The Youngest of the McMahons

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THE YOUNGEST OF THE McMAHONS

by Gilbert Parker Author of "The Right of Way," "The Seats of the Mighty," "The Money Master," "Blood Will Tell," etc

THEM McMahons, Y'r Anner, they'll be the death of some one before they're done with it, the way they carry on! Look at him—look at him now, ragin' up the street with them harses, and he drunk too, and no constable annywhere. There's no good in them fellas, not a ha'purth."

II

THE net result of Phil McMahon's dangerous escapade was a summons. It was followed by a trial of short duration, because the law-breaker was not willing to put up a defense. He pleaded not guilty, but that was merely to give his lawyer a chance of making a plea for an easy sentence. During the trial Phil was carefully, and almost amusingly, sympathetic. In the thrilling, dramatic moment to Priscilla when she gave evidence, his eye was limpid with magnanimous regard. He beamed upon her. That was his way. Scamp as he was, he had regard and respect for the opposite sex. Anyone that wore a dress—if that dress was clean and its wearer had a clean name also—commanded his homage. In other words, he liked 'em clean and damn the looks, though if they had the looks it was better fun. He was an incorrigible Adonis, and yet with no evil toward women in him.

Phil's trial gave Askatoon a great day, not so much because of the misdemeanant as because of Priscilla, whose incursion into the realms of legitimate drama, with a smack of comedy, was a relish to every meal eaten by the people of Askatoon for several days. They all admitted that Priscilla had come into her own in a way. Sensation, in which she should be a living, breathing, central figure, had always been the desire of her heart: and here it was. Phil had opened up for her doors to a red sky of sensation.

In the witness-box she was so moved by the central position she occupied that Augustus Burlingame the lawyer—who, none too secretly disreputable, had even borrowed money of her in the past; and because she had babbled of his unpaid loans, he did not scruple to make her modest goodness appear naked assurance when he had her now under cross-examination. He did not, however, carry his ruthless game far, because Phil McMahon intervened, saying:

"Give it the hush. Let the girl be. It's me that's done the harm, and all I can say is I'm proud to see her alive."

The wind being taken out of Burlingame's sails, the trial soon ended, a fine of fifty dollars or a month in jail being imposed. The month in jail was a heavy punishment, but when he announced it, the magistrate assumed that Phil would naturally elect to pay the fine. His experience had been that men would rather pay five hundred dollars than be in jail for three days.

After a judicious and reproving little speech from the Bench. Phil stood up, but he did not put his hand in his pocket. He seemed to be waiting patiently for something.

"Pay the fine—fifty it is," whispered Burlingame to him.

"I'll not pay a cent of any fine," returned Phil loudly. "I've spent all I mean to spend on the fun I had. A blamed good drunk it was, but it's over. I paid in cash all it was worth. Money's no punishment to me. When I have it, anybody can have it; it burns my pocket. Money can't pay for breakin' the law, not with me. I've broke the law, and I'll see it through. On principle, I'm a friend of the law, and prison's a good place for them that's broke it and are weary of ill—doin'. So take me where I'll be eatin' bread that I wont have to pay for."

Everyone laughed except the magistrate, Priscilla and the chief constable. Priscilla did not laugh, because now that the thing was over, the reaction had come. The way Phil had looked at her during the trial had fluttered her in spite of herself. She had taken the attitude of an avenging goddess, and she had got out of it all there was to get. Somehow punishment was not so sweet as it looked.

Being what she was, an epitome of the weaknesses of her sex, she suddenly gave way to one of them, which was to punish and then to pity. Besides, Phil McMahon's voice was a thing to remember; it had a coaxing element which had been too much for women of more character than herself; and when, in leaving the courtroom, he turned, and with deviltry in his eye and kindness on his tongue, he said to her, "Priscilla, oh, Priscilla, 'tis for you I go to jail!" she felt a shiver of emotion go through her. So powerful was it that she even failed to notice how everybody's attention was fixed on Phil, while she remained unnoticed save by a few of her own sex who gave to their congratulations a tone of assassination.

