THE MEASURE OF JOHN MAILLORY

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 11, Issue 10, 11 March 1909, Page 363

THE MEASURE OF JOHN MAILLORY

' You" intend, then, to go on with this scheme ?' ' The scheme, as you call it, is included in my orders from my company. Naturally, I will go on with it.' ' But the barefaced dishonesty of the thing,' said the priest. • ' Have you .no conscience, no notions of honor which would put you above a slavish obedience to orders ?' ' Say, friend,' said John Mallory, laying his hand on Father Corbin's shoulder with that large tolerance which the West has for those who do not seem to understand it, ' you're a good man and a good preacher, but if you think that this town and this big country is going to be developed on the little two-by-four lines of the East, you are simply mistaken. Why, man, Barr has already been offered more than he can ever get out of his claims with his old pick and pan. His legal title is worth nothing. The company is willing to give him a fair price for what it might as well have for nothing.' ' You mean by a fair price the little scraping of gold which he, a tottering old man, might be able to haggle out of the ground between now and the time he dies, which won't be long. In the name of common honesty, is that a fair price to a man for the work of a lifetime, for his home, for everything that makes his life? But the question is not one of price, and we both know it. The old ' man is not asking a price. . He is standing on his earned right to live and work and die on those claims, and to leave them intact to the little girl there, who is more to him than claims or life.' ' Oh, by the way, who is that little girl, Juanita Barr ? — that name does not seem to agree with itself.' ' No, it does not,' answered the priest. ' The child, of course, is no relation to him. Nevertheless, that does not change the fact that your company's plan of absorption will mean robbing her of her inheritance.' c Oh, that ; why, don't you see that the money will bo worth more to her than the claim? What could she ever do with it?' 1 Your company is not asking itself that question. It wants what is hers and goes about to get it. 5 ' You put it hard, sir. You do not realise that those claims are essential to the company, that without them it stands to lose thousands.' 'We do not agree; I guess, on the' things that are essential. lam glad to have met you, though our talk seems to have ended where it began. But I will venture this much — you will never go through with this business.' ' I guess you're not up to modern business methods, Father.' ' No,' said the priest, looking long and searchingly I into the clean, brown face before him ; ' no, but I know ' something of men.' And he turned slowly up the slope. This fell out on Father Corbin's second visit to Larido. Coming back to the place, after two months' absence, looking up his strayed parishioners over the whole waste ' of the eastern foothills, he could not but see the unmistakable signs of what in our country is progress. The spur of railroad up from the ' Atchison ' was nearing completion, and, facing out on the old trail, at the end of the row of bedraggled cabins, there was a new planked building which announced itself as the office of the Bordwin Mining Company, J. B. Mallory, Manager. Father Corbin immediately on his arrival had gone to see the old miner and Juanita, to whom he had been so unceremoniously introduced on his first visit to Larido. He had found Barr frankly glad to see him, Juanita shy and half afraid of him still, in the memory of former happenings. The old man, though, was plainly worried. The priest hardly expected him to speak, for long years in" the desert's silences do riot bring a man to easy confidences. In the evening, sitting out before the cabin, with the long, slanting shadows of the Rockies curtaining down over them, lie opened the burden — Father, I ha' done a great wrong to the little lass there, and now I'm to pay for it.' He did not seem to look for comment, and Father Corbin silently let him take his own way. 'I tell "you afore,' he went on, the canty brogue of the ' North ' slipping through the dry tones of the West, ' that I came ,here, some sixteen years ago, bringin' the little lass, a weany, all the way over the mountains on a pony's back. But I didna tell ye that I came here for ' a reason. Out there, where you'll see that big fir staridin' with his feet in the -weir, Juanita's father died — I have it from them that knew. How the little pardner came to me I'll tell ye some other day, - but I'm no minded to

