The Quest Read online

  “Albert Pendleton,” said Paradise Al slowly.

  “Albert?” exclaimed Thomas J. Pendleton. “I thought that Rory had you baptized Alfred?”

  Paradise Al turned without confusion on his supposed uncle and merely said: “You know how it is, Uncle. What father wanted was one thing. What mother wanted was the opposite. He called me Alfred, but mother always called me Albert, and that’s the name I’ve come to use.”

  “A bad idea,” said his “uncle” sharply. “The baptismal name . . . However . . . ”—he broke off, controlling his feeling on the subject—“however, let that be as it may. I’m glad to have you with us, Albert.”

  They went into the office of the jail.

  “Here’s the money,” said the tremulous Gresham. “You count it, Mister Pendleton.”

  Paradise Al took it and stuffed the wallet carelessly into his inside coat pocket. “That’s quite all right, I’m sure,” he said carelessly.

  Again the face of his “uncle” flushed with pleasure.

  Paradise Al received back his other few possessions.

  “No luggage?” asked the elder Pendleton.

  “I was making a fast trip . . . without tickets,” said the young fellow, smiling.

  Thomas J. Pendleton looked up and down the lines of the brown suit. They were very neat. The trousers were sufficiently well pressed. There was nothing about the get-up to suggest a professional tramp.

  “Very well,” he said. “Very well, indeed. It’s the proper spirit, also, that takes a young man across the continent to see his relations.”

  He fairly distended his chest with his pride in this accomplishment. Even the sheriff nodded.

  “Blood will out,” said the sheriff, smiling and nodding at Thomas Pendleton.

  “Thank you,” said the other very coldly and briefly. Then he added: “Weapons, perhaps, my dear fellow?”

  “Only this pocket knife,” said Paradise Al.

  “Pocket knife!” exclaimed Pendleton, amazed.

  The sheriff grinned. “Concealed weapons, you know, Pendleton,” he said.

  “Concealed damnation!” exclaimed the rancher, much irritated. “What use would a pocket knife be in a brawl, I’d like to know?”

  “Only in a pinch, and then it would be useful,” said Al. “If you’ll excuse me, Sheriff . . . ” Pointing to the side of the room, he added: “The window sill, for instance.” Suddenly the knife flashed in a long streak of light from his hand, and that streak of light went out, and left the pocket knife buried to the handle in the soft wood of the sill.

  Paradise Al stepped to it and tugged it forth. “In a pinch, it’s useful,” he said, “and it doesn’t weigh as much as a gun.”

  They were impressed. The sheriff stepped to the scar the knife had left, and traced a forefinger over it.

  “Damned good shot,” he muttered. “If some of my boys could do as much with a gun . . . ” He left off, and faced around upon the others. “Pendleton,” he said, “I don’t have to tell you again, how sorry I am that this thing’s gone and happened. I reckon you know that, don’t you?”

  Thomas J. Pendleton pocketed some of his surplus dignity, then stepped forward and said: “Timothy, there never was a time, even in the midst of our disagreements, when I have not been willing to admit that every Drayton is a man, and a real man, above petty meanness. I’d like to shake your hand on it at this moment, sir.”

  The sheriff flushed again, although he blinked with surprise, almost with bewilderment. Then he reached out hastily, as though afraid that the opportunity might disappear, and gripped the hand of the other heartily.

  “I hope, Thomas,” he said, “that there’ll be some good come out of this here. There was a time when we thought different, but maybe there’s room enough on the range for all of us, and we can get along like other folks. We been following a habit of crossing each other. I’m willing and more’n willing to forget that there habit.”

  Pendleton dropped his liberated hand on the shoulder of the sheriff. “Perhaps,” he said, “this may be a bright day in the history of our families, Drayton.”

  V

  When they left the jail, a brown-faced girl with blue eyes, and hair sun-faded almost to white at the outer fringes, got out of a buckboard and waved to the sheriff.

  “Waiting, Father!” she called.

