The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (small books to read .TXT) 📕

“Naturally!” remarked Mr. Knight, looking again with a smile, at Chirstie.

“Oh, I didn’t know her then! If I had known her I’d have started home crawling! Have you got those grays yet?” asked Wully, suddenly curious.

“No, I haven’t.” The man smiled reminiscently. “I wish I had, sometimes. A Chicago man came along and wanted them. He was determined to have them. I let them go for a half section of land in Lyons County. I wouldn’t have done it,” he added confidently, “only my son had a baby born a day or two before that. I thought the land would be a good thing to keep for the child. How old is this little fellow?” He snapped his fingers invitingly towards the child.

“Oh, he’s⁠—a year or two. Something like that, isn’t he?” he asked his wife.

“Tut, tut, McLaughlin! You need experience! When they’re young like that the women count them in months. Don’t they, Mrs. McLaughlin?” he appealed.

“How old is your grandchild?” Wully parried boldly.

“Oh, mine’s several months. Mine’s⁠—well, he’s got two teeth already!” And they laughed. Wully hastened to safer ground. If he wasn’t careful, someone might ask him when he was married.

“I’ll tell you another thing I remember!” he began. “I got in on that night train, that time, you know, and I went to the hotel where we had always stayed. Sick, I was, you know! I told the man⁠—he’d seen me a dozen times before⁠—that I hadn’t the price of a room. He’d had too much. He never even looked to see who I was. Just saw my uniform and began swearing! Wasn’t going to be eaten out of house and home by a lot of begging soldiers, he said. It nearly knocked me over. I went out to the street. And I couldn’t get up face enough to go some place else and ask for a bed, at first. I just sat around. Then finally I went into the Great West⁠—that’s where we all stay now when we come in. And Pierson there almost began swearing at me because I said I’d pay him later. He didn’t take soldiers’ last cents away from them, he said. He saw how I felt, and he went and got some milk toast made for me. And soft boiled eggs. And then, do you know what he did? He went to a room with me, and when he saw the pillows on the bed, he went and got me a pair of good pillows from some place. I hadn’t slept on a pillow for I don’t know how long! A man notices those things when he’s most dead, I tell you! Milk toast, and pillows, by Jiminy! And in the morning he sat and fed me such a lot of breakfast⁠—no wonder I had trouble! I felt as if I’d never get enough to eat.”

Mr. Knight made him go on talking. They sat there till the street was dark. And then Wully led his wife away, right up to the hotel. And then into the dining room. It seemed lordly to her that dining room⁠—an amazing day⁠—and Wully most lordly and amazing of all. It was like a fine wedding trip, almost, that day.

They had breakfasted together before daylight, and he had gone to load the lumber he was taking home for his father, so that they might have a very early start. In the noisy, untidy hotel office she sat watching in surprise the confusion and the stir. There were crowds of women waiting near her, women like herself waiting for wagons to take them on towards the west, women with bundles and babies, and quarreling, crying young children. Chirstie’s face showed how exciting the scene was to her. She looked from group to group. She considered a foreign woman with a handkerchief tied on her head, whose tiny baby coughed and wheezed distressingly. She longed to say something sympathetic to the stolid mother. But she was too shy. Between caring for her own vigorous son, and watching other women’s children, the hour hurried by. Presently she saw her husband drive up, and get out to tie his horses. But before he had started for the hotel door, a stranger accosted him, and with the stranger Wully turned and went down the street. So she waited on. Two sets of youngsters quarreling drew their mothers into the fray, and Chirstie shrank away from their roughness, thoroughly shocked.

Then, before she had expected him, Wully was standing over her, reaching down for the baby. She scarcely knew him. His face was white. His eyes were shining strangely.

“What ails you?” she cried. “You’re sick, Wully! What’s the matter?”

“I’m all right!” he said sharply. His voice quivered with feeling. He couldn’t trust himself to speak. His mouth was set in a hard line.

She rose and followed him, frightened. She got into the wagon, and he handed her the baby. He climbed up beside her, and they were off. She saw he couldn’t tell her what had happened just there. She could wait⁠—a little.

They were almost out of town now.

“Wully, what’s the matter? Are you sick?”

“I’m all right!”

She was more anxious than ever. She waited till the baby was asleep in her arms, and then she laid him carefully down in the little box in which Isobel McLaughlin had taken her babies back and forth to town. Then she turned towards her husband with determination. And hesitated. He looked too stern⁠—too fierce. She sat undecided, wretched, glancing quickly at him and then away. After a few perplexed moments, her face darkened with terror.

“Oh, I know! You’re⁠—you’ve seen him! You were like that on the Fourth!”

He turned toward her, trying to speak.

“Yes!” he broke forth. “I saw him dying.”

“Oh, dying!” She tried to realize it. “Oh, if he’s dying, then we’ll be happy again!”

He said nothing. His lips worked.

“I won’t have to be afraid now!” She spoke like one overcome by a great fortune.