do it now. When I brought her here, there was sewed into ' her _ little kirtle a deed to their weir land — all the land drained by this arroyo, up to the ridges on either side, that's how it read, and does yet, for I ha' it in the nookie there this day — but I'm afeard it's no good since the fire in the State's house ten years backj that burned all yon records. But that's no what I'm trying to tell ye. I didna tak it to be cleared again, when they called for all the old deeds — Why did I not? Because I was jealous c'en o' the man there; I would ha' the weany. to be all mine; I wanted her to ha' naething that I couldna gie her masel'. With the old man's story still on his mind, Father Corbin had met John Mallory in the morning, and had tried to measure him as a man, while boldly placing him before him the dishonesty of his position. The result had been as we have seen. ' Mallory, drilled and hammered by the demands of modern methods, remembering the fight of life by which .he had risen to his present position, could be reached by no argument except actual legal force. From his name, and even more surely from his clear-cut face, Father Corbin knew Mallory for what lie was; knewhim to be of that great number of our Catholic boys who for years back have been slipping out from carefully guarded homes all over the East, and giving their lives and their work to the making of the West. Walking slowly up the foot-trail to Barr's cabin, -the conviction came to him that this man, Mallory, could yet be awakened to a sense of actual "truth and right, if a real test were forced upon him. From what he had learned from Barr m the evening before, he foresaw a test that would be real ** enough. The old man was sitting dejectedly in the sunshine before the cabin, having no will to work. IFather Corbin came up, and, seating himself quietly beside him, told him of his talk with Mallory. ' There's plainly no use appealing to him directly in this matter, but I have- a plan in mind, if you will let me try it.' ' Yes, man, then try what you will, though I'm afeard it's no help.' ' Well,' said Father Corbin, 'my thouglt is this. I do not know, nor do you, whether Juanita' s deed is of any value or not. John Mallory is the only man within three days' ride who would' know surely. His company's suit against your claims will be decided on Monday; that is four days from now. If it is decided in their favor, and they are once in possession, with their resources against you, you could hardly recover the property, eveji if the deed proved sound. On the other hand, if you or I were to start at once for Ralston to record the deed, we might be in time,- yes; but if the deed proved worthless it would only anger „ the Bordwin people, and Juanita would be left without even the settlement which they offered.' ' What is there for us, then ? ' wondered the old man. ' Bring Mallory up here, show him the deed — we can get the truth about its value from him someiow — and then act on what we shall know.' To the wary old man it did seem a great deal like putting himself into the hands of his enemy; but not for his life would he have worded his doubt of the wisdom ofFather Corbin's plan. Mallory came up to the cabin that afternoon in ready response to a message, thinking, of course, that the old man, advised by Father Corbin, had made up his mind to accept the terms offered. As the manager stepped into the little living room of the cabin, the air of tense waiting of the three who greeted him, the sense of an impending trial, struck oddly upon his nerves. He could not fight ba-ck the feeling that, somehow, he was being brought under a test. He was used to meeting men who blustered or cringed or swore deeply. These three merely waited. Father Corbin grave and alert, the old man grimly steady as a mastiff, the girl intense, almost fierce, in her scrutiny. As if to end the pause, Father Corbin quietly crossed the room and placed a yellowed, closely-written paper in the manager's hand, saying, *Read this, and then tell us if you will go on with your suit.' John Mallory, reading down the cramped lines, saw that his warning of a trial had been true. The paper was a clear, well-drawn legal document, deeding to Juanita not only the claims in question, but every claim in the settlement, into which his company had put nearly every" dollar of its available capital. It needed only that this" paper should be registered at Ralston within four days, and his fortune and those of the men who trusted him would be gone. At first the significance o>f his own position did not strike him. Then he remembered that he •was a lawyer, the only one near enough to be of service, \ and that this thing was placed upon his professional honor. I Anger at what seemed a trap swelled up in his throat. What right had a priest to put him in such a 'position?

