The Sky Line of Spruce by Edison Marshall

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Ben tried in vain to find an answer. A whole world of meaning lingered
just beyond the reach of his groping mind; but always it eluded him. It
was true, however, that the name gave him a certain sense of pleasure
and pride, as if it had been used in compliment to some of his own
traits. Far away and long ago, men had called _him_ "Wolf" Darby: he
felt that perhaps the name had carried far, through many sparsely
settled districts. But what had been the occasion for it he did not
know.

He described these dim memory pictures; and Forest's air of satisfaction
seemed to imply that his own theories in regard to Ben's case were
receiving justification. He appeared quite a little flushed, deeply
intent, when he turned to the next feature of the examination. He
suddenly spoke quietly to old Ezra Melville; and the latter put a small,
cardboard box into his hands.

"I want you to see what I have here," Forest told Ben. "They were your
own possessions once--you sent them yourself to Abner Darby, your late
father--and I want you to see if you remember them."

Ben's eyes fastened on the box; and the others saw a queer drawing of
the lines of his face, a curious tightening and clasping of his fingers.
There was little doubt but that his subconsciousness had full cognizance
of the contents of that box. He was trembling slightly, too--in
excitement and expectation--and Ezra Melville, suddenly standing erect,
was trembling too. The moment was charged with the uttermost suspense.

Evidently this was the climax in the examination. Even McNamara, the
Governor, was breathless with interest in his chair; Forest had the rapt
look of a scientist in some engrossing experiment. He opened the box,
taking therefrom a roll of white cotton. This he slowly unrolled,
revealing two small, ribboned ornaments of gold or bronze.

Ben's starting eyes fastened on them. No doubt he recognized them. A
look of veritable anguish swept his brown face, and all at once small
drops of moisture appeared on his brow and through the short hairs at
his temples. The dark scar at his temple was suddenly brightly red from
the pounding blood beneath.

"The Victoria Cross, of course," he said slowly, brokenly. "I won it,
didn't I--the day--that day at Ypres--the day my men were trapped--"

His words faltered then. The wheels of _his_ memory, starting into
motion, were stilled once more. Again the great darkness dropped over
him; there were only the medals left in their roll of cotton, and the
broken fragments of a story--of some wild, stirring event of the war
just gone--remaining in his mind. Yet to Forest the experiment was an
unqualified success.

"There's no doubt of it!" he exclaimed. He turned to McNamara, the
Governor. "His brain is just as sound as yours or mine. With the right
environment, the right treatment, he'd be on the straight road to
recovery. In a general way of speaking he has recovered now, largely,
from the purely temporary trouble that he had before."

McNamara focused an intent gaze first on Ben, then on the alienist. "It
is, then--as you guessed."

"Absolutely. The night of his arrest marked the end of his trouble; you
might say that his brain simply snapped back into health and began to
function normally again, after a period of temporary mania from
shell-shock. It is true that his memory was left blank, but there
doesn't seem to be any organic reason for it to be blank--other than
lack of incentive to remember. Catch me up, if you don't follow me. In
other words, he has been slowly convalescing since that night: under the
proper stimuli I have no doubt that everything would come back to him."

"And our friend here--Melville--offers to supply those stimuli."

"Exactly. And it's up to you to say whether he gets a chance."

Thoughtfully the executive drummed his desk with his pencil. Presently a
smile, markedly boyish and pleasant, broke over his face. More than
once, in the line of duty imposed by his high office, he had been
obliged to make decisions contrary to every dictate of mercy. He was all
the more pleased at this opportunity to do, with a clear conscience, the
thing that his kindness prompted. He turned slowly in his chair.

"Darby, I suppose you followed what the doctor said?" he asked easily.

"Fairly well, I think."

"I'll review it, if I may. It seems, Ben, that you have been the victim
of a strange set of unfortunate circumstances. Due to the efforts of an
old family friend--a most devoted and earnest friend if I may say
so--we've looked up your record, and now we know more about you than you
know about yourself. You served in France with Canadian troops and
there, you will be proud to know, you won among other honors the highest
honor that the Government of England can award a hero. There you were
shell-shocked, in the last months of the war.