PHIL went to jail cheerfully. It was not the first time he had been there. It had no terrors for him, particularly in summer-time, when he could be nice and warm and sleep to his heart's content. Also, he liked doing the unexpected thing, and certainly his going to jail was not expected. As he said, "It flabbergasted the old rooster on the bench."

When the door of the cell closed on him, he remarked to the warder: "Well, there's a lot of people can't bother me for a while. Blessed be Jonathan and John!"

For some days, what with sleeping and reading things like "The Story of the Jumping Frog" from the jail library, he got along quite well, but presently he became the bored victim of a conspiracy which even the jail walls could not shut out.

For Priscilla, troubled in spirit, became a conspirator. No sooner had Phil gone to jail than she repented having sent him there. His playful, reproachful words to her as he left the court kept ringing in her ears. She took them seriously, and by the time forty-eight hours had gone round she flung herself into the storm of another of her romances. Her mind kept turning to the jail, and despite the disparaging remarks of Jonas Billings,—who heard of her intentions through his wife,—she conceived the noble idea of converting Phil.

With the consent of the sheriff, who had a sense of humor, and saw no moral breach of the rules in doing the thing, she sent Phil tracts, books of travel, "The Life of John Wesley." "The Adventures of a Missionary in Uganda," and so forth. Also, at last, she secured permission to send him good things to eat, including a frosted cake, on which, in beautiful pink sugar, she inscribed the words:

Pull for the shore, sailor, Pull for the shore.

To the cake she attached a paper giving the whole of the words of the hymn.

She was indifferent to the fact that Askatoon made sport of her. She was bent on a high enterprise, or such was her make-believe. As for Phil, he really had a taste for reading, and though the tracts startled him, he became engrossed in the adventures of the missionary of Uganda; and even the life of John Wesley had its interest for him, especially that part where the great man was persecuted for his convictions. Indeed, he talked quite sympathetically about Wesley to the warders.

AS for the food sent him by Priscilla, it was very palatable, and his native tact and common sense made him share it with his greedy and grateful warders. However, in spite of the Uganda missionary, John Wesley and the jelly-cake, he became intensely bored at the end of a fortnight, in which he made up his mind that Priscilla's attentions were not wholly Virtue pursuing Vice for Vice's good, but woman stalking man for sentiment's sake.

Yet when he was informed by the sheriff that Priscilla wished to visit him in prison, and to read to him in the presence of the warder, he recklessly consented. He was really pleased when she did come, and still more so when the warder stood outside the cell, not within hearing, though able to see what was going on inside at any instant.

Phil made short work of the reading of the tracts, and presently engaged Priscilla in such conversation as she had never known in the thirty odd years of her harmless life. Nothing he said, however, might not have been published in a Sunday-school paper—or a comic journal. Yet despite the blameless speech, Priscilla's hot eyes, slightly trembling and nervous fingers, all of which told a tale of emotion, conveyed to Phil that it was her will to put him in greater danger than she had been from his wild horses and the murderous wheels of his wagon. Suddenly he felt as a man would who must fight an armed enemy with his naked hand. He had no courage at all with women if they were "straight," as he called it.

"Your time in jail will he up in another week." Priscilla said at last. "I wont be a bit happy till you're free again."

"Aw, a week or so is nothin'!" remarked Phil carelessly. "There's plenty to do here. There's the physical exercises and the eatin' exercises, and"—raising his voice—"there's the fatiguin' exercise of watchin' them fools of warders stick their noses in where they're not wanted."

He said this at the moment when his warder had stepped forward to the barred opening in the door to warn Priscilla that her time was up. So taken aback was the warder at the tone of Phil's voice, and the humorously malicious character of the remark, that he fell hack with a grim smile.

"I pray for you every night," said Priscilla with curious little undulations of her body and an embarrassing, misty look in her eyes.

