ice on
Beechey's pond in November. Just before Christmas, Colonel Cliff,
riding back from New Hope to his ranch, thoroughly drunk, fell
off his buggy and was found dead in a drift of snow. A revival
meeting came to our town and unsettled it, and miser Joe Scott's
eldest daughter married against his persuasion.
IT was on a windy afternoon in March, I remember, that I came out
of the New York Store with a package for my mother and found
Judith and Mr. Stanton, talking there with Father. Something had
been said, and Father was strongly laughing, a rare thing for him
to do, and I could see Mr. Stanton's brown, solid face show
pleasure. Judith said to me—"Why don't you visit me,
Tod?"—and, afterward, Mr. Stanton half spoke and half
grunted a word that turned my attention to him. He was looking
down the street, and then I observed Judith's cheeks whiten from
a pure pain. It thrust me about on my heels. A man yelled clear
across the street: "Chad!" And I saw Chad Colpitt ride forward on
a long-jawed, Indian pony that had only a piece of rope for a
bridle. He came up to where we stood, and I saw the eagerness of
his grin flash behind the full beard that covered his face. He
was a thin man, and his clothes were ragged, and a scar ran down
from one temple toward the point of his nose. But he came before
us, still hugely pleased, and got down; and he said to Judith, as
though he had never been away: "Hello."
Nothing in my life has ever been like that since. I heard her breathe in a strange way. She swayed toward Mr. Stanton, whose own expression was all dark; and she was asking him to take her home. They turned, and my father let his arm fall across Chad Colpitt who moved to follow. I looked back to Chad. He had stopped smiling.
"You were supposed to be dead, Chad," my father said. "Missus Stanton thought you were." He repeated her name in a stronger voice: "Missus Stanton, Chad." Then he looked at me and said—"Come along."—and we left Colpitt standing that way. There were people running up from all parts of the street, and voices were rising fast, but my father said not another word. His mouth was peculiar to me, being thin and dismal in its set.
I had another errand to do before reaching home—and so I do not know how my mother took that news. But when I did get home, I saw that she had been crying again, and that the old hurt was once more fresh. My father had gone, and it was late before he returned. Something sat heavily on his mind, and he was not pleased. He said: "Chad went up to Charley Stanton's house." And then, after a silence that was uncomfortable to me, my father burst out: "What did Chad expect? I am disappointed in him."
It was my mother who found an excuse for Chad, just as so many people in our town found excuses for him, because they could not help it. "It is a hard thing to come back to. I cannot blame him too much."
But my father's sense of right was always a stem thing, many times impelling him to make decisions that were harsh, that were uncomfortable. "You could have blamed Charley Stanton six months ago, if he had interfered with Judith and Chad. But Charley is a man who takes his punishment. He took it then. Chad should take it now."
My mother had a woman's answer for that. "This is different," she said.
My father looked at me and held his tongue. My parents were this way: they never argued in front of me. It was dusk then, and I slipped away, going out around the western edge of our town where the big freight park was, and found my young companions there. Boyhood has its own telegraph, its own sources of information, and I found that Nick Fallon, one of the more knowing lads in the group, knew the story my father had withheld.
Nick Fallon said: "Chad Colpitt went up to the Stanton house. He was pretty mad. Semus Curtiz saw him go in, and heard some loud talk. Then Mister Stanton and Chad came out and crossed to the alley behind Blagg's stable. Semus Curtiz saw the fight. Mister Stanton beat hell out of Chad."
The very thought outraged me. I said: "That's a lie."
Nick Fallon was a wicked boy, the son of a teamster who let him run wild. I remember that Nick slid off the tar barrel he had been sitting on. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and came at me, and the other boys stepped backward into the shadows to give us room. I felt very cold, for I was afraid of Nick; and then he hit me, and I wasn't afraid any more, and I struck him on his lips and ran against him and hit him in the chest and threw him down. He got up and cursed me, and his fist sliced the skin from the side of my face. I was very confused and missed him completely and stumbled past him, and he caught me a hard blow on the back of my head. I remember turning with a wild swing that knocked the wind out of his stomach. He went down again, and that was all of our fight. We both stayed as we were. I wanted no more fighting, but this was one of the great moments of my boyhood. I had been afraid of Nick Fallon, and now I wasn't afraid any more. It changed the night for me; it changed me in front of my crowd. It is one of those things that sometimes happens. I stood over Nick then, and I would be forever standing over him. I do not recall any other moment in my life when one long minute ever meant so much to me.
The other boys came toward us. None of them spoke of the fight. We were all crouched down in the semi-darkness, and Henry Dix was speaking.
"My old man heard Chad Colpitt tell why he didn't come back sooner. The Sioux captured him and meant to kill him. But Chad said the Indian leader was superstitious about red hair. So they didn't kill Chad because he has red hair. Chad said they were afraid the soldiers would be after them, so they went away up into Montana, almost Canada. He was adopted into the tribe. Pretty soon they didn't watch him very close... and he escaped."
I got up without saying anything and went home.
