Evening Star Newspaper, November 10, 1929, Page 102

THE SUNDAY STAR. WASHINGT This Story Is Typical of America’s Newer School of Fiction, and It Was Written by an Author Who Has Gained the Top Rung of the Fiction Ladder in This Country—You Maly Like ““Blue Murder”’; You May Dislike It; but You Cannot Deny the Strength of the Story. T MILL CROSSING it was already past sunset. The rays still laid fire along the woods crowning the stony slopes of Jim Bluedge’s pastures; but then the line of the dusk began and from that level it filled the valley, washing with transparent blue the buildings scattered about the bridge, Jim's house and horse-sheds and hay-barns, Frank's store, and Camden'’s Of the three brothers Cam was the dumb one. He seldom had anything to say. it —as provi- dential (folk said) that of the three enterprises at the Crossing one was a smithy; for while he was a strong, big, hungry-muscled fellow, he never would have had the shrewdness to run the store or the farm. He was better at pounding —pounding while the fire reddened and the sparks flew, and thinking, and letting other people wonder what he was thinking of. Blossom Bluedge, his brother’s wife, sat perch- ed on the top bar of the paddock gate, holding her skirts around her ankles with a trifle too much care to be quite unconscious, and watched him work. “You'd have thought Jim would bé home be- fore this, wouldn’t you, Cam?” Her brother-in-law said nothing. He was too dumb for any use. He was as dumb as this: When all three of the Bluedge boys were after her a year ago, Frank, the store- keeper, had brought her candy—chocolates wrapped in silver foil in a two-pound Boston box. Jim had laid before her the Bluedge farm and with it the dominance of the valley. And Damden! To the daughter of Ed Beck, the apple grower, Camden had brought a box of apples!— and been bewildered, too, when, for all she omfldhclpit.flwhldbehpahandwether mouth and run into the house to have her giggle. “Camden,” she reverted suddenly. “Tell me one thing, did you hear—" She stopped there. Some people were coming into the kitchen yard, dark forms in the grow- ing "darkness. Most of them lingered at the porch, sitting on the steps and lighting their ptpec.'rhconethltecmeoutwumk,tha second of her brothers-in-law. She was glad. Frank wasn’t like Camden, he would talk. Turn- ’ingmdukm:umolbersklm,shenvehlm ‘s bright and sisterly smile. “Well, Frankie, what's the crowd?” FAE from avoiding the smile, as Camden’s habit was, the storekeeper returned it with 2 brotherly wink for good measure. “Oh, they're tired of waiting down the road, so they come up here to see the grand arrival.” He was some- thing of 2 man of the world; in his calling he had acquired a fine turn of skepticism. “Don’t want to miss being on hand to see what flaws they can pick in ‘Jim’s five hundred dollars’ wurth of expiriment.’” “Frank, ain’t you the least bit worried over Jim? So late?” “Don’t see why. Had all the men from Perry's stables there in Twinshead to help him get the animal off the freight, and he took an extra rope and the log chain and the heavy wagon, so I guess no matter how wild and woolly the animal is he'll scarcely be climbing in over the tailboard. Besides, them Western horses ain't such a big breed, even a stallion.” “All the same—(look the other way, Frankie) =" Plipping her ankles over the rail, Blossom jumped down beside him. “Listen, Frank, tell me something, did you hear—did you hear the reason Jim’'s getting him cheap was because he killed a man out West there, what's-its- name, Wyoming?” Frank was taking off his sleeve protectors, the pins in his mouth. It was Camden, at the bars, speaking in his sudden deep rough way, “Who told you that?” Frank got the pins out of his mouth. “I guess what is it, Blossie, what's mixed you up is his having that name ‘Blue Murder.'” Jim had arrived. With a clatter of hoofs and a rattle of wheels he was in the yard and the lines over the team, i The curlous began to edge around, closing & tance of Jim's “experiment” but a blurry sil- houette anchored at the wagon's tail. “Oh, Jim, I'm so glad you come. I been so wasn’ . g with his hammer two-fisted and his 1 spread, his chin down and his thoughts to him- self (the dumbhead), he was looking at Blue Murder, staring at the other dumbhead, which, raised high on the motionless column of the stallion’s neck, seemed hearkening with an exile’s doubt to the sounds of this new universe, tasting with wide nostrils the taint in the wind of equine strangers and studying with eyes accustomed to far horizons these dark pastures that went up in the air. Whatever the smith's cogitations, presently he . let the hammer down and said aloud, “So you're him, eh?” Jm had put Blossom aside, saying, “Got sup- per ready? I'm hungry!” Excited by the act of kissing and the sense of witnesses to it, she fussed her hair and started kitchenward as he turned to his brothers. “Well, what do you make of him?” “Five hundred dollars,” said Frank. “How- ever, it’s your money.” Camden was shorter. “Better put him in.” “All right; let them bars down while I and Frank lead him around.” “No, thanks!” The storekeeper kept his hands in his pockets. “I just cleaned up, thanks, Cam’'s the boy for horses.” “He's none o' my horses!” Camden wet his lips, shook his shoulders and scowled. “Unless,” Frank put in slyly, “unless Cam’s scared.” “Scared?” And still, to the brother’'s en- during wonder, the big dense fellow would rise to that boyhood bait. ‘“Scared? I'm not scared of any horse ever wore a shoet Come on, I'll show you!” “Well, be gentle with him, boys; he may be brittle.” As Frank sauntered off around the shed he whistled the latest tune. In the warmth and light of the kitchen he began to fool with his pretty sister-in-law, feigning princely impatience and growling with & wink at the assembled neighbors, “When do we eat?” But she protested, “Land, I had everything ready since five, ain’'t I? And now, if it ain't you, it’s them to wait for.” At last one of the gossips got in a word. “What you make of Jim's purchase, Frank?” “Well, it’s Jim’s money, Darred. If I had the ;running of this farm——" Frank began drawing up chairs noisily, leaving it at that. Darred persisted. “Don’t look to me much like an animal for women and children to handle, not yet awhile.” 