Big Jim Albright

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Big Jim and Mary . i

II. “We Will be Christians”.22

Chapter I

B IG JIM ALBRIGHT, twenty-three, was a Puget Sound boy, born near the sea. He was six feet three and looked it. If there was any weakness any¬ where about his blond makeup it didn’t show. Mary Mor¬ ton, twenty, was a Puget Sound country girl. She was blonde, too, and pretty; clear creamy skinned, brown eyed, and lustrous haired. Jim’s father, Judge James Albright, owned a farm in the extreme northwestern district of the United States. He was Justice of the Peace and was called Judge be¬ cause in the far western country everything in the judicial line or of seemingly judicial calibre after reaching a certain age and standing in the community is called Judge or Colonel. Mary’s father, John Morton, also owned a farm, next to Judge Albright’s. Jim was an only son and Mary afl only daughter.

Big Jim and Mary were out walking together on a June evening thoroughly enjoying their own companionship, which was very exclusive, and the Puget Sound air and scen¬ ery. That means a good deal, for Puget Sound from June first to October fifteenth is the garden of the world, a paradise in climate, a luxuriant lotus land where big men and big women live, satisfied with the life that comes to them day by day.

There is no other climate on all the earth like that of Puget Sound in the calm and delightful summertime. The sunny resorts of Italy are cold and cheerless and changeful compared to Puget Sound’s summer days; there is a little somnolent heat at times and a few chilly mornings where the radiant sun of California draws tourists from all the corners of the earth; the Isles of Greece with their clustering grapes, the Mediterranean shores of France with their villas and chateaux and their graceful people living their graceful lives; the hill¬ sides of Japan, white blossomed and fragrant like the homes of the gods, all have their drawbacks, but Puget Sound in summertime is the perfect place. It has a summer climate that blends the north and the south. There is unexampled vigor in the salt and iodine breeze that sweeps three thou¬ sand miles across the Pacific; there is bracing vigor in the clear cool air that comes from the eastern borderline of giant mountains with their snow-capped peaks; there is vigor in the calm air of the calm day and the calm night; the day is never hot and the hours of sleep are never cold. It is pleasant from the time the sun goes down till he rises again in a far western imperial splendor. The invalid who cannot sleep through the nights of Puget Sound cannot sleep anywhere on earth; nature could do no more for invalid or athlete. The quiet sunshine of the perfect day, the balsam balm of the perfect night, the mountains, the forests, the rivers, the great ocean —it is Utopia realized.

And this great, calm, peaceful Pacific Ocean is guarding and watching this Utopia as it has guarded and watched it for the tens of millions of years in the long past. Through the cold waters of that immense ocean there runs a river of warm life. It is a blessed river. Its waters are tepid. It might be the bathing pool of all the mermaids of all the western seas. We can fancy we see them disporting there and as they revel in the warmth and play their games, gliding hither and thither, we can see them shudder and draw hastily back as they touch the cold walls of the waters that surround this marvelous river of hallowed contentment. It welcomes with cheer and good will and luxurious comfort the chilled sailor boys who come shivering to its cleavage line and urges them to throw off their woolens and their heavy clothes and stretch themselves to doze in the long restful sleep that they have dreamed of through their voyage. Its mists are the advance guard of old winter’s enemies; they fling defiance in the face of frost and ice and invite the glacier and the iceberg to float gently into the stream and warm their heart of hearts. It radiates verdure; every shore it touches or reaches with its occult influence is green and wooded and grassed; the ferns are like little trees in its domain, and the trees that are mir¬ rored in the blue waters are the most splendid giants of all the forests of all the world. It is the guardian spirit, the angel of life of an elysian land, and it claims this one favored region for its own special kingdom—a kingdom that endows its blonde people with bigness and breadth and vision. The little thing of man or mountain or forest or ocean finds no place here. Size and strength and grandeur and beauty are nature’s natural expression on Puget Sound.

The soft influences of this river of life winds in and out among wooded islands all along the ocean front of Puget Sound. These islands are nature’s floating fortresses. The harsh winds and the burly waves cannot buffet and browbeat the long mainland. They have to be peaceful, for the islands are interlocked breastworks, the line of defence that subdues their arrogance and blustriness and they come to the shore¬ line only with balmy messages of good will and friendly friendship. These islands have mountains for neighbors that tower above the snow line through all the year, and rivers that carry the pure snow water long distances from the mountains to the sea—rivers that are sounding the invitation by day and by night to the humanity around to place their steel towers and runways along their banks and they will furnish power to run all the mills and factories of the Ameri¬ can western world for all the years to come.

