Jeffard

“ Take Jeffard's case, for example. He came to Denver with good introductions; I know, for I saw some of them. But a man in a strange city doesn't often go about presenting his social credentials. What he does is to make a few haphazard acquaintances, and let them set the pace for him. That is what Jeffard did, and I'll venture to say [58] there have been nine evil doors open to him to one good one. You've known him longer than any one else—how many times have you invited him to spend a rational evening with you in the company of respectable people?"
"Good Lord, Lansdale ”

“ Go, mein freund, mit der goot Cherman in your moud—und Gott go mit you."
Jeffard felt his way down the dark stair, and so on out into the lighted street, still only in the middle ground between realization and the bare knowledge of the fact. He was conscious of some vague recurrent effort to surround the incredible thing; and conscious, too, that it grew and spread with each succeeding attempt to measure it until no mere human arms could girdle it. ”

“ As he was passing a deep-set doorway giving on the sidewalk, a friendly arm shot out and barred the way. Jeffard looked up with an unspoken malediction on his tongue. It was Bartrow. In his haste to gain his lodging the shamed one had forgotten the proximity of the St. James hotel.
"You're a chump!" declared the broad-shouldered young miner, backing Jeffard against the wall and pinning him fast with one finger. "You're no man's man, and you're not fit to live in a man's town. Why didn't you come around to breakfast this morning, like decent people?" ”

“ Jeffard's tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. Frantic plunges into the nether depths are not conducive to good health, moral or physical, and nature was exacting the inevitable penalty. For three days he had been fighting a losing battle with an augmenting army of ills, and but for the rough heartening of his companion he would have fallen by the wayside more than once during the breath-cutting march over the mountain passes. Wherefore his answer to Garvin's question was the babblement of despair. ”

“ If there were a prompting of suspicion in the glance with which Jeffard met this proposal it remained in abeyance. With every embrasure gunned and manned the fortress of this life must always be pregnable on the human side; in the last resort one must trust something to the chance of loyalty in the garrison. Wherefore Jeffard accepted the promoter's pipe and the blanket hammock, and fell asleep while Donald was pulling down the barricade at the tunnel's mouth preparatory to liberating the neighing horse stabled in the heading. ”

“ Jeffard arranged them in a symmetrical row in front of him, and began to play with the singleness of purpose which is the characteristic of that particular form of dementia.
It was the old story with the usual variations. He lost, won, and then lost again until he could reckon his counters by units. After which the tide turned once more, and the roar of its flood dinned in [14] his ears like the drumming of a tornado in a forest. His capital grew by leaps and bounds, doubling, trebling, and finally quadrupling the sum he had handed the banker. ”

“ Jeffard scowled his resentment of the interference and [53] played on, losing steadily until his capital had shrunk to fifty dollars. Then the miner rose up in his place, reached across, and gave Jeffard an open-handed buffet that nearly knocked him out of his chair.
"Dad blame you!" he roared; "I'll learn you how to spile my play! Stan' up and fight it out like a man!" ”

“ Jeffard now, Dick? Are we all mistaken? or is he the hardened cynic he seems to be?"
Bartrow did not reply on the spur of the moment, as was his custom. When he had reasoned it out, he said:—
"I think we ought to break away from the notion [354] that a man has got to be either all angel or all devil. Jeffard's a human man, like the rest of us. He's done some good things that I know of,—and one pretty bad one; and it's the bad one that is setting the pace for him just now. But, as I once said to Lansdale, I'm betting on the finish. One bad curve needn't spoil a whole railroad." ”

“ Do you know what to do when you reach Aspen?"
"Why, yes; I'll meet Garvin when his train arrives, cut him out of the tangle with the sharks, get him on a horse and ride for life across the range."
"That's the scheme. But what if the other fellows object?"
Jeffard straightened himself unconsciously. "I'm not uncertain on that side; I can fight for it, if that is what you mean."
[184]
Bartrow looked him up and down with a smile which was grimly approbative. "Your summer's done you a whole lot of good, Jeffard. You look like a grown man." ”