2 Blossom put the kettle back, protesting, “Leave off, or you'll get me worried to death; all your talk . . . I declare, where are those bad boys?” Opening the door, she called into the dark, “Jim! Cam!” Subdued by distance and the intervening sheds, she could hear them at their business— sounds muffied and fragmentary, soft thunder of hoofs, snorts, puffings, and the short words of men in action: “Aw, leave him be in the paddock tonight.” . . Come on, don't be so scared.” . . . “Scared, eh?” ‘Why was it she always felt that curious tight- ening of all her powers of attention when Camden spoke? Probably because he spoke so rarely, and then so roughly, as if his own thickness made him mad. Never mind. “Last call for supper in the dining car, boys!” she called, and closed the door. Turning back to the stove, she was about to replace the tea water for the third time when, straightening up, she said, “What's that?” No one else had heard anything. They looked at one another. “Frank, go—go see what—go tell the boys to come in.” Frank hesitated, feeling foolish, then went to the door. Then every one in the room was out of his chair, There were three sounds. The first was hu- man and incoherent. The second was incoher- ent, too, but it wasn't human. The third was a crash, a ripping and splintering of wood. When they got to the paddock they found Camden crawling from beneath the wreckage of the fence, where a gap was opened on the pasture side. He must have received a blow on the head, for he seemed dazed. He didn't seem to know they were there. At a precarious bal- ance—one hand at the back of his neck—he stood facing up the hill, gaping after the di- mindendo of floundering hoofs, invisible above. So seconds passed. Again the beast gave , & high wild note, and on the black of the snowy hill to the right of it a faint shower of sparks blew like fireflies where the herding wares wheeled. It seemed to awaken the dazed smith. He opened his mouth., “Al- mighty God|” Swinging, he flung his arms toward the shed. ‘“There! There!” At last some one brought a lantern. They found Jim Bluedge lying on his back in the corner of the paddock near the door to the shed. In the lantern light, and still better in the kitchen when they had carried him in, they read the record of the thing which Camden, dumb in good earnest now, seemed unable to tell them with anything but his strange un- focused stare. The bloody offense to the skufl would have been enough to kill the man, but it was the second, full on the chest above the heart, that told the tale. On the caved grating of the -ribs, already turning blue under the yellowish “down, the iron shoe had left its mark, and when, laying back the rag of shirt, they saw that the toe of the shoe was upward and the cutting caulk-ends down they knew all they wanted to know of that swift, black, crushing episode. No outlash here of heels in fright. Here was a forefoot. An attack aimed and frontal; an onslaught reared, erect; beast turned biped; red eyes mad to white eyes aghast. . . . And only afterward, when it was done, the blood- fright that serves the horses for conscience; the blind rush across the inclosure; the fence gone down. No one had much to say. No one seemed to know what to do. As for Camden, he was no help. He simply stood propped on top of his logs of legs where some one had left him. It was lucky that Prank was a man of affairs. His brother was dead, and frightfully dead, but there was tomorrow for grief. Just now there were many things to do. There were people to be gotten rid of. With short words and angry gestures, he cleared them out, all but Darred mdgmmmpdwmu,nndtofl:eqehenld. “Now, first thing, Jim can't stay here”” He ran and got & blanket from a closet. “Give me a hand and we'll lay him in the icehouse over-: night. Don’t lopnm:l. but it's best, poor ellow. Cam, come ", ’Henmd.momem.mduhenududtbe wooden fool the blood poured back into his face. w“wake up, Cam! You great big scared stiff, you!” Camden brought his eyes out of nothingness and looked at this brother. A twinge passed over his face, convulsing the mouth muscles, “Scared?” “Yes, you're scared!” Frank's lip lifted, showing the tips of his teeth. “And I'll war- rant you something: If you wasn't the scared stiff you was, this thing wouldn't have hap- pened, maybe. Scared! You a blacksmith! Scared of a horse!” “Horse!” again that convulsion of the mouth muscles, something between irony and an idiot craft. “Why don’t you go catch 'im?” “Hush it! Don’t waste time by going loony now. Come!” “My advice to anybody—" Camden looked crazier than ever, knotting his brows. “My ad- vice to anybody is to let somebody else g0 catch—that——" Opening the door he faced out into the night, his head sunk between his shoulders and the fingers working at the ends of his hanging arms; and before they knew it he began to swear. He stopped only when at ad\lrpmdfmm!