Jim and Mary with their health and strength and youth and intelligence fitted into the rural scene around them as if to the manor born. They had always known each other and they had strolled out this evening as they had often done before along the river bank that separated their homes. A big fir tree had been undermined by the river and had blown over and carried a smaller fir with it. They sat down on the smaller tree and leaned back against the big tree and looked across the stream through the evening sunshine of their shel¬ tered cove.

They had been silent for some time. Their conversation had been of the commonplace variety, about the affairs of the two farms, and the neighborhood gossip. After a silence Jim reached over and placed his long arm around Mary and drew her toward him and seated her squarely on his knee. Then he placed his two big hands on each side of her cheeks and looked into her surprised eyes and said: “Look here, little girl, I love you better than life. I don’t think of anything else from the time I wake up in the morning till I go to sleep at night but just you. You’re all there is in the world to me. We’re going to get married right away, just you and me and no one else, and we’re going to live for the rest of our lives in our own little world. There isn’t going to be another soul in that little world but just you and me. I will make a home for us two and you can keep it and we can go on loving each other just as much as we want to—and that’s going to be an immense amount on my side of the fence. We’ll go right down and tell your Dad and Mama and then we’ll go right over and tell my Dad and Mama and have it all over with to¬ night and we’ll go right about getting married without any fiddle-dee-dee delay and frum frums. I’m for getting mar¬ ried at nine to-morrow morning and going to housekeeping at two to-morrow afternoon. Now what do you say, little girl? And don’t you dare to say anything else but yes to all I have said is going to happen. Say yes, now, quick, and have it over with.”

Mary was little more than a schoolgirl, and although the thought had come to her in the past at times that she and Jim might get married it was something that had always seemed far away in the very distant future, a vague though pleasant possibility. The action and words of her resolute lover took her breath away and for an instant she could find no answer.

“Say yes, little girl, or I’ll go right away and throw myself in the river before your very eyes where the water is all of a foot deep. You don’t want me to drown myself on a sandbar in a river that won’t cover me all over, do you? I should have waited till the fall and then I could have floated past on the silvery tide in the floods and waved a long farewell to you just before I went down for the last time. But I can’t do that now when the water is so low. Say yes, little girl, or just nod your head; that will do just as well as golden speech. There, you’ve nodded all right, and now we’ll kiss and bind the bargain, not once, but about sixteen times, to make up for all the times we should have kissed in the past but didn’t.”

True enough, Mary had nodded, for Jim had a hand on each cheek and he had nodded her head for her, but she acquiesced by saying: “Oh, Jim,” and putting her arms around his neck while he kissed her again and again.

“There, now,” said Jim, “it’s all settled and there’s nothing further except for the preacher to say his few words, and we’ll have him say them in the near future. Now I’ll leave the time of the ceremony all to you, and see that you make the wedding day a closeup, as they say in the movies.”

“Jim,” she said, as she laid her head on his shoulder and looked up at him, “I’m the happiest girl in the universe to¬ night. I’ll have to talk with Mama, though, about the exact day for our wedding. You know you mustn’t be so impatient for it’s a woman’s special prerogative to be fussy and bossy and tyrannical about that one day of days in her life. You know it comes only once and it’s the greatest day ever; but it won’t be so very, very long. Now where are we going to live? We can’t live in your home and we can’t live in ours. There isn’t room in either house, and—besides ”

“Besides, no one house, even if it’s as big as the palace of the Romanoffs, is big enough for two families. That’s what you were going to say, my dear little duckling, wasn’t it?”

“That’s just what I was thinking,” said Mary thought¬ fully. “My folks will want us to live with them, at least till we get settled; your folks will want us to live with them till we get settled. I think we had better strike out right at the beginning and take care of ourselves. It will be better for all concerned.”