  Young Paradise Al looked at her swiftly, but with care. She was not, he told himself, the type of woman who made any great appeal to him. He preferred girls who had a certain flair for gaiety; he preferred a little coloring in the cheeks, a touch of rose on the fingernails, and a trace of darkening about the eyes. Mother Nature was all very well, but Nature could be improved upon, he felt. Then he felt that women with any pretensions to looks ought to be dressed up to their pretensions in full. Silks, colored silks—that was his idea, and high heels, something, on the whole, precious and useless, that might be forgotten tomorrow, perhaps, but that made an instant impression when it was seen.

  He decided that this was a dowdy one. And that was a pity. With such a body, such a carriage, such eyes, she could have been made into almost anything. Instead, she preferred to dress like a man. The old sombrero on her head was largely battered out of shape, and its wide brim dipped down over eyes that should not, under any consideration, have been covered. Her clothes were simply khaki, neither well fitted nor, for that matter, overly clean. He could see the saddle and sweat stains on her divided skirts.

  So he saw her, appraised her, and dismissed her from his mind. He was ready to yawn about the subject, as they reached the sidewalk.

  “Molly,” the sheriff was saying, “this is Paradise Al. He’s Alfred Pendleton. Albert his mother calls him.”

  “Oh, a Pendleton, is he?” said the girl, with what seemed to Paradise Al endless effrontery. “Hello, Alfred. Glad to meet you.” She came forward and stripped from her brown right hand a gauntlet glove and grasped his much paler fingers.

  “Thanks,” said Paradise Al. “Glad to see you in Jumping Creek.”

  “That’s where you’ll find most of the Draytons,” she said.

  He felt that she was looking him up and down with a lack of interest that even exceeded his indifference to her. And this was an offense. No man ever reached a stage of existence or a place in society or an age when he feels that he is really unattractive to the opposite sex. That the girl should venture to look him over and obviously dismiss him from her mind in this manner was a distinct shock to him. His lip curled a little. There were certain things about him that, if she were told, would make her eyes open suddenly, and very widely, too. This rather grim satisfaction he hugged to his heart. Then he looked at her again, with a retort on his lips, but swallowed the remark, for already she was turning away from him, and from this angle he saw her in full profile, with her head lifted as she looked up to her father and spoke to him.

  These two things may be very strange, but they are very true. In the first place, every woman’s face is best seen, for her beauty, when it is viewed from below. Thackeray knew it, and that was why he had Esmond see Beatrix for the first time on his return from the wars as she was coming down the stairs—that moment when the great novelist put his mind to its full stretch and described the girl who had grown to be a most dazzling beauty.

  So Paradise Al, young in years only, looked at the girl, and, seeing her face uptilted, he saw in it such beauty that he was hushed, because beauty in a woman is to every man, no matter how degraded, a holy thing.

  Furthermore, he was seeing her now in profile, and the blue Western sky was her background, and she seemed to Paradise Al as lovely as something cut from Grecian marble, a brown old marble, but now flushed with life and, therefore, all the more pricelessly desirable.

  He balled one hand into a fist. He straightway forgot all about Jumping Creek, his “uncle” Pendleton, and the role that he was playing. Like a child at the theater, he believed what he saw as thoroughly as though he had been drawn up upon the stage. And nothing existed
for him, in that moment, except Molly Drayton.

  Why waste words about it? It was the oldest disease to which the mind of man succumbs. It was love. Love at first sight has been doubted, but there have always been fools who could not believe in it. All that had happened before, on this rather crowded day, appeared as nothing to the mind of Paradise Al. His very existence seemed to him to begin at this moment.

  So, like a man, he said nothing, but stood, still and silent, and turned very pale. The girl was chattering something to her father about affairs on the Drayton Ranch. And now, at his side, he saw the tall form of Pendleton, mounting a horse and pointing to another with an inviting gesture.

  “Ride Ginger,” said Pendleton. “He needs some riding, but every Pendleton can ride a little, I suppose, and I don’t expect that Rory’s son will be found to be behind the rest in that.”