"You did not return to your home. Shell-shock, Forest tells me, is a
curious thing, resulting in many forms of mania. Yours led you into
crime. For some months you lived as a desperate criminal in Seattle. You
came to yourself in the act of breaking into a bank, only to find that
your memory of not only your days of crime but all that had gone before
was left a blank. That night, as you know, marked your arrest.

"Forest has just explained that you are organically sound--that the
recovery of your memory is just a matter of time and the proper stimuli.
Now, Ben, it isn't the purpose of this State to punish men when they are
not responsible for their deeds. Melville tells me that your record, in
your own home, was the best; your war record alone, I believe, would
entitle you to the limit of mercy from the State. I don't see how we can
hold you responsible for deeds done while you were mentally disabled
from shell-shock.

"All you need for complete recovery, to call everything back in your
mind, is the proper stimuli. At least that is the opinion of Doctor
Forest. What those proper stimuli are of course no one knows for
sure--but Doctor Forest has a theory; and I think he will tell you that
he will share the credit for it with the same man who has been your
friend all the way through. They think they know what is best for you.
The final decision has been put up to me as to whether or not they shall
be permitted to give it a trial.

"This good friend of yours has offered to try to put it through. He has
a plan outlined that he'll tell you of later, that will not only be the
best possible influence toward recalling your memory, but will also give
you a clean, new start in life. A chance for every success.

"So you needn't return to Walla Walla, Darby. I'm going to parole
you--under the charge of your benefactor. Melville, from now on it's up
to you."

The little, withered gray man looked very solemn as he rose. The others
were stricken instantly solemn too, surprised that the droll smile they
were so used to seeing had died on the homely, kindly face. Even his
twinkling eyes were sobered too.

Vaguely amused, yet without scorn, McNamara and Forest got up to shake
his hand. "I'll look after him," Melville assured them. "Never fear for
that."

Slight as he was, wasted by the years, his was a figure of unmistakable
dignity as he thanked them, gravely and earnestly, for their kindness in
Ben's behalf. Soon after he and his young charge went out together.

III

There was a great house-cleaning in the dome of the heavens one
memorable night that flashed like a jewel from the murky desolation of a
rainy spring. The little winds came in troops, some from the sea, some
with loads of balsam from the great forests of the Olympic Peninsula,
and some, quite tired out, from the stretching sage plains to the east,
and they swept the sky of clouds as a housekeeper sweeps the ceiling of
cobwebs. Not a wisp, not one trailing streamer remained.

The Seattle citizenry, for the first time in some weeks, recalled the
existence of the stars. These emerged in legions and armies, all the way
from the finest diamond dust to great, white spheres that seemed near
enough to reach up and touch. Little forgotten stars that had hidden
away since Heaven knows when in the deepest recesses of the skies came
out to join in the celebration. Aged men, half blind, beheld so many
that they thought their sight was returning to them, and youths saw
whole constellations that they had never beheld before. They continued
their high revels until a magnificent moon rose in the east, too big and
too bright to compete with.

It was not just a crescent moon, about to fade away, or even a rain
moon--one of those standing straight up in the sky so that water can run
out as out of a dipper. It was almost at its full, large and nearly
round, and it made the whole city, which is rather like other cities in
the daylight, seem a place of enchantment. It was so bright that the
electric signs along Second Avenue were not even counter-attractions.

No living creature who saw it remained wholly unmoved by it. Wary young
men, crafty and slick as foxes, found themselves proposing to their
sweethearts before they could catch themselves; and maidens who had
looked forward to some years yet of independent gaiety found themselves
accepting. Old tom-cats went wooing; old spinsters got out old letters;
old husbands thought to return and kiss their wives before venturing
down to old, moth-eaten clubs. Old dogs, too well-bred to howl, were
lost and absent-minded with dreams that were older than all the rest of
these things put together.

But to no one in the city was the influence of the moon more potent than
to Ben Darby, once known as "Wolf" Darby through certain far-spreading
districts, and now newly come from the State capital, walking Seattle's
streets with his ward and benefactor, Ezra Melville. No matter how
faltering was his memory in other regards, the moon, at least, was an
old acquaintance. He had known it in the nights when its light had
probed into his barred cell; but his intimate acquaintance with it had
begun long, long before that. Not even the names that the alienist,
Forest, had spoken--the names of places and people close to his own
heart--stirred his memory like the sight of the mysterious sphere
rolling through the empty places of the sky. It recalled, clearer than
any other one thing, the time and place of his early years.