“ Right you are, dear,” said Jim. “We’ll do that very thing, and we can make up our minds just what we will do along those lines when we have talked over the matter with the old folks on both sides regarding our engagement. Let us see what they say. They may want to make some sug¬ gestion that will help us out. Now let us talk over some of the other things of this awfully responsible married life of ours. Do you know, little one, that Tve always had the idea that there’s only one successful man in all the world and he’s the fellow that has reached the goal of the Cotter that Burns describes. I’d rather be a workaday farmer with a blameless reputation and a well-spent honest life behind me and my boys and girls around me in their honest, straightforward, strictly moral joys and sorrows when I reach my gray-haired days than to be the millionaire sitting alone before my fire¬ place in cold, silent, solitary selfishness. I learned the ‘Cot¬ ter’s Saturday Night’ years and years ago. Listen to it now and see if it doesn’t sound good for us, for just you and me.” And he commenced in low, measured tones to recite the most beautiful word picture of Scottish life that Burns ever drew.

“There now, little one,” he said as he finished and looked down at Mary, “what do you think of that? Isn’t the old Cotter’s family about right? And I have often thought that if I ever got married and started a family institution of my own along with my wife that the first thing I would do would be to join the church and to read the Scriptures and be sin¬ cerely religious like the old Cotter. It’s easier to start at the beginning than to right about face and begin halfway down the track. What do you say, little girl, if we go right up to the altar next Sunday night when Reverend Story calls for any one who wishes to come forward and join the church. You know he has the habit of saying something like that every service just before he dismisses the congregation. There hasn’t been many occasions when any one took ad¬ vantage of the invitation except when some stranger moved into the neighborhood and brought his card from some other church.”

“Oh, Jim, I’m so glad you think that way,” said Mary as she pressed her cheek closer to his. “I’ll go right up with you, and I’ll be so glad to be a member of the church. I’ve always wanted to be but it’s so hard to make the break when a person’s folks are not members and perhaps they might— well, they might think it strange, although I don’t think Dad or Mama would have the slightest objection to me going forward, even if I went alone, but it’s different with you and me together and I’ll make our home a real little Christian home. We’ll be real members of a real Christian church.”

“That’s fine, little girl, and I’ll get a big family Bible, just like the old Cotter had, and we’ll begin the very first day in our new home by asking a blessing at every meal and having family prayers. The church people are going to be our kind of people and the Christian life our kind of life, and now we’ll go across the field and tell your folks all about how they’re going to lose you or perhaps how they’re going to add me to the family.”

They started arm in arm across the meadow that lay be¬ tween them and Mary’s home and were making slow headway as they talked about the things that were of interest to them. Suddenly Jim became aware that something was behind them and half turning round he exclaimed hastily: “Run, run for your life! Nero is coming!” Mary didn’t need to be told any more. She knew Nero well, a big red four-year-old bull with a supposedly vicious temper. She had never ven¬ tured near where he was before and although she didn’t take time to turn her head she knew just how he looked coming full sweep toward them with head up in the air, angry looking horns tossing, and questioning eyes that had smouldering red blazes in them.

Mary could run fast, as the country life had given her strength and swiftness of foot, and Jim was an athlete when circumstances called out his powers. He placed one arm half around the girl and they flew for the fence, but the big bull only increased his pace and came faster. They were running from him and their action only incensed him. He had made up his mind that he was going to catch them and his energetic movement showed that no doubt he would do so, for no man could hope to run away from a young bull if he called his powers of speed into play.

Jim’s heart sank as he intuitively noted the rapid pace of the bull and the predicament of himself and his fiancee. They were still some distance from the fence. It was not the ordinary rail fence. John Morton had taken a great deal of pride that spring in building along that line an especially strong board fence though it was not very high. It was im¬ possible to jump over it and just as impossible to batter it down in a second of time such as Jim would have. The boards were turned the wrong way to kick off and he knew they couldn’t be pulled off quickly even if he had something to do it with, which he hadn’t. If he were only alone be could handle the bull in some way, but with Mary with him he realized each step that his case was getting more and more desperate.

They reached the fence. The bull was right behind them, coming like a hurricane. To get Mary out of the way was Jim’s only thought. He raised her up on the final step, swung her clear over the top, and dropped her as gently as he could on the other side. “Run, run for the house!” he shouted as he half turned round toward the bull that was right at his heels. Jim instinctively saw that the big animal would go through the fence if he hit it at the rate he was going and as instinctively leaped along the fence to draw the bull after him. If the fence were broken down Mary might be killed. The bull swung after him, just barely grazing the fence that shook and vibrated with even the slight impact for a long dis¬ tance on either side. If he had hit it squarely it would surely have gone down.