Through years of struggle and unscrupulousness he had stuck to that fetish of professional integrity, and was he to lose it now in this way? Out of th-e whirl of his thoughts, the voice of the old man called, him with a steady, insistent question : ' Is no the deed gude an' true ? ' To Mallory there was just enough of menace in the question and the tone to steady him. The suggestion of threat was what he needed to bring him back into the world of fighting, jostling, men, where he was at home. A bold lie was not so much, when men were badgering you. Already the words — ' No,' it is not worth the — ' were forming themselves on his tongue, when something from the other side of the room' seemed to arrest the words on his very lips. As he turned the girl had risen and seemed to be moving towards him, though he knew she had not taken a^ step. Her eyes, question points of searching light, with the horror of the young, wild, free thing for a lie,- seemed to burn down into his very soul. His thoughts froze in his brain, as his own eyes fell before that merciless scanning of Truth itself. Standing, as it .seemed, beside himself, he heard his own voice saying"~with curious, hypnotic precision: ' The deed is entirely right.' The spell passed, and the full meaning of his admission came, pounding in upon him. The -work of years, the hammering, delving toil or days and nights, the trust of men placed in him, "all thrown away toeeatise a slip of a girl had looked oddly at him. Rage smote him to blind - desperation, and he raised the paper in his hands to tear it in bits, there before their eyes. At his motion, before one of the others could raise a hand, the girl, with one lithe spring, was at his side, had caught his wrist, and with the instinct of the wild things of ler hunts was driving her nails deep into the flesh, until the paper fluttered noiselessly down to the floor. Without a word/ Juanita took her chair again, and he was left there in the centre of the room, looking dazedly down at the paper on the floor. ' You will take that paper, Mallory, and carry it yourself to Ralston, and register it yourself before 10 o'clock on Monday.' It was Father Corbin. again breaking the pause. Mallory's first thought was a dull wonder that they should trust him again, after what had just happened. Then the meaning of it struck him., and he turned angrily to the priest. ' What right have you to force a trust upon me ? You think I'm a scoundrel already; do you want me to be a still bigger one? t Take the deed to Ralston yourselves, and fight it out fairly.' .'There 'is nothing for us to fight, and you know it,' came the steady answer, probing down into the man's soul, down to the place where he kept sliame and selfrespect and his notions of manhood; 'the fight is yours alone, with yourself; and. when you have Tvon it, as you will win it, then you will be not a scoundrel, but a man — and a good one some day.' Slowly stooping, John Mallory picked, up the paper from the floor and, without a word, passed out of the door and down the trail. At midnight, Father Corbin, pacing in. front of the cabin where he was lodged, saying his Hosary for the night, saw the light in the office of the- company blink, blink steadily, as some one passed. and repassed. And_he knew that Mallory was fighting his own figlit. Curiously, he had little fear of the result, but he breathed his prayer to the God of the watching stars above for the character and the soul of this man, in the hour of Ms bitterness. John Mallory, striding back and forth ■ across his office, was, in truth, fighting the crucial battle of his life. He realised that he was at the last ditch of manhood, beyond which such things as honor and faith and truth to a man's self do not go. Yet he was not fighting to keep away from that ditchj rather to cross it, and be where those things could not follow him. Yet he could not. Everything about him told him to destroy that deed or to hide it even from himself. The claim-prints on the wall flaunted* each- its price at him; his report for the month, broken off that afternoon at the words, 'All clear except the two claims under ' ; the very ugliness or the homely office itself; all dragged at him to cross that ditch. Yet he could not. • The deed itself lay there open, leering at him. Twice he took it to the safe to lock it there and lose the combination until after Monday; and that soul-burning look of the girl lvas upon him. Twice ' he seized it, to tear ' it ; and he saw, deep in his wrist, the print of the girl's nails. So through the night. In the hour of the gray dawning a w«ary-footed man passed out of the office, mounted a pony fro-m the corral at the back; and slipped away into the mist at the ford of the arroyo. On the other side, high up where - the - draping mists thinned, the figure paused, looking at the things it was leaving, then faded into the mountain shadows on the long north trail — to Ralston. — Extension,