"Think of that!" Phil returned. "Just think of that! Now, about what time every night is this holy action performed for the man that put the life of a pious, paramount woman in danger?"

He had to indulge in extravagance to cover his actual helplessness. He was free from entanglement with any woman alive, but he would have run till he dropped, if he were on the trail and Priscilla pursued him. His bones became ropes at the thought of what might happen.

"At nine o'clock every night," she answered, fluttered, "and I feel it in me that my prayer will be answered."

PHIL was like one trying to beguile a lunatic. He had the stark premonition that what she prayed for was a walk up the aisle of the church with a man about his size, carrying a gold ring in the right-hand pocket of his waistcoat, while another man with a big book in his hand and a white tie under his chin would wind up an embarrassing business with the words, "let no man put asunder."

"Now, think of that!" be repeated. "I've often wondered what was the right time to say prayers, and whether they ought to be said standin' up like the Presbyterians, or sittin' down like the Quakers, or gettin' on the knees like all the holy people of the Methodists and Baptists. Are you a Methodist or a Baptist?" he added in a tone that was like the interest which one of the Apostles might have felt in the Sadducees.

Priscilla undulated modestly. "Oh, I'm a Methodist," she answered. "I found grace five years ago."

Phil brightened. Something familiar had struck his ear. It gave him a chance of getting away from her smothering sentimentality.

"Oh, well, we're both in the same box, then," he remarked. "Five years ago it was down in Montana I went huntin' Grace, and I found her too. Dang it, but she was a prize-packet! She wasn't unmarried like you. She was married, but her boy got smashed in the ranges, and she went huntin' him, and got lost. Well, the way Bill Sparks, Nick Godalmine and myself went huntin' her hell-to-leather was a caution! And 'twas me that found her. Five years ago you found grace, and five years ago I found Grace. Well, well, it shows, doesn't it!" He did not, however, say what it showed.

There was something devilishly innocent and childlike in his face. His natural sense of humor had suddenly given him courage.

"Time's up!" said the warder peremptorily through the barred opening, and then he straightway swung the door wide open.

Phil turned on him with mock indignation. "Is there no sense of convenience in a jail? Is there no manners in a warder? We were finding grace," he said, "and you've put your ugly face between."

He reached out a hand. It swallowed Priscilla's as a hippopotamus might swallow a fly. "Nine o'clock's the time to be remembered!" he added in a voice at once malicious and mockingly tender.

He could not help it. He was born that way, and the woman was going—that was the great thing; and in sheer gratitude he would say to her anything that came to his mind.

"I hear they're to let you out of prison before the full time is up," she said at the door. "You'll let me know when you're leaving, wont you—the very minute you're leaving, please, dear friend?"

"I'd die before I'd forget," answered Phil; and she did not see the double meaning in his words.

A minute afterward he sat down limp and helpless.

"She'll not be waitin' for me at the door of the jail when I go," he said huskily. "No, by jiminy-jo—I'll go in the middle of the night."

Then he asked the warder for a dipper of water. He had never been so thirsty in his life.

"Phew! Coppers all hot!" he said as he gulped the water down.

III

THE day after Phil left jail with the regrets of the sheriff and the warders following him,—for he had made himself popular in that stern circle,—he plunged into the mild dissipation of a logging-bee at the house of old Brick Tannahill. His brothers, Tom and Matt, with six of their ranchmen, were also present. It was the McMahons' cue to make themselves neighborly, and also, for some time, Tom had been "looking toward" Eileen, Tannahill's daughter. "Looking toward" has more than one meaning in the West. You "look toward" with a glass in your hand, and you "look toward" a woman who has your admiration. The sturdy ranchman had made up his mind that he would add Eileen to his household, if it were possible, though he had not yet conveyed his purpose to Eileen. He had been on his good behavior to her on the few occasions they had met, and he had won her gratitude by organizing the bee for the building of the new house, and rounding up over sixty helpers who were trained in the work of building log-houses.