  Ginger was a blue roan. It is never a pretty color, and Ginger, besides, was built like a mule, heavy in the body, thin in the legs, and large in the head, with a back that promised mischief to any understanding eye.

  But Paradise Al lacked an understanding eye, so far as horses were concerned. He could read off the mind of a man like a printed page, he knew something about women, also, according to the dark ways of his kind, but, when it came to riding, he was more familiar with the rods under a freight car or, above all, the blind baggage, than with the back of a horse.

  If he had been completely himself, he would have taken in what his “uncle” had just said and refused a dangerous mount without shame, for you must understand at once that Paradise Al was a very practical fellow, who never risked his neck to make a show. When he stirred his hands, it was because he was sure of the work that they could perform. He was as coldly logical as a mathematician, when it came to living—hence, his nickname. He was known, among what he would have called the craft, as a man who makes happy days easy, because he never did reckless things. When he handled a knife or a gun, for instance, it was not recklessness at all. It was simply the master working well inside the heart of his craft.

  So Paradise Al, in a dream about Molly Drayton, climbed onto the back of Ginger with a clumsiness that brought a frown of wonder and surprise to the face of his “uncle”, Thomas J. Pendleton.

  A moment later, Paradise was brought out of his dream as smartly as though fingers had been snapped under his nose, for Ginger, realizing that his rider was not proficient and being always desirous of bringing to the earth as much hell as possible, left the earth and soared toward the sky. When he came down again on stiffened forelegs, it just happened that Paradise managed to keep in the saddle.

  In other words, his balance, by sheerest chance, was perfect. He almost wished that it had not been so, for he took the whole shock of that abrupt landing on the base of his spinal column, and a great wave of darkness suddenly swept over his brain.

  His wits were not entirely obscured, however. Through the dim cloud he heard a peal of delighted laughter, and, staring in the direction of the sound, he saw Molly Drayton convulsed with mirth that bowed her over and made her hold her sides with both arms. She even stamped upon the ground with her high-heeled boots in the excess of her pleasure. Another sound penetrated upon his mind—the happy yelling of a child, who was crying: “Ride him, cowboy!” Then there was the stentorian voice of his “uncle”, which shouted something about getting the head of the horse up and riding “like a man”. Paradise Al, however, cared nothing for riding like a man. He only knew that he was in great distress, and he felt sure, if he were thrown from the saddle, he would certainly break himself to pieces on the hard roadway.

  So Paradise Al did what had never been done before in Jumping Creek, not even by the veriest of tenderfeet—he yelled loudly for help and frantically gripped the saddle, fore and aft.

  The mirth of Molly Drayton mastered her completely. Even the grim sheriff began to roar. After all, this was a Pendleton, as he supposed, and he could not help being amused when he saw a member of the famous clan disgraced.

  “Ten thousand damnations!” roared Thomas J. Pendleton. “Get his head up. Stick your spurs into him! Ride him like a man!”

  “Ride him, cowboy!” screeched the child in the street.

  For the roan gelding, having measured his rider with a precise nicety worthy of so great an artist, now did a whirling side-step that the veriest tyro of a cowpuncher that ever rode on the range could easily have warded against. But it was all new to Paradise Al. It dawned upon his brain, that trick, at the same moment that his body left the saddle and was hurled sidewise, straight at the form of the prancing child.

  The latter managed to avoid the whirling, spread-eagled body of the rider, but Paradise Al could not dodge the broad, hard face of the road at which he was thrown.

  He hit it screeching like a tomcat. Luckily for him, he fell at such an angle that he rolled head over heels, and the rolling broke some of the jar that would have resulted from a sheer, solid impact of man against the ground.

  When he staggered to his feet, he looked down to see that he was white as a sheeted ghost with dust, and the whole of Jumping Creek seemed to have gathered to witness his downfall. There was one vast uproar, one volcano of laughter, all pouring forth in waves and all aimed at him.

  Why, he might have been killed by the beast, but there was the girl, quite helpless with her mirth, tears of pleasure streaming down her face.

