The Taming of Red Butte Western | Page 3

pond back of the
school-house, and two of us were paddling around on a raft made of
sawmill slabs. One of the two--who always had more dare-deviltry than
sense under his skull thatch--was silly enough to 'rock the boat,' and it
went to pieces. You couldn't swim, Howard, but if you hadn't forgotten
that trifling handicap and wallowed in to pull poor Billy Mimms ashore,
I should have been a murderer."
Lidgerwood shook his head.
"You think you have made your case, but you haven't. What you say is
true enough; I wasn't afraid of drowning--didn't think much about it,
either way, I guess. But what I say is true, also. There are many kinds
of courage, and quite as many kinds of cowardice. I am a coward of
men."
"Oh, no, you're not: you only think you are," protested the one who
thought he knew. But Lidgerwood would not let that stand.
"I know I am. Hear me through, and then judge for yourself. What I am
going to tell you I have never told to any living man; but it is your right
to hear it.... I have had the symptoms all my life, Stuart. You have
spoken of the schoolboy days: you may remember how you used to
fight my battles for me. You thought I took the bullying of the bigger
boys because I wasn't strong enough physically to hold up my end.
That wasn't it: it was fear, pure and simple. Are you listening?"
The man in the chair nodded and said, "Go on." He was of those to
whom fear, the fear of what other men might do to him, was as yet a
thing unlearned, and he was trying to attain the point of view of one to

whom it seemed very real.
"It followed me up to manhood, and after a time I found myself
constantly and consciously deferring to it. It was easy enough after the
habit was formed. Twentieth-century civilization is decently peaceable,
and it isn't especially difficult to dodge the personal collisions. I have
succeeded in dodging them, for the greater part, paying the price in
humiliation and self-abasement as I went along. God, Stuart, you don't
know what that means!--the degradation; the hot and cold chills of
self-loathing; the sickening misery of having your own soul turn upon
you to rend and tear you like a rabid dog!"
"No, I don't know what it means," said the other man, moved more than
he cared to admit by the abject confession.
"Of course you don't. Nobody else can know. I am alone in my pit of
wretchedness, Ford ... as one born out of time; apprehending, as well as
you or any one, what is required of a man and a gentleman, and yet
unable to answer when my name is called. I said I had been paying the
price; I am paying it here and now. This is the fourth time I have had to
refuse a good offer that carried with it the fighting chance."
The vice-president's heavy eyebrows slanted in questioning surprise.
"You knew in advance that you were going to turn me down? Yet you
came a thousand miles to meet me here; and you admit that you have
gone the length of looking the ground over."
Lidgerwood's smile was mirthless.
"A regular recurring phase of the disease. It manifests itself in a
determination to break away and do or die in the effort to win a little
self-respect. I can't take the plunge. I know beforehand that I can't ...
which brings us down to Copah, the present exigency, and the fact that
you'll have to look farther along for your Red Butte Western
man-queller. The blood isn't in my veins, Stuart. It was left out in the
assembling."

The vice-president was still a young man and he was confronting a
problem that annoyed him. He had been calling himself, and not
without reason, a fair judge of men. Yet here was a man whom he had
known intimately from boyhood, who was but just now revealing a
totally unsuspected quality.
"You say you have been dodging the collisions. How do you know you
wouldn't buck up when the real pinch comes?" he demanded.
"Because the pinch came once--and I didn't buck up. It was over a year
ago, and to this good day I can't think calmly about it. You will
understand when I say that it cost me the love of the one woman in the
world."
The vice-president did understand. Being a married lover himself, he
could measure the depth of the abyss into which Lidgerwood was
looking. His voice was as sympathetic as a woman's when he said: "Go
ahead and ease your mind; tell me about it, if you can, Howard.