Jim was now rid of Mary and was more master of himself. Just ahead of him, leaning against the fence, was the iron runner of an old sled that John Morton had been using the winter before during the few days’ sleighing the Puget Sound winter afforded. It was a home-made runner hammered out of a bar of iron, for the natives of Puget Sound did not have the finished sleighs and winter vehicles of the East where there is a long, cold winter. Jim grasped the iron bar and took it with him as he leaped from the fence to dodge the bull and at the same time turned out into the open field to lead the furious animal where he would have more chance. The bull had his head lowered now and his nostrils were steaming angry snorts, as if threatening just what he would do to Jim in another ten seconds. He was ready to toss him in the air and he whirled out as Jim did and just as speedily, but the bull had a longer body to turn and Jim gained a few feet lee¬ way. He stopped suddenly and half turned round so he could see the bull. The bull charged with head down and eyes red with anger. He was quick as a cat, but Jim was quicker and kept his coolness of head and presence of mind in the emergency. He knew he had to use all his powers of mind and body right then to the very best advantage or he would be caught. With the deftness of the Spanish bull fighter he sidestepped the big brute and as the bull plowed past him ten feet before he could stop Jim measured him all along the side with the heavy iron bar.

It was a terrific blow and raised a great welt from the shoul¬ ders to the hips and just along the shoulder and at the rump it cut into the flesh the depth of the bar. It made the bull wince and evidently put other thoughts into his head than that of goring Jim. But he was still determined to fight and began to turn. Before he could finish his turning move¬ ment Jim made a leap and struck him a short arm blow across the nose. There had been no time to draw the heavy bar back, but the bull’s nose is the most sensitive spot about his body and Jim’s short arm jolt was no light blow anyway. The bull let out a loud bellow of pain. The blow on the nose was heavy enough, although given at close range, to cause him to hesitate and stand still for just an instant. That was Jim’s opportunity. He had time to regain his balance and he swung the bar again along the bull’s ribs making another welt along his side that cut in parallel with the previous mark. The bull staggered. He was beaten. He couldn’t fight this terrible man with the iron bar and he started across the field with a half-crippled motion. Jim swung on him again, and this last blow completely broke his spirit. The fight was gone out of him and he was now nothing but a cowardly, beaten brute. When he was the victor he could be the merci¬ less gorer of some weak human being who was helpless before his far superior strength and brutality but now he was a cra¬ ven coward in body and soul. He bellowed as the last blow fell and tried as hasty flight as he could force himself to in order to get away from this well-merited punishment he had brought on himself.

But his troubles were not ended. The folks at the house had seen the almost tragedy just as Jim swung Mary over the fence and John Morton had seized an axe and started on the run for the scene. Mrs. Morton also came running and ahead of them darted the nemesis of Nero on more than one occasion in the past, old Spot, the more than half bulldog that was one of the family and usually Mary’s constant com¬ panion. Spot went over the fence like a bullet, and just as the bull got away from the last blow from Jim’s iron bar the dog flashed past Jim and along the bull’s side. One dash more and he swung from Nero’s nose. With a quick flip, which the bulldog tribe seem to inherit the instinctive knowl¬ edge of, he turned Nero over on his side, and the big brute lay there prostrate and bellowing with pain and fright. The dog hung on, and seemed to master his giant antagonist and hold him down without any trouble.

John Morton stopped at Mary’s side as the fight ended thus happily for the family and Mrs. Morton, white faced and trembling, came up a little later. “Not hurt, are you, Jim ?” she inquired.

“Not a bit,” said Jim. “Nero is one fighter, though. I guess I’d better take Spot off. From the looks of things he’s settled down for all day. Enough of anything is plenty, I

II guess.” He went back and told the dog to let loose. Spot just turned up the whites of his eyes at him and held on.

‘‘You’ll have to choke him off,” said John Morton.

Jim quietly placed his big hands around Spot’s neck and closed down on him and tightened his grip more and more. The dog’s wind began to fail him. The big hands tightened still more. The dog gasped and his eyes closed. He let loose and Jim threw him off to one side. The bull staggered to his feet, a thoroughly beaten beast, and made off across the field. The dog started after him and the bull bellowed pite¬ ously. Jim headed Spot off and took him by the collar and led him back through the fence.