Brick Tannahill was by no means a prepossessing man in appearance, for his nose had been broken in his youth, and he had had an injury to one eye, which somewhat disfigured him; but he was a whimsical old fellow, and he had a kindly disposition. There was no doubt, however, about the comeliness of Eileen. She was alone and separate in her good beauty, with her soft blue eyes and their long lashes, her wavy black hair, her dimpled cheek and chin and a figure of sweet suppleness, she would have been the pride of better places than Askatoon; but she had no preferential position, because she was only the daughter of "old Brick Tannahill," who had been little better than an ordinary laborer till he had been left two thousand dollars by a relative in Ireland, and had taken up a government grant of land.

The girl, however, had none of the characteristics of a laborer's daughter. She had mental gifts above the average, and she was ambitious and determined. She had secretly been sorely hurt by the petty "uppishness" of those who arranged the social tests of Askatoon; and she had determined that she would yet be recognized, for had there not been a canon of the Church in her family! By which it will be seen that Eileen was not perfect, though her imperfections were no crime in one of her sex. It remained that she was bright and cheerful, simple and unaffected, and she easily captured the good will of all the men that came to the logging-bee, among them Phil McMahon, who had never seen her before.

THE subjection of Phil was instant. For the first time he was ashamed of having been "a jail-bird." But he worked like a Trojan at the bee, and was the life of the crowd, meeting chaff and gibe by chaff and gibe, putting one man against another in the competitive work of the day, completely usurping his brother Tom's leadership—not wholly to his regret, unselfish though he was, for there was Eileen!

Eileen was conscious of what the glance of his eye meant; and it brought a flutter to her pulse—a little to her chagrin, for Phil had done no good to himself by having gone to jail, and people had said dark things about him and his drunken exploits. Yet to her, in spite of all, there was something compelling in his devil-may-care ways and laughing, impudent face. Also he had great physical strength and athletic grace. So it was that when their eyes met, or their hands touched as he helped her to place the pails of coffee and cold meats on the tables, she had a thrill of interest and excitement. She could not help coquetting with him shyly. It was done carefully, though spontaneously; yet it attracted the attention of two or three rough spirits who were secretly envious of "the McMahon Gang;" and as the day wore on, a spirit of provocation began to show itself. Once after Eileen had had a few friendly words with Phil, Sam Shorthorn of "the Shorthorn lot," as the men from his ranch were called, said to Eileen: "Did you know, Miss, the new name for a jail?"

Eileen recognized a malicious purpose, but she shook her head and poured Shorthorn out another cup of coffee.

"It's the courtin'-house," was the sarcastic reply. "From the courthouse to the courtin'-house—that's the game. It's a regular system now. The things that go on in the courthouse aint nothin' to what goes on in the courtin'-house."

"I'll have to take your word for it; I've never been in either," answered Eileen. "I suppose it's funny," she added as the Shorthorn lot laughed loudly, "but I don't see it, and I can't laugh."

"Priscilla saw it, all right," Shorthorn said, and laughed loudly. "'Pull for the shore, sailor, pull for the shore,' says Priscilla, and the sailor pulled his weight. He knew a lot about pullin' before Priscilla pulled him into court, and that was a way-up maritime display. Hip, hip, hooray, for Priscilla and the sailor. Hip, hip, hooray!"

"I thought no one was to drink liquor till the bee was over," remarked Eileen sarcastically, and there was a flush to her cheek.

"He hasn't been drinking liquor here, Miss," said Phil McMahon softly. "He come here drunk—what was left from yesterday and the day before, and last week—and so 'way back!"

PHIL was getting angry. Several had chaffed him rudely all morning about Priscilla, and he had met the gibes good-humoredly; but when there were insinuations of a vulgar kind about the spinster who had drawn upon herself the comment of the community, he grew steadily resentful and answered his tormentors brusquely. As a rule, he was very quick to anger, but there was in him a real sense of delicacy where women were concerned, and he did not want a row here at Eileen Tannahill's home; nor did he want further gossip about Priscilla. He saw now that he had been a fool in permitting Priscilla to send him things and visit him in jail, and he thought the less said or done on his part the soonest mended.