IT is hard for me to describe New Hope's emotions during that
long winter. I felt it then and did not understand it; I feel it
now—and the years have made me wiser. It was a
restlessness, a sense of a thing gone wrong. It was a kind of a
wound that would not heal. The news of Stanton's fight with Chad
soon got out for our town was too small not to know people's
secrets and I think New Hope thought the better of Stanton from
that moment forward. He had done only what any honest man would
do; and it was strange to all of us to observe how this wild Chad
Colpitt turned his ways inside out. I remember meeting him on the
street one day. He stopped me, and he spoke to me—and I
waited for that old-time, famous smile to break across his face.
But I never saw it; there was a change in him. He used to play
seven-up at the White Palace in the evening with old Judge
Menefee, and he used to take his horse and ride away from New
Hope. But he was a tame man those days, a quiet-spoken man. He
never went to the Stanton house again, yet we wondered about
that, and we always watched when Mr. Stanton met him on the
street. There was a kind of friendliness between them that New
Hope could not understand, and sometimes the people of our town
would stop and turn and watch Judith as she passed by Chad
Colpitt's stage office. I think now it must have been an ordeal
for those three, yet nobody ever saw behind that strange reserve,
that unsmiling serenity.
Remember, ours was a strict town. We didn't know what divorce was, and we believed in the hard and fast ways. Yet the winter went along, and our blustery spring broke, and the sense of wrongness still was strong. New Hope once had thought to see the story of young love work out. But that dream had died, and New Hope had laid the memory aside. And now Chad Colpitt walked the street to mock the hope our town had put away. It was, as I say, like a wound that wouldn't heal. There was no cure; there was no answer. Young as I was, I often watched Judith walk along the street, a fair woman in all her ways, a woman vigorous and serene, with a sweetness in her lips—and I used to feel a hatred for Mr. Stanton that made me old.
It is something I regret now. For in June of that year Mr. Stanton, riding out to one of his leased ranches, was thrown from a high-strung horse and fatally injured. A rider came in with the news on a noon of that day, and Judith was driven out to the ranch where they had taken him. He lived to see her come, and New Hope saw that scene through the eyes of Dr. Gillespie who was there.
Judith came to his bedside, and it must have been plain to her that he was dying. She bent over and took his hand, and she kissed him. But she didn't cry.
Mr. Stanton said: "Luck was with me once, Judith. It's against me now. It comforts me to feel you will never know want. I wish I could live long enough to see our child."
She said: "Charley, I want you to know this...." But we never knew any more, for Dr. Gillespie turned and left the room. When he returned again, Judith was kneeling at the bedside, and Mr. Stanton was dead.
THERE is so little left to tell of this story, and yet in that
little lies all that is wonderful to me. It would be a cruel
thing to say that New Hope felt relieved at Mr. Stanton's death,
and it would be an untrue thing, for our town was kinder than
that. Yet, I know that there was a change, and I know that people
were quietly talking again of that long-interrupted courtship
between Judith and Chad Colpitt. I know it because my mother,
gentle soul, said it to my father.
"It is almost too much to hope," she told him. "I pray God is kind this time."
When my father was deepest moved, he spoke most softly, as he spoke now. He only said: "I should not pray too much."
But my mother's hope was the hope of our town. Even then I knew it. There was a kindness surrounding these two, there was a gentleness around them—and above all that, a quiet insistence, as though my elders meant to have their way at last. Yet we were a seemly people, and we held our tongues until the baby was born, a boy that some said looked like Mr. Stanton, and some said looked like Judith. I saw it once and could see no resemblance anywhere, but that is a way people have. And then the gentle conspiracy grew, and our good matrons made it their business to have parties that included a Chad Colpitt now turned grave and a Judith whose eyes seemed to smile above those quiet lips. And once I saw them, walking at dusk down our street, down it and into the yonder shadows as they had done in that past day which seemed so far back. Once. Never again. And nothing happened. That night, I like to think, they laid the pattern of their lives for the time to come.
She came to our home one day to visit Mother. I was there and heard some stray talk between them. Then, all by impulse and energy, Mother said: "You have a man waiting for you, Judith. A fine man to make you happy."
I still see Judith, standing there so sweetly, with something in her eyes deeper than serenity; I still hear the soft, grave melody of her voice.
"I was Charley Stanton's wife, and I have his boy. It was the choice I made. Well, we choose our parts only once. There is never a second choosing. It has to be this way."
That is all. She never married Chad.
I SEE the world so confused now, so puzzled about its ways. I see
people seeking happiness and crying out for it and walking away
without compass or light, eager to hear whatever little stray
whimper may come to their ears. And then I think back to my
boyhood and recall Judith Grand, walking along our street, a
woman instilled with the grace and vigor and sweetness of life. I
was a man fully grown before I realized what she had done to our
town, and what she had done to me. Many times, in darkness and in
doubt, I have felt the touch of her personality upon me; and I
know now it touched our town as well.
It was a steadfastness that somehow showed me what dignity life could hold—a shining light coming all through the long darkness of the world.