Starr, of the Desert Read online

  CHAPTER THREE

  VIC SHOULD WORRY

  Wise man or fool, Peter had taken the one way to impress obedience uponHelen May. Had he urged and argued and kept on living, Helen May couldhave brought forth reasons and arguments, eloquence even, to combat him.But Peter had taken the simple, unanswerable way of stating his wishes,opening the way to their accomplishment, and then quietly lying back uponhis pillow and letting death take him beyond reach of protest.

  For days Helen May was numb with the sudden dropping of Life's bigresponsibilities upon her shoulders. She could not even summon energyenough to call Vic to an accounting of his absences from the house. Untilafter the funeral Vic had been subdued, going around on his toes andlooking at Helen May with wide, solemn eyes and lips prone to trembling.But fifteen years is the resilient age, and two days after Peter wasburied, Vic asked her embarrassedly if she thought it would look rightfor him to go to the ball game. He had to do _something_, he addeddefensively.

  "Oh, I guess so; run along," Helen May had told him absently, without inthe least realizing what it was he had wanted to do. After that Vic wenthis way without going through the ceremony of asking her consent, securein the knowledge of her indifference.

  The insurance company for which she had worked set in motion the wheelsthat would eventually place in her hands the three thousand dollars forwhich Peter had calmly given his life. She hated the money. She wanted totell her dad how impossible it was for her to use a cent of it. Yet shemust use it. She must use it as he had directed, because he had died toopen the way for her obedience. She must take Vic, against his violentyoung will, she suspected, and she must go to that claim away off theresomewhere in the desert, and she must live in the open--and raise goats!For there was a certain strain of Peter's simplicity in the nature of hisdaughter. His last scrawled advice was to her a command which she mustobey as soon as she could muster the physical energy for obedience.

  "What do I know about goats!" she impatiently asked her empty room onemorning after a night of fantastic dreams. "They eat tin cans and paper,and Masonic candidates ride them, and they stand on high banks and looksilly, and have long chin whiskers and horns worn back from theirforeheads. But as to _raising_ them--what are they good for, forheaven's sake?"

  "Huh? Say, what are you mumbling about?" Vic, it happened, was awake, andHelen May's door was ajar.

  "Oh, nothing." Then the impulse of speech being strong in her, Helen Maypulled on a kimono and went out to where Vic lay curled up in theblankets on the couch. "We've got to go to New Mexico, Vic, and, live onthat land dad bought the rights to, and raise goats!"

  "Yes, we have--not!"

  "We have. Dad said so. We've got to do it, Vic. I expect we'd betterstart as soon as the insurance is paid, and that ought to be next week.Malpais is the name of the darned place. Inez Garcia says Malpais meansbad country. I asked her when she was here yesterday. I expect it does,though you can't tell about Inez. She's tricky about translating stuff;she thinks it's funny to fake the meaning of things. But I expect it'strue; it sounds like that."

  "I should worry," Vic yawned, with the bland triteness of a boy whospeaks mostly in current catch phrases. "I've got a good chance for ajuvenile part in that big five-reeler Walt's going to put on. Fat chanceanybody's got putting _me_ to herding goats! That New Mexico dope got mynumber the first time dad sprung it. Not for mine!"

  Helen May sat down on the arm of a Mission chair, wrapped her kimonoaround her thin figure, and looked at Vic from under her lashes. Besidesraising goats and living out in the open, she was to make a man of Vic.She did not know which duty appalled her most, or which animal seemed toher the more intractable.

  "We've got to do it," she said simply. "I don't like it either, but thatdoesn't matter. Dad planned that way for us."

  Vic sat up crossly, groping for the top button of his pajama coat. Hislong hair was tousled in front and stood straight up at the back, and hislids were heavy yet with sleep. He looked very young and very unruly, andas though several years of grace were still left to Helen May before sheneed trouble herself about his manhood.