By this time Mrs. Morton had ascertained that Mary had a sprained ankle. When Jim had dropped her over the fence she had landed with one foot on a hard clod which had turned over and all her weight had come down on the foot that was turned to one side. However, with Jim on one side of her and Mr. Morton on the other, and Mrs. Morton and Spot acting as convoy, they all reached the house.

When they all had their final say about the event and Mary had been propped up with her ankle wrapped in a hot liniment preparation John Morton leaned back in his chair and said, “Jim, I’ve noticed something just now for the first time. What’s the color of your coat?” Jim looked down at it. He was wearing a reddish cardigan jacket, the color that tradition says rouses all bulls to a frenzy. “Well,” said Mr. Morton, “Nero had some slight excuse, looking at it from a bull’s standpoint, but to-morrow off come his horns. I’ve been going to take them off now for a year. This settles it, and they come off to-morrow without fail. If he doesn’t like red coats after this he will have to butt without horns to hurt any one. Now, Jim, you’ll stay for supper and I’ll ’phone over for the Judge and Kate to come and we’ll have a family party.”

Jim looked at Mary sitting there with her ankle swathed in white cloths and her cheeks a trifle pale. He interpreted her glance as appealing to him to stay and he said: “Sure, I’ll stay. I’ll help you to do the chores and then I’ll turn in and show Aunt Lizzie some of the fine points of cookery. I’ll boil the water just right if she makes the tea and I’ll put the potatoes in such elegant shape that all she’ll have to do is to cook them. I’m some kitchen maid myself, graduated in two weeks once while keeping bachelor’s hall in a shack on the beach.”

“Correct, then,” said Mr. Morton; “I’ll call the folks and I’ll bet they’ll open their eyes wide when they hear me tell how you licked Nero single handed.”

“Hello, Judge, is that you?” he called over the ’phone. “Yes, well you and Kate come right over and have supper with us, Jim is here and is helping me to do the chores. All right, come right along. There, it’s all settled. Now let’s get to the barn and have the work all done by the time they get here.”

It was a real family party that sat down to supper after the Judge and Mrs. Albright had heard every word of the near tragedy of the evening and had condoled with Mary on her painful accident and congratulated her on the fact that she had a lucky escape for it might have been so much worse. Mrs. Morton had cooked a famous supper in the best style, for she was a model housekeeper and had everything of the very best to work with. The city hotel or restaurant or boarding house meal never looked or tasted like the one these six people out in the country sat down to. The talk was of the neigh¬ borhood affairs, particularly on one subject of more than pass¬ ing interest to them. Judge Morton had motored down to the city that afternoon and had heard of an invasion of the dis¬ trict by the I.W.W., a new and puzzling factor in the rural district affairs. He had heard they were making a special rendezvous of the county and were bringing in squads of al¬ leged workmen to stir things up during the autumn work in the country especially. The master of the grange had made a speech on the subject in the hall and advised every farmer to keep his eyes wide open while they were in the vicinity.

It was the principal subject of discussion and held everybody’s attention. The meal was practically over and Jim and Mary were sitting silently side by side. They hadn’t said much and had let their elders do the talking. All were through eating except Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Albright. They had been waiting on the table and had struck an in¬ teresting plum preserve discussion near the close that delayed the end of the meal.

Suddenly Jim spoke up and cut short their housekeeping dialogue: “I’ve got something to tell you folks that may per¬ haps interest you to some extent. Mary and I have made up our minds we’re going to get married. And we also agreed that we’re going to get married right away. Now everyone has got due and timely legal notice and I guess you all understand.”

The party instantly became a speechless study. They might have been photographed then and there for a group representing wide-eyed surprise. The men sat back and just looked. Mrs. Morton had taken a bite off a crisp tea wafer and her hand remained suspended with the balance of the wafer while her jaws refused to chew. She forgot she was eating and looked helplessly at Big Jim and Mary. Mrs. Albright had a tiny cup of tea in her hand which she was sip¬ ping slowly with the tea epicure’s satisfaction. Mechanically she held the cup halfway to her lips and sat as if afraid to breathe. There was dead silence except for the tick, tock, tick, tock, of the brass-columned old clock on the mantel.

“Well, have I knocked you all silly?” said Jim. “I didn’t know an unimportant bit of news like that would strike everybody dumb.”