‘rmkhewumadelm that Blossom had come back into the room. Even then he didn’t seem to comprehend her return, but stood blinking at her, and at the rifie she carried, with his distraught bloodshot eyes. Frank comprehended. Hysteria had followed the girl’s blankness. Stepping between her and the body on the floor, he spoke in a persuasive, unhburried way. “What you doing with that gun, Blossie? Now, now, you don’t want that gun, you know you don't.” It worked. Her rigidity lessened appreciably. Confusion “Yes, yes, Blossie—now, yes—only you best give me that gun; that's the girlie” When he had got the weapon he put an arm around her shoulders. “Yes, yes, course we're going to shoot him: What you think? Don't want an animal like that running round. Now first thing in the morning—" Hysteria returned. With its strength she re- sisted his leading. “No, now! Now! He's gone and killed Jim! Killed my husband. I won't have him left alive another minute I won't! Now! No, sir. I'm going myself, I am! Prank, I am! Cam!” A’r his name, appealed to in that queer screeching way, the man in the doorway shivered all over, wet his lips, and walked out into the dark. “There, you see?” Frank was quick to cap- italize anything. “Cam’s gone to do it. Cam’s gone, Blossie!...Here, one of you—Darred, take this gun and run and give it to Camden, that's the boy.” “You sure he’ll kill him Frank? You sure?” “Sure as daylight. Now you come along back to your room like a good girl and get some rest. Come, I'll go with you.” When Frank returned to the kitchen 10 minutes later, Darred was back. “Well, now, let’s get at it and carry out poor Jim, he can't lay here...Where’s Cam gone now?” “Up the pasture, like you said.” “Like I—" Frank went an odd color. He walked to the door. Between the light on the sill and the beginnings of the stars where the woods crowned the mountain was all one black- ness. One stillness, too. He turned on Darred. “But, look, you never gave him that gun, even.” o “He didn't want it.” “The fool!” Poor dead Jim! Poor fool Camden! As the storekeeper went about his business and after- “Even then he didn’t seem to col put the plaything of thoughts diverse and way- ward. Jim gone...And Camden, at any moment... His face grew hot. An impulse carried him a dozen steps. *“I ought to go up. Ought to take the gun and go up.” But there shrewd sanity put on the brakes. “Where’s the use? Couldn't find him in this dark. Besides, I oughtn’ to leave Blossom here alon'.” With that he went around toward the kitchen, thinking to go in. But the sight of the lantern, left burning out near the sheds, sent his ideas off on another course. At any rate, it would give his muscles and nerves something to work on. Taking the lantern and entering the paddock, he fell to patching the gap into the pasture, using broken boards from the wreck. As he worked his eyes chanced to fall on footprints in the dung-mixed earth— Camden’s footprints, leading away beyond the little ring of light. And beside them, taking off from the landing place of that prodigious leap, he discerned the trail of the stallion. ATter a moment he got down on his knees where the earth was softest, hclding the lantern so that its light fell full. He gave over his fence-building. Returning to the house his gait was no longer that of the roamer; his face, caught by the periodic flare of the swinging lantern, was the face of an- other man. In its expression there was a kind of fright and a kind of calculating eagerness. He looked at the clock on the kitchen shelf, shook it, and read it again. He went to the telephone and fumbled at the receiver. He waited till his hand quit shaking, then re- moved it from the hook. ““Listen, Darred,” he said, when he had got the farmer at last, “get White and whatever others you can and come over first thing it's light. Come a-riding and bring your guns. No. Cam ain’t back.” He heard Blosscm calling. Outside her door he passed one hand down over his face, as he might have passed a wash-rag, to wipe off what was there. Then he went in. “What's the matter with Blossie? Can't sleep?” He sat down beside the bed. “Oh, Frankie, Frankie, hold my hand!" Pretty Blossom Beck. Here, for a wonder, hé sat in her bedroom and held her hand. One brother was dead and the other was on the mountain. But little by little, as he sat and dreamed so, nightmare crept over his brain. He had to arouse and shake himself. He had to set his thoughts resolutely in other roads. . . . Pere haps there would be even the smithy. The smithy, the store, the farm. Complete. The farm, the farmhouse, the room in the farme- house. FAR from rounding up thelr quarry in the early hours after dawn, it took riders, five of them, till almost noon simply to make cer- tain that he wasn’t to be found—not in any of the pastures. Then, when they discovered the hole in the fence far up in the woods beyond the crest, where Blue Murder had led the mares in a break for the open country of hills and ravines to the south, they were only beginning. at the Frank did the trailing. Hopeless of getting before sundown in that unkempt anywhere wilderness of a hundred square miles of scrub, his companions slouched in their saddles and rode more and more mechanically, knee to knee, and it was he who made the casts to recover the lost trail and, dismounting to read the dust, cried back, “He’s still with ’em,” and with gestures of imperious excitement beckoned them on. . “Which you mean?” Darred asked’ him once. - “Cam or the horse?” 3 Frank wheeled his beast and spurced back st