For some hours there was a lull in the coarse chaffing and sidelong remarks, but toward evening Sam Shorthorn, who, through jealousy, was evidently determined to punish Phil as much as possible, began to torment him. He initiated his attack none too strategically. And at last he ventured a remark of an offensive nature about Priscilla, within hearing of Eileen. On the instant Phil, touched in his most chivalrous corner, and hot with accumulated anger, flung the pail of coffee he was carrying for Eileen in Shorthorn's face.

"Long in the tooth, but good sport for them that don't pick and choose—and watch the census, boys!" was the remark made by Shorthorn.

He never made another of that kind in his life, for the coffee was in his face, and a moment later Phil and he were locked in each other's arms. Shorthorn tried to draw his knife, but to no purpose. Phil's blood was up, and all the resources of a lifetime were called into play, while his brothers stood watching the crowd, lest there should be a movement on the part of Shorthorn's friends. There was, however, no necessity for the vigilance, for the one unpardonable thing in the Western men's eyes had been done,—a woman had been slandered,—and sympathy was with Phil.

Moreover, it was over too soon for any faction fight. Phil had suddenly got the grip for which he had been working since they closed, and he flung the stalwart Shorthorn over his shoulder like a bag. Shorthorn came down with a thud, his head striking the splintered bole of a small tree which had been cut down. He did not move. For half a minute the crowd waited; then some one rushed forward, knelt down beside him and felt his heart. It was still.

Phil looked at the body in a dazed way for a moment, then put on his coat and turned to go. Two of the Shorthorn lot moved forward as though to prevent him.

"I'm goin' to the sheriff to give myself up," he said. "It was an accident, but I'll take what I get, without squealing."

Then he marched away, his brothers following; and Eileen watched them go with horror in her eyes.

IV

IN jail again on a charge of manslaughter, Phil awaited his trial with indifference. In the town of Askatoon. Priscilla awaited it with an immense emotion—one much too big for either her mind or her body. A man was to be tried for killing another man who had defamed her! She was the center of a tragic situation. She had been the object of a supreme act of devotion. A man had been killed for her sake, and the slayer was in jail!

It was a bigger thing by a thousand times than Priscilla had ever expected to happen in her life. It transcended the most brilliant dream of her imagination. People who had never been very nice to her now treated her with respect. She had a share in the heroic in spite of her watery blue eyes, her faded cheeks, her straw-colored eyebrows and hair. Even Jonas Billings' disparaging and sarcastic remarks could not lower her temperature. Her chance had come at last. She was sure now that Phil was in love with her.

She insisted on being called for the defense when the trial came on. Burlingame, with useful intuition, saw the danger of such a course, for it was supremely necessary that his client should not suffer ridicule, that he be kept in an atmosphere of heroism and chivalry before the court. And so he told Phil, who was greatly alarmed at the idea of Priscilla's appearing at the trial at all. He could face judge and jury, but he wilted at the thought of facing the woman who would lay her life at his feet.

At last Phil devised a scheme that he believed would temper her transports. He asked the sheriff to allow her to visit the jail, and he arranged that she should be admitted at the very time when he expected the new unmarried minister of the Baptist Church to visit him.

At the appointed time Priscilla entered the door of his cell, with an intolerable romance in her eyes and the flush of a hectic sentiment on her cheek. Phil had braced himself to the ordeal, but he was hardly prepared for the trembling, passionate figure who came toward him with hands outstretched. He suddenly felt weak, for he seemed to feel her arms around his neck. He caught her hands, however, in time to counter that danger.

"O my defender—my dear, dear defender—at last!" she said with a smile sick with sentimentality.

"Heaven is our helper!" returned Phil with a veiled grimace.

"Oh yes—how sweet it is to owe our debt to Heaven!" she replied. "But you were Heaven's handmaid," she added gushingly.