  "Not for mine," he repeated stubbornly. "You can go if you want to, butI'm going to stay in pictures." No film star in the city could havesurpassed Vic's tone of careless assurance. "Listen! Dad was queer alongtowards the last. You know that yourself. And just because he had a nuttyidea of a ranch somewhere, is no reason why we should drop everything--"

  "We've got to do it, and you needn't fuss, because you've got to goalong. I expect we can study up--on goats." Her voice shook a little, forshe was close to tears.

  "Well, I'm darned if you ain't as nutty as dad was! Of course, he wasold and sick, and there was plenty of excuse for him to slop down alongtowards the last. Now, listen! My idea is to get a nifty bungalow outthere handy to the studios, and both of us to go into pictures. We canget a car; what I want is a speedy, sassy little boat that can _travel_.Well, and listen. We'll have plenty to live on till we both land instock. I've got a good chance right now to work into a comedy company;they say my grin screens like a million dollars, and when it comes tomaking a comedy getaway I'm just geared right, somehow, to pull a laugh.That college picture we made got me a lot of notice in the projectionroom, and I was only doing mob stuff, at that. But I stood out. AndWalt's promised me a fat little bit in this five-reeler. I'll land instock before the summer's half over!

  "And you can land with some good company if you just make a stab at it.Your eyes and that trick of looking up under your eyebrows are just thetype for these sob leads, and you've got a good photographic face: a_good_ face for it," he emphasized generously. "And your figure couldn'tbe beat. Believe me, I know. You ought to see some of them Janes--and atthat, they manage to get by with their stuff. A little camera experience,under a good director that would bring out your good points--I was goingto spring the idea before, but I knew dad wouldn't stand for it."

  "But we've got to go and live on that claim. We've _got_ to."

  Vic's face purpled. "Say, are you plumb _bugs_? Why--" Vic gulped andstuttered. "Say, where do you get that stuff? You better tie a can to it,sis; it don't get over with me. I'm for screen fame, and I'm going to getit too. Why, by the time I'm twenty, I'll betcha I can pull down a salarythat'll make Charlie Chaplin look like an extra! Why, my grin--"

  "Your grin you can use on the goats," Helen May quelled unfeelingly. "Ionly hope it won't scare the poor things to death. You needn't argueabout it--as if I was crazy to go! Do you think I want to leave LosAngeles, and everybody I know, and everything I care about, and go to NewMexico and live like a savage, and raise goats? I'd rather go to jail, ifyou ask me. I hate the very thought of a ranch, Vic Stevenson, and youknow I do. But that doesn't matter a particle. Dad--"

  "I told you dad was crazy!" Vic's tone was too violent for grief. Hisyoung ambitions were in jeopardy, and even his dad's death must lookunimportant alongside the greater catastrophe that threatened. "Do youthink, for gosh sake, the whole family's got to be nutty just because hewas sick and got a queer streak?"

  "You've no right to say that. Dad--knew what he was doing."

  "Aw, where do you get that dope?" Vic eyed her disgustedly, and with agood deal of condescension. "If you had any sense, you'd knew he wasqueer for days before it happened. _I_ noticed it, all right, and ifyou didn't--"

  Helen May did not say anything at all. She got up and went to her roomand came back with Peter's last, pitiful letter. She gave it to Vic andsat down again on the arm of the Mission chair and waited, looking at himfrom, under her lashes, her head tilted forward.

  Vic was impressed, impressed to a round-eyed silence. He knew his dad'shandwriting, and he unfolded the sheet and read what Peter had written.

  "I found that letter in--his hand--that morning." Helen May tried tokeep her voice steady. "You mustn't tell any one about it, Vic. Theymustn't know. But you see, he--after doing that to get the money for me,why--you see, Vic, we've _got_ to go there. And we've got to make good.We've got to
."

  There must have been a little of Peter's disposition in Vic, too. Helay for several minutes staring hard at a patch of sunlight on thefarther wall. I suppose when one is fifteen the ambition to be a moviestar dies just as hard as does later the ambition to be president ofthe United States.

  "You see, don't you, Vic?" Helen May watched him nervously.

  "Well, what do you think I am?" Vic turned upon her with a scowl. "Youmight have said it was for your health. You wasn't playing fair. You--youkept saying it was to raise goats!"