  He looked sourly at Pendleton and was amazed to see that even from him he received no sympathy. No, upon the face of that old veteran of the range, there was only a look of the profoundest disappointment, the profoundest disgust.

  VI

  Probably no human being in the world could have been subjected to so much scorn, mirth, and disapproval and have remained so little affected by it as young Paradise Al. He had his own points of pride, to be sure, and on these points he was a stickler. But such a matter as riding a horse or yelling for help when the horse was about to buck him off was not listed among them. If it were a human antagonist, well, that was a different matter. Or, if it had been a deal of cards, he would almost as soon have cut off his right hand as to permit the crookedness of the deal to be seen.

  He was an artist, and, therefore, he was his own best critic and audience; very severe was he in his judgments pronounced upon himself, but, as he stood now in the street and observed the torrents of derision that were flowing his way, he was totally unmoved except by surprise—unmoved, that is to say, except for one thing, the laughter of Molly Drayton.

  There was the sword with the poisoned point, and that poison instantly was flowing into him. Why was he ridiculous in her eyes? As for the stony face of his “uncle”, that made very little difference, indeed, to the tramp.

  Straightway young Paradise Al offended all Western standards even more than he had done before. For he walked straight up to Molly Drayton, knocking off the dust from his clothes, and said to her: “Why such a big laugh, Miss Drayton? Never saw a man fall off before?”

  “I never heard a man yell so much before,” she said.

  “I always yell when I’m scared,” said Paradise Al.

  “Then you’ll probably make a lot of noise in Jumpin’ Creek,” she said, “because it’s an awfully scary town.”

  He heard his “uncle” calling him, and turned back. Tall Thomas J. Pendleton was dismounting from his horse and preparing to take Ginger; he waved the boy to the saddle that he had just vacated.

  “There’s a gentler horse,” he said stiffly. “I’ll try Ginger.”

  “Will you?” commented Paradise Al. “Good luck to you, then. I’d just as soon try to ride a rock python that imitates a whiplash. I never could tell whether the sky was over my head or under Ginger’s feet while I was on him.”

  “You weren’t on him long enough to make up your mind,” Pendleton was heard to say. And there was a stir of grim laughter from all who heard this remark.

  However, Paradise Al was eventually in the saddle on the quieter horse, and there he sat an
d watched Ginger make one more frantic effort to snap a human burden from his back. It was a vain effort, however. Thomas Pendleton might be rather brittle with age, but he was supple with experience, and he easily sat out the efforts of the mustang. Presently he was jogging down the street, waving to Paradise Al to come on.

  So they left Jumping Creek and rode out through the brilliant sunshine toward the Pendleton Ranch.

  The head of the clan found it possible to converse after a time. “Where is your father now, Alfred?” he asked.

  “Uncle Tom,” answered the young man, “the fact is . . . my job while I’m out here with you is not to answer questions. I’m sorry, but you can imagine why it is.”

  Pendleton shook his head. “Rory never did anything that he needed to be ashamed of. His father had ideas that were not like Rory’s. He couldn’t understand how any man would want to give up his life to painting pictures, when he might be raising cows on the range.”

  Paradise Al nodded. He was reaching far out to get together enough facts to enable him to guess at the life of his supposed “father”.

  “And he’s still painting, I suppose,” said the rancher.

  “You know how it is,” said Al. “When a man starts that sort of a business, it’s hard to give it up. He still paints. Yes.”

  “Do anything with the stuff?” asked Pendleton.

  “Yes, fills attics with it, but there I am talking!” exclaimed Paradise Al. “I’m sorry. But you can imagine. I’m not supposed to talk at all, if you’ll forgive me.”

  “I understand that,” said Pendleton. “Poor Rory. He was full of the Pendleton pride. Full of it. He swore that he’d never speak or write to me again . . . and he’s kept his word. I suppose he’s told you that he felt I’d helped to make trouble between him and our father?”

  Paradise Al reflected. Then he said truthfully: “As a matter of fact, my father never mentioned your name.”