Acres of Unrest by Max Brand Read Free Book Online Page A

urged.
    “Never mind. Never mind,” replied Ross Hale. He broke out suddenly: “Why, Peter, your cousin is gonna be, by all odds, the biggest and the most important man in the whole county. You hear me?”
    “I hear you,” said Peter.
    “Curse it!” cried his father. “It don’t seem to bother you none!”
    “Bother me? Of course not. I’m glad for the sake of cousin Charlie…that’s all.”
    “Curse cousin Charlie! Don’t the money end of things mean nothing to you?”
    “Why should it?” asked Peter. “I could be very happy with a most moderate income.”
    His father wiped his perspiring forehead and finally muttered: “Well, there’s ways and ways that an educated man can do things, and I’d be the last man in the world to deny it. You said that you had got a leaning for the law, Peter. I suppose that maybe you’ll start right in being a lawyer in Sumnertown?”
    “Start in being a lawyer?” Peter cried. “Why, Father, the law course takes three whole years after the regular course is finished.”
    Mr. Hale reached for the back of a chair and steadied himself. “Three years…more?” he gasped.
    “Yes, at least three years.”
    “Three years more…,” Mr. Hale repeated, and began to laugh in a very odd fashion. “But maybe you’re ready for something else. You never told me much about yourself, son. You never said much about your work, and so how can I know what you’re ready for?”
    “It’s true,” said Peter. “I’m afraid that I haven’t kept you in touch with my work.”
    “When I busted my legs, nine years ago,” said Ross Hale, “it cost me close onto a hundred and fifty dollars, first and last. Well, Peter, maybe you’ve fitted yourself for being a doctor, if you can’t be a lawyer. Maybe you’re ready to start out and make yourself a good living doctoring.”
    Peter shook his head. “The medical course is twice as long as the law course,” he said. “A man has to spend four years on top of his collegiate work, and after that he has to work in a hospital as an internfor two years. Six years altogether, on top of his college diploma.”
    The rancher was almost speechless, but, when he had recovered some of his presence of mind, he muttered: “Law and medicine takes pretty near forever, then. Peter, tell me if there ain’t no profession that this university does fit a man for?”
    “There are technical branches of it,” said Peter, “where a man can learn to be an engineer and such things.”
    “Mining and bridge building and such things. All fine work. I hope that you went in for such things, Peter!” cried his father.
    “Never gave them a thought,” Peter answered. “Most of the boys I knew were taking a general course, and I took one, too.”
    “What does a general course mean?” asked the father. “A little bit of everything and something of nothing?”
    “You might call it that,” Peter said, apparently unable to notice the agony and the biting disappointment in the tones of his father. “I don’t know what I’m ready to work at, unless it were to be a teacher. I could teach in a high school…Greek or history…or Latin.”
    “A teacher!” shouted Ross Hale. “A teacher! Teach in a school? My son?” He broke into a wild laughter and lunged blindly from the room.
    His son made no effort to follow him. He waited for a time, with his keen eyes fixed upon the uncurtained, shadeless window, through which the sun streamed. Peter finally gathered himself and set about examining the state of the larder and the provisions of meat in his father’s house. He found an empty sugar sack, the last fragment of a sideof bacon, mostly fat, a quarter of a sack of moldy potatoes, five or six pounds of cornmeal, a little salt, and half a pound of a very cheap brand of coffee.
    Peter examined all of these possessions in detail. When he had examined everything, he swung himself dexterously down the hall toward his room. He did not need his crutches for this, for