IN her excitement she did not notice what is billed in the West her "break." Phil as a "handmaid" was truly an illusion.

"Maid of-all-work," added Phil dryly. "Salary no object—workin' for Heaven its own reward."

She did not realize yet the silly mistake in grammar she had made, nor that Phil was "taking a rise" out of her. She was so agitated that her eyes were glazed by the fire of her emotions.

"Oh, dear friend, I felt sure you would find peace if you had time," she said with simpering solemnity. "Those tracts and books I sent you—in the solitude of your cell they opened up the gates of understanding, they brought conviction and a sense of sin, they—"

"I'm likely to have conviction twice in a month," remarked Phil, "and as for a sense of sin, I guess I've had that ever since I stole Pap's tobacco and Ma's pics outen the pantry when I was a youngster. Senses was always a strong point with me."

"But your stay here has brought you to the Mercy Seat, hasn't it?" asked Priscilla.

"If you call a jury of twelve men from Sokash County the Mercy Seat, I expect I'm here; but I'm not mashed on mercy—leastways I was mashed on Mercy once—Mercy Maggs she was, but not the mercy you mean."

The palpitating Priscilla began to doubt her own hopes. "I know it's only your manner of speaking, but you should not trifle with such things," she remarked ruefully. "I'm sure it's only because you feel deeply and don't want your real feelings to be seen."

"Well, it's plain I succeed in it," rejoined Phil maliciously. "If you—"

She interrupted him with a hysterical little simper. "Oh, you needn't say it—I know it all—Philip! You killed a man for my sake, and I can never to my dying day, never—oh, I thank the Lord morning and night that I have helped to snatch a brand from the burning, that there was something which roused in you—"

Phil could stand it no longer. "Say," he said, "I only done for you what I'd have done for any woman on earth, when a man spoke of her as Shorthorn done. And you'd been kind to me—that cake and currant loaf, and pumpkin pie and the books, they clinched it. But if it bad been old Sary Ginnis the washerwoman, I'd have done it just the same. He riled me a lot, that Shorthorn, and I wasn't takin' any more from him. I itched to lay him out the minute I set eyes on him at the bee. A skunk, he was, but I wasn't aimin' at killin' him, not for no woman on earth. I got to face a judge and jury too for it, and—"

She almost threw herself in his arms. "Oh, my brave one, you—"

"Don't talk that way." he interrupted irritably. "That's no way to talk to a man that's to be tried for manslaughter. I aint fit company for you—not for one frozen minute. I put Shorthorn out of action forever, and I got to pay. I'm sorry I killed him. There aint no woman that's worth a life like that—and I'm tired of jail already."

"You shall not be here long—you shall go free. I'll go into the witness-box and say why you did it. That'll clear you. I told Mr. Burlingame so."

"I'm not sure I wouldn't rather go to jail for ten years than see you in the witness-box." remarked Phil with meaning, but not a meaning that she apprehended. "I wouldn't want to be in that position. I couldn't stand it. I'm tough, but I'd break down if I saw that."

THIS time he spoke with an apparent purpose. The first words were full of sarcasm not understood by her, but the last two sentences were spoken with mock feeling and tenderness. He was determined to bring things to an issue at once, and he anticipated accurately what she would do.

She stood gazing at him for one instant; then, in spite of the fact that one of the warders was looking in the opening of the door, she almost threw herself upon him. Her hands caught at his arms; her lips trembled.

"You shall not suffer alone—you shall not, Philip," she said ecstatically.

He loosened the storm on her without warning.

"I wouldn't suffer alone—that's the trouble," he said, coolly bracing himself for the lie he was to tell. "I wouldn't—that's the trouble. There's my wife and children—my dear little ones, two lovely little girls, down in Idaho."

She started back with face abashed. Her body seemed to shrink. She became suddenly wilted and forlorn. All in a second her wonderful romance was shattered by a lie as big as it was useful. On hearing it, the warder fell back from the door in a fit of laughter. Phil regarded his visitor mournfully.