The Second Western Megapack. Zane Grey

I’ll phone for Dr. Bradley so he’ll be here by the time you come,” said Rose, wondering how she could think of so practical a thing. Her mind had wrapped itself in a protecting armor, forbidding the shock of it all to strike with a single blow. She couldn’t understand why she was not screaming.

      “You can—if you want to, but Bill don’t need him, Mrs. Wade,—he’s dead.”

      Slowly she hung up the receiver, the wall still around her brain, holding it tight and keeping her nerves taut, afraid to release them for fear they might snap. She stood there looking at the receiver as her hands came together.

      As though she were talking to a person instead of the telephone before her, she gasped: “So—so this is what it has all been for—this. Into the world, into Martin’s world—and this way out of it. Burned to death—Billy.”

      The rain had lessened a little and now the wind began to shake the house, rattle the windows and scream as it tore its way over the plains. The sky flared white and the world lighted up suddenly, as though the sun had been turned on from an electric switch. At the same instant she saw a bolt of lightning strike a young tree by the roadside, heard the sharp click as it hit and then watched the flash dance about, now on the road, now along the barbed wire fencing. Then the world went black again. And a rumble quickly grew to an earth-shaking blast of thunder. It was as though that tree were Billy—struck by a gush of flying fire. The next bolt broke above the house, and the light it threw showed her the stripling split and lying on the ground. In the impenetrable darkness she realized that the house fuse of their Delco system must have been blown out, and she groped blindly for a match. She could hear the rain coming down again, now in rivers. There was unchained wrath in the downpour, viciousness. It was a madman rushing in to rend and tear. It frothed, and writhed, and spat hatred. Rose shook as though gripped by a strong hand. She was afraid—of the rain, the lightning, the thunder, the darkness; alone there, waiting for them to bring her Billy. She was too terrified to add her weeping to the wail of the wind—it would have been too ghastly. Would she never find a match! As she lit the lamp, like the stab of a needle in the midst of agony, came the thought of how long it had been after Martin had put in his electrical system and connected up his barns before she had been permitted to have this convenience in the house. What would he think now? She wished he were home. Anyone would be better than this awful waiting alone. She could only stand there, away from the window, looking out at the sheets of water running down the panes and shivering with the frightfulness and savageness of it all.

      Her ears caught a rumble, fainter than thunder, and the splash of horses’ hoofs—“it’s too muddy for the motor ambulance,” she thought, mechanically. “They’re using the old one,” and her heart contracting, twisting, a queer dryness in her throat, she opened the door as they stopped, her hand shading the lamp against the sudden inrush of wind and rain. “In there, through the parlor,” she said dully, indicating the new room and thinking, bitterly, as she followed them, that now, when it could mean nothing to Billy, Martin would offer no objections to its being given over to him.

      The scuffling of feet, the low, matter-of-fact orders of a directing voice: “Easy now, boys—all together, lift. Watch out; pull that sheet back up over him,” and a brawny, work-stooped man saying to her awkwardly: “I wouldn’t look at him if I was you, Mrs. Wade, till the undertaker fixes him up,” and she was once more alone.

      As if transfixed, she continued to stand, looking beyond the lamp, beyond the bed on which her son’s large figure was outlined by the sheet, beyond the front door which faced her, beyond—into the night, looking for Martin, waiting for him to come home to his boy. She asked herself again and again how she had been so restrained when her Billy had been carried in. After what seemed interminable ages, she heard heavy steps on the back porch and knew that her husband had returned at last. He brought in with him a gust of wind that caused the lamp to smoke. She held it with both hands, afraid that she might drop it, and carrying it to the dining-room table set it down slowly, looking at him. He seemed huger than ever with his hulk sinking into the gray darkness behind him. There was something elephantine about him as he stood there, soaked to the skin, bending forward a little, breathing slowly and deeply, his fine nostrils distending with perfect regularity, his face in the dim light, yellow, with the large lines almost black. He was hatless and his tawny-gray hair was flat with wetness, coming down almost to his eyes, so clear and far-seeing.

      “What’s the matter with the lights? Fuse blown out?” he asked, spitting imaginary rain out of his mouth.

      Rose did not answer.

      “Awful night for visiting,” Martin announced roughly, as he took off his coat. “But it was lucky I went, or all would have been pretty bad for me. Do you know, that rascal was delivering the wheat to the elevator—wheat on which I held a chattel—and I got to Tom Mayer just as he was figuring up the weights. You should have seen Johnson’s face when I came in. He knew I had him cornered. `Here,’ I said, `what’s up?’ And that lying rascal turned as white as death and said something about getting ready to bring me a check. I told him I was much obliged, but I would take it along with me—and I did. Here it is—fourteen hundred dollars, plus interest. And I got it by the skin of my teeth. I didn’t stop to argue with him for I saw the storm coming on. I went racing, but a half mile north I skidded into the ditch. I really feel like leaving the car there all night, but it would do a lot of damage. I’ll have to get a team and drag it in. I call it a good day’s work. What do you say?” He looked at her closely, for the first time noticing her drawn face and far-away look.

      “What’s the matter? You look goopy—”

      Rose settled herself heavily in the rocker close to the table.

      “You’re not sick, are you?”

      She shook her head a few times and answered: “He’s in there—”

      “Who?” Martin straightened up ready for anything.

      “Billy—”

      “Oh!” A light flashed into Martin’s face. “So he has come back, has he? Back home? What made him change toward this place? Is he here to stay?”

      “No, Martin—”

      “Then if he hasn’t come to his senses, what is he doing here—here in my house, the home he hates—”

      “He doesn’t hate it now,” Rose replied, struggling for words that she might express herself and end this cruel conversation, but all she could do was to point nervously toward the spare room.

      “What is he doing in there? It’s the one spot that Rose can call her own, poor child.”

      “He’s on the bed, Martin—”

      “What’s the matter with the davenport he’s always slept on? Is he sick? What in heaven’s name is going on in this house?”

      As Martin started toward the bedroom, his wife opened her lips to tell him the truth but the words refused to come; at the same instant it struck her that not to speak was brutal, yet just. She would let Martin go to this bed with words of anger on his lips, with feelings of unkindness in his heart. She would do this. Savage? Yes, but why not? There seemed to be something fair about it. Then her heart-strings pulled more strongly than ever. No; it was too hard. She must stop him, tell him, prepare him. But before the words came, he was out of the room and when she spoke he did not hear her because of the rain.

      He saw the vague lines of the boy’s body, hidden by the sheet, and thought quickly, “Bill’s old ostrich-like trick,” and while at the same instant something told him that a terrible thing had happened, the idea did not register completely until he had his hand on the linen. Then, with a short yank, he pulled away the cover and saw the boy’s head. Dark as it was, it was enough to show him the truth. With a quick move he covered him again. There was a smeary wetness on his fingers, which he wiped away on the side of his trousers. They were drenched with rain, but he distinguished the sticky feel of blood leaving his hand as he rubbed it nervously.

      His first emotion was one of anger with Rose. He was sure she had played this sinister jest deliberately