“ In the midst of another wrestling bout the beaten one freed himself, bounded to his feet, and darted into the corridor with Jeffard at his heels. There was a sharp scurry of racing feet in the hall, a prolonged crash as of a heavy body falling down the stair, and Jeffard was back again, panting with the violence of it, but with eyes alight and an apology on his lips.
Constance ran to meet him and cut the apology short.
[89]
"The idea!" she protested; "when it was for Margaret's sake and mine! Are you sure you're not hurt?" ”

“ There were two entrances to the newspaper office, and Jeffard watched beaglewise lest his chance of breaking his fast should vanish while he tarried. Presently Lansdale came out, and Jeffard fell upon him before he could latch the door.
"Salaam! Jeffard, my son," said the outcomer. [47] "I saw you waiting for me. How goes the world-old struggle for existence?"
"Don't remind me of it, Lansdale; do you happen to have the price of a meal about you?"
Lansdale smiled, and gravely tucking Jeffard's arm under his own, steered diagonally across the street toward the open doors of a café. ”

“ Jeffard summoned his dignity, and found some few shreds and patches of it left. "Bartrow, there is such a thing as overdrawing one's account with a friend," he returned stiffly. "I don't want to quarrel with you. Good-night."
Three minutes later the goggle-eyed swing doors opened and engulfed him. At the top of the carpeted stair he met a hard-faced man who was doubling a thick sheaf of bank-notes into portable shape. The outgoer nodded, and tapped the roll significantly. "Go in and break 'em," he rasped. "The bank's out o' luck to-night, and it's our rake-off. I win all I can stand." ”

“ When the soup and fish had disappeared, Jeffard was ashamed of himself, and said as much.
"You mustn't mind what I said," he began, by [48] way of making amends. "I used to think I was a civilized being, but, God help me, Lansdale, I'm not! When I've gone without food for twenty-four hours on end, I'm nothing more or less than a hungry savage." ”

“ Since, in his own estimation, if not in that of others, the clothes do make the man to a very considerable extent, Jeffard gradually withdrew from his former lounging-places, confining himself to the less critical region below Larimer Street during the day, and avoiding as much as possible the haunts of his former associates at all hours.
It was for this cause that Bartrow, on his return from Chaffee County, was unable to find Jeffard. Meeting Lansdale when the search had become unhopeful, the large-hearted man of the altitudes lamented his failure after his own peculiar fashion. ”

“ Jeffard was moody and disheartened, and the nod and the smile went near to the better part of him. He kept his seat during the next intermission, and ventured a civil commonplace about the opera. The young woman replied in kind, and the wheel thus set in motion soon rolled away from the beaten track of trivialities into a path leading straight to the fulfillment of Miss Elliott's promise to her cousin.
"Then you haven't been long in Denver," she hazarded on the strength of a remark which betrayed his unfamiliarity with Colorado.
"Only a few weeks."
"And you like it? Every one does, you know." ”

“ He's on top just now,—rather more so than usual, I believe,—but the 'pioneer's luck' will catch him again some day, and just as likely as not he'll be hustling around for a grub-stake."
"Man of family?" queried Jeffard.
"Yes, if a daughter's a family. His wife died in one of the lean years a long time ago. But say, Jeffard, you ought to know the daughter. She's as pretty as a peach, and as bright as a new nickel. She's had her share of the ups and downs, and they've made a queer little medley of her. ”

“ Accordingly, Jeffard's unexpected reinforcements pressed forward while the enemy was in full tide of retreat; and a short half-hour later the squadron of retrieval came near to paying the penalty of an unheralded approach, since it was upon the promoter and his henchman that Jeffard poured his final volley.
So much for the tragi-comedy of the sky-pitched Gibraltar, which made a travesty of Jeffard's heart-breaking [228] efforts to fortify himself in the old tunnel. ”

“ Jeffard slid out of the hammock and went to plunge his face and hands in the stream; after which they ate again as men who postpone the lesser to the greater; with Donald the taciturn serving them, and hunger waiving speech and ceremony. ”

“ It's the only way; you're too drunk to pull strings with that pardner o' yours, and we're goin' to stand by you, see? All we want is the authority."
Jeffard started back and made as if he would fling himself against the locked door. ”