He could not put into words just how it affected him. From first to
last, even through his days of crime, it had been the one thing
constant--the unchanging symbol--that in any manner connected his
present with his shadowed past. It had served to recall in him, more
than any other one thing, the fact that there was a past to look
for--the assurance that somewhere, far away, he had been something more
than a reckless criminal in city slums. The love he had for it was an
old love, proving to him conclusively that his past life had been
intimately associated, some way, with moonlight falling in open places.
Yet the mood that was wakened in him went even farther. It was as if the
sight of the argent satellite stirred and moved deep-buried instincts
innate in him, in no way connected with any experience of his immediate
life. Rather it was as if his love for it were a racial love, reaching
back beyond his own life: something inborn in him. It was as if he were
recalling it, not alone from his own past, but from a racial existence a
thousand-thousand years before his own birth. His memory was strangely
stifled, but, oh, he remembered the moon! Forest had spoken of stimuli!
The mere sight of the blue-white beams was the best possible stimulus to
call him to himself.

Ezra Melville and he walked under it, talking little at first, and
mostly the old, blue twinkling eyes watched his face. Seemingly with no
other purpose than to escape the bright glare of the street lights they
walked northward along the docks, below Queen Anne Hill, passed old Rope
Walk, through the suburb of Ballard, finally emerging on the Great
Northern Railroad tracks heading toward Vancouver and the Canadian
border. For all that Ben's long legs had set a fast pace Melville kept
cheerfully beside him throughout the long walk, seemingly without trace
of fatigue.

They paused at last at a crossing, and Ben faced the open fields.
Evidently, before crime had claimed him, he had been deeply sensitive to
nature's beauty. Ezra saw him straighten, his dark, vivid face rise; his
quiet talk died on his lips. Evidently the peaceful scene before him
went home to him very straight. He was very near thralldom from some
quality of beauty that dwelt here, some strange, deep appeal that the
moonlit realm made to his heart.

For the moment Ben had forgotten the old, tried companion at his side.
Vague memories stirred him, trying to convey him an urgent message. He
could all but hear: the sight of the meadows, ensilvered under the moon,
were making many things plain to him which before were shadowed and
vague. The steel rails gleamed like platinum, the tree tops seemed to
have white, molten metal poured on them. It was hard to take his eyes
off those moonlit trees. They got to him, deep inside; thrilling to him,
stirring. Perhaps in his Lost Land the moon shone on the trees this same
way.

There were no prison walls around him to-night. The high buildings
behind him, pressing one upon another, had gone to sustain the feeling
of imprisonment, but it had quite left him now. There were no cold,
watchful lights,--only the moon and the stars and an occasional mellow
gleam from the window of a home. There was scarcely any sound at all;
not even a stir--as of prisoners tossing and uneasy in their cells. His
whole body felt rested.

The air was marvelously sweet. Clover was likely in blossom in nearby
fields. He breathed deep, an unknown delight stealing over him. He stole
on farther, into the mystery of the night--ravished, tingling and almost
breathless from an inner and inexplicable excitement. Melville walked
quietly beside him.

Forest had given over the case: it was Melville's time for experiments
to-night. All the way out he had watched his patient, sounding him,
studying his reactions and all that he had beheld had gone to strengthen
his own convictions. And now, after this moment in the meadows, the old
man was ready to go on with his plan.

"Let's set down here," he invited casually. Ben started, emerging from
his revery. The old man's cheery smile had returned, in its full charm,
to his droll face. "You'll want to know what it's all about--and what I
have in mind. And I sure think you've done mighty well to hold onto your
patience this long."

He sat himself on the rail, and Ben quietly took a seat beside him.
"There are plenty of things I'd like to know," he admitted.

"And plenty of things I ain't goin' to tell you, neither--for the reason
that Forest advised against it," Ezra went on. "I don't understand
it--but he says you've got a lot better chance to get your memory
workin' clear again if things are recalled to you by the aid of
'stimuli' instead of having any one tell you. I've agreed to supply the
'stimuli.'

"I don't see any harm in tellin' you that the guesses you've already
made are right. Your name is Ben Darby--and you used to be known as
'Wolf' Darby--for reasons that sooner or later you may know. Abner Darby
was your father. Edith Darby was your sister that ain't no more. You
went awhile to MacLean's College, in Ontario.

"Now, Ben, I'm going to put a proposition up to you. I'm hoping you'll
see fit to accept it. And I might as well say right here, that while
it's the best plan possible to bring you back your memory, and that
while it offers just the kind of 'stimuli' you're supposed to need,
neither 'stimuli' nor stimulus or stimulum has got very much to do with
it. I argued that point mighty strong because I knew it would appeal to
Forest, and through him, to the governor. I don't see it makes a whale
of a lot of difference whether you get your memory back or not.

"Maybe you don't foller me. But you know and I know you're all right
now, remembering clear enough everything that happened since you was
arrested, and I don't see what difference it makes whether or not you
remember who your great-aunt was, and the scrapes you got in as a kid.
You can talk and walk and figger, get by in any comp'ny, and you suit me
for a buddy just as you are. However, Forest seemed to think it was
mighty important--and it may be.

"The reason I'm goin' to take you where I'm goin' to take you is for
your own good. I'm sort of responsible for you, bein' your folks are
dead. I know you from head to heel, and I think I know what's good for
you, what you can do and what you can't do and where you succeed and
where you fail. And I'll say right here you wasn't born to be no gangman
in a big city like Seattle. You'll find that isn't your line at all."

"I'm willing to take your word for that, Mr. Melville," Ben interposed
quietly.

"And I might say, now a good time as any, to let up on the '_Mister_.'
My name is Ezra Melville, and I've been known as 'Ezram' as long as I
can remember, to my friends. The Darbys in particular called me that,
and you're a Darby.

"I'll say in the beginning I can't do for you all I'd like to do, simply
because I haven't the means. The first time you saw me I was walkin'
ties, and you'll see me walkin' some more of 'em before you're done. I
know you ain't got any money, and due to the poker habit I ain't got
much either--in spite of the fact I've done two men's work for something
over forty years. On this expedition to come we'll have to go on the
cheaps. No Pullmans, no hotels--sleeping out the hay when we're caught
out at night. Maybe ridin' the blinds, whenever we can. I'm awful sorry,
but it jest can't be helped. But I will say--when it comes to work I can
do my full share, without kickin'."

Ben stared in amazement. It was almost as if the old man were pleading a
case, rather than giving glorious alms to one to whom hope had seemed
dead. Ben tried to cut in, to ask questions, but the old man's words
swept his own away.

"To begin at the beginning, I've got a brother--leastwise I had him a
few weeks ago--Hiram Melville by name," Ezram went on. "You'd remember
him well enough. He was a prospector up to a place called Snowy Gulch--a
town way up in the Caribou Mountains, in Canada. Some weeks ago, herdin'
cattle in Eastern Oregon, I got a letter from him, and started north,
runnin' into you on the way up. The letter's right here."

He drew a white envelope from his coat pocket, opening it slowly. "This
is a real proposition, son," he went on in a sobered voice. "I'm mighty
glad that I've got something, at least worth lookin' into, to let you in
on. I only wish it was more."

"Why should you want to let me in on anything?" Ben asked clearly.

The direct question received only a stare of blank amazement from Ezram.
"Why should I--" he repeated, seemingly surprised out of his life by the
question. "Shucks, and quit interruptin' me. But I'll say right here
I've got my own ideas, if you must know. Didn't I hear that while you
was rampin' around the underworld, you showed yourself a mighty good
fighter? Well, there's likely to be some fightin' where we're goin', and
I want some one to do it besides myself. If there ain't fightin', at
least they'll be worklots of work. Maybe I'm gettin' a little too old
to do much of it. I want a buddy--some one who will go halfway with me."

"Therefore I suppose you go to the 'pen' to find one," Ben commented,
wholly unconvinced.

"I'm going to make this proposition good," Ezram went on as if he had
not heard, "probably a fourth--maybe even a third--to you. And I ain't
such a fool as I look, neither. I know the chances of comin' out right
on it are twice as good if somebody young and strong, and who can fight,
is in on it with me. Listen to this."

Opening the letter, he read laboriously:

Snowy Gulch, B.C.

DEAR BROTHER EZRA:--

I rite this with what I think is my dying hand. It's my will too.
I'm at the hotel at Snowy Gulch--and not much more time. You know
I've been hunting a claim. Well, I found it--rich a pocket as any
body want, worth a quarter million any how and in a district where
the Snowy Gulch folks believe there ain't a grain of gold.