“ He left the sentence incomplete, and Jeffard took it up at the break.
"And if she should acknowledge my obligation—which [322] she would not—she would refuse to be reimbursed out of Garvin's money. That is why I haven't sent her a note with a check in it. Will you have another cup of tea?"
Lansdale took the query as a dismissal of the subject and pushed back his chair. On the way out they passed a late incomer; a florid man, with a nervous step and the eye of preoccupation. He nodded to Lansdale in passing, and Jeffard said, "Do you know him?" ”

“ We've played the string out up yere. Besides, summer's gone, and a month of fall, and the grub's runnin' shy."
"Where next?" inquired Jeffard.
"I dunno, hardly. 'Tain't worth while to strike furder in, this late in the season. We've got to be makin' tracks along back t'wards the valley afore the snow comes, and that'll be pretty quick now. What d' you say to tryin' some o' the gulches o' the Mosquito?"
"Anywhere you say. I'm with you—if you care to take me after what I've tried to tell you. [144] But you'd much better go alone. You had it right a while ago; you have yoked yourself to a Jonah." ”

“ And as for the apparent determination to die open-eyed and militant behind the barricade, the unromantic truth again steps in to give the coup de grace to the disappointed unities. There is a limit to human endurance, and the hardiest soldier may find it on a field as yet no more than half won. Fastings and fierce hurryings, wounds, physical and spiritual, and ruthless determination may ride roughshod over Nature's turnpike; but Nature will demand her toll. For this cause Jeffard saw no more than the first flight of moon-arrows glancing from the face of the western cliff. ”

“ Men were cursing and belaboring the beasts with sticks, the fierce and strenuous figures looming dim and blurred under the light through the trees. The significance of the thing flashed through Jeffray’s mind, as he held the mare well in hand and swung along the winding path, dodging the swooping boughs as they trailed above his head. He had seen a smuggling cavalcade threading through the forest, in some peril of capture, to judge by the way the men were beating the pack-horses. Jeffray remembered, at the same moment, the cornet and the light-horse at Rodenham village. ”

“ The busy hand which has written so much will write no more. He can no longer dictate. His very feebleness will soon be past, and he will be at rest, whether in the unconscious clay-cold rest of the dark grave, or in that better life of the Fuller Soul of which he had so great and glorious a Vision—who knoweth?
You have read the life of Richard Jefferies. You have seen how the country lad, ill-educated, slenderly provided with books or friends, formed in early life a resolution to succeed in letters. ”

“ He must live apart from men; all day long the sun must burn his cheek, the wind must blow upon it, the rain must beat upon it; he must never be out of reach of the fragrant wild flowers and the call and cry of the birds. Of such men literature can show but two or three—Gilbert White, Thoreau, [Pg 47] and Jefferies—but the greatest of them all is Jefferies. No one before him has so lived among the fields; no one has heard so clearly the song of the flowers and the weeds and the blades of grass. ”

“ Jeffray pricked up his horse, and came at a fast trot into Rodenham village. Already there were vague mutterings running athwart the distant sky. Outside the Wheat Sheaf Inn Jeffray came upon some twenty troopers of a regiment of Light-Horse drinking beer at the wooden tables, their horses picketed upon the green. Some of the men were watching the thunder-clouds, reckoning on the drenching of the outer man as they were moistening the inner. Their cornet, a dark-faced youth with a hooked nose and a libidinous mouth, came to the doorway of the inn with George Gogg as Jeffray passed. ”

“ Forrester was perhaps the most expert of Jeffreys’ enemies. He worried the Cad not so much out of spite as because it amused him, and, like the nimble matador, he kept well out of reach of the bull all the time he was firing shots at him.
“Hullo, Jeff!” he called out, as the Cad approached. “Are you going to play in the match on Saturday?”
“No,” said Jeffreys.
“You’re not? Haven’t you got any old clothes to play in?”
Jeffreys’ brow darkened. He glanced down at his own shabby garments, and then at Scarfe’s neat suit.
“I’ve got flannels,” he said.
“Flannels! Why don’t you play, then? ”