It's yours. Come up and get it quick before some thieves up hear
jump it. Lookout for Jeffery Neilson and his gang they seen some of
my dust. I'm too sick to go to recorder in Bradleyburg and record
claim. Get copy of this letter to carry, put this in some safe
place. The only condition is you take good care of Fenris, the pet I
raised from a pup. You'll find him and my gun at Steve Morris's.

I felt myself going and just did get hear. You get supplies horses
at Snowy Gulch go up Poor Man Creek through Spruce Pass over to Yuga
River. Go down Yuga River past first rapids along still place to
first creek you'll know it cause there's an old cabin just below and
my canoe landing. Half mile up, in creek bed, is the pocket and new
cabin. And don't tell no one in Snowy Gulch who you are and where
you going. Go quick brother Ez and put up a stone for me at Snowy
Gulch.

Your brother

HIRAM MELVILLE.

There was a long pause after Ezram's voice had died away. Ben's eyes
glowed in the moonlight.

"And you haven't heard--whether your brother is still alive?"

"I got a wire the hotel man sent me. It reached me weeks before the
letter came, and I guess he must have died soon after he wrote it. I
suppose you see what he means when he says to carry a copy of this
letter, instead of the original."

"Of course--because it constitutes his will, your legal claim. Just the
fact that you are his brother would be claim enough, I should think, but
since the claim isn't recorded, this simplifies matters for you. You'd
better make a copy of it and you can leave it in some safe place. And of
course this claim is what you offered to let me in on."

"That's it. Not much, but all what I got. What I want to know is--if
it's a go."

"Wait just a minute. You've asked me to go in with you on a scheme that
looks like a clear quarter of a million, even though I can't give
anything except my time and my work. You found me in a penitentiary,
busted and all in--a thief and a gangster. Before we go any further,
tell me what service I've done you, what obligation you're under to me,
that gives me a right to accept so much from you?"

It might have been in the moonlight that Ezram's eyes glittered
perceptibly. "You're in my charge," he grinned. "I guess you ain't got
any say comin'."

"Wait--wait." Ben sprang to his feet, and caught by his earnestness,
Ezram got up too. "I sure--I sure appreciate the trust you put in me,"
Ben went on slowly. "For my own part I'd give everything I've got and
all I'd hope to ever get to go with you. It's a chance such as I never
dared believe would come to me again--a chance for big success--a chance
to go away and get a new start in a country where I feel, instinctively,
that I'd make good. But that's only the beginning of it."

The dark vivid eyes seemed to glow in the soft light. "Forgive me if I
talk frank; and if it sounds silly I can't help it," Ben continued.
"You've never been in prison--with a five-year sentence hanging over
you--and nobody giving a damn. For some reason I can't guess you've
already done more for me than I can ever hope to repay. You got me out
of prison, you wakened hope and self-respect in me when I thought they
were dead, and you've proved a friend when I'd given up any thought of
ever knowing human friendship again. I was down and out, Ezram. Anything
you want me to do I'll do to the last ditch. You know I can fight--you
know how a man can fight if it's his last chance. I've got some bonus
money coming to me from the Canadian Government--and I'll put that in
too, because we'll be needing horses and supplies and things that cost
money. But I can't take all that from a stranger. You must know how it
is. A man can't, while he's young and strong, accept charity--"

"Good Lord, it ain't charity!" the old man shouted, drowning him out.
"I'm gettin' as much pleasure out of it as you." His voice sank again;
and there was no line of mirth in his face.

"It was long ago, in Montreal," Ezram went on, after a pause. "I knew
your mother, as a girl. She married a better man, but I told her that
every wish of hers was law to me. You're her son."

IV

Night is always a time of mystery in Snowy Gulch--that little cluster of
frame shacks lost and far in the northern reaches of the Caribou Range.
Shadows lie deep, pale lights spring up here and there in windows, with
gaping, cavernous darkness between; a wet mist is clammy on the face. At
such times one forgets that here is a town, an enduring outpost of
civilization, and can remember only the forests that stretch so heavy
and dark on every side. Indeed the town seems simply swallowed up in
these forests, immersed in their silence, overspread by their gloom, and
the red gods themselves walk like sentries in the main street.

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