diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 10932-0.txt | 13252 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/10932-8.txt | 13674 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/10932-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 260692 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/10932.txt | 13674 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/10932.zip | bin | 0 -> 260609 bytes |
8 files changed, 40616 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/10932-0.txt b/10932-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..78f5fd1 --- /dev/null +++ b/10932-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13252 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10932 *** + + OVER THE PASS + + BY FREDERICK PALMER + + AUTHOR OF THE VAGABOND, DANBURY RODD, ETC. + + 1912 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART I--AN EASY TRAVELLER + +CHAPTER + + I YOUTH IN SPURS + + II DINOSAUR OR DESPERADO + + III JACK RIDES IN COMPANY + + IV HE CARRIES THE MAIL + + V A SMILE AND A SQUARE CHIN + + VI OBLIVION IS NOT EASY + + VII WHAT HAPPENED AT LANG'S + + VIII ACCORDING TO CODE + + IX THE DEVIL IS OUT + + X MARY EXPLAINS + + XI SEÑOR DON'T CARE RECEIVES + + XII MARY BRINGS TRIBUTE + + XIII A JOURNEY ON CRUTCHES + + XIV "HOW FAST YOU SEW!" + + XV WHEN THE DESERT BLOOMS + + XVI A CHANGE OF MIND + + XVII THE DOGE SNAPS A RUBBER BAND + + XVIII ANOTHER STRANGER ARRIVES + + XIX LOOKING OVER PRECIPICES + + XX A PUZZLED AMBASSADOR + + XXI "GOOD-BY, LITTLE RIVERS!" + + XXII "LUCK, JACK, LUCK!" + + +PART II--HE FINDS HIMSELF + + XXIII LABELLED AND SHIPPED + + XXIV IN THE CITADEL OF THE MILLIONS + + XXV "BUT WITH YOU, YES, SIR!" + + XXVII BY RIGHT OF ANCESTRY + + XXVIII JACK GETS A RAISE + + XXIX A MEETING ON THE AVENUE TRAIL + + XXX WITH THE PHANTOMS + + XXXI PRATHER WOULD NOT WAIT + + XXXII A CRISIS IN THE WINGFIELD LIBRARY + + XXXIII PRATHER SEES THE PORTRAIT + + XXXIV "JOHN WINGFIELD, YOU--" + + +PART III--HE FINDS HIS PLACE IN LIFE + + XXXV BACK TO LITTLE RIVERS + + XXXVI AROUND THE WATER-HOLE + + XXXVII THE END OF THE WEAVING + +XXXVIII THEIR SIDE OF THE PASS + + + + +PART I + +AN EASY TRAVELLER + + + + +I + +YOUTH IN SPURS + +Here time was as nothing; here sunset and sunrise were as incidents +of an uncalendared, everlasting day; here chaotic grandeur was that +of the earth's crust when it cooled after the last convulsive +movement of genesis. + +In all the region about the Galeria Pass the silence of the dry Arizona +air seemed luminous and eternal. Whoever climbed to the crotch of that V, +cut jagged against the sky for distances yet unreckoned by tourist +folders, might have the reward of pitching the tents of his imagination +at the gateway of the clouds. + +Early on a certain afternoon he would have noted to the eastward a speck +far out on a vast basin of sand which was enclosed by a rim of tumbling +mountains. Continued observation at long range would have shown the speck +to be moving almost imperceptibly, with what seemed the impertinence of +infinitesimal life in that dead world; and, eventually, it would have +taken the form of a man astride a pony. + +The man was young, fantastically young if you were to judge by his garb, +a flamboyant expression of the romantic cowboy style which might have +served as a sensational exhibit in a shop-window. In place of the +conventional blue wool shirt was one of dark blue silk. The +_chaparejos_, or "chaps," were of the softest leather, with the fringe +at the seams generously long; and the silver spurs at the boot-heels +were chased in antique pattern and ridiculously large. Instead of the +conventional handkerchief at the neck was a dark red string tie; while +the straight-brimmed cowpuncher hat, out of keeping with the general +effect of newness and laundered freshness, had that tint which only +exposure to many dewfalls and many blazing mid-days will produce in +light-colored felt. + +There was vagrancy in the smile of his singularly sensitive mouth and +vagrancy in the relaxed way that he rode. From the fondness with which +his gaze swept the naked peaks they might have been cities _en fête_ +calling him to their festivities. If so, he was in no haste to let +realization overtake anticipation. His reins hung loose. He hummed +snatches of Spanish, French, and English songs. Their cosmopolitan +freedom of variety was as out of keeping with the scene as their lilt, +which had the tripping, self-carrying impetus of the sheer joy of living. + +Lapsing into silence, his face went ruminative and then sad. With a +sudden indrawing of breath he freed himself from his reverie, and bending +over from his saddle patted a buckskin neck in affectionate tattoo. Tawny +ears turned backward in appreciative fellowship, but without any break in +a plodding dog-trot. Though the rider's aspect might say with the desert +that time was nothing, the pony's expressed a logical purpose. Thus the +speed of their machine-like progress was entirely regulated by the +prospect of a measure of oats at the journey's end. + +When they came to the foot-hills and the rider dismounted and led the +way, with a following muzzle at times poking the small of his back, up +the tortuous path, rounding pinnacles and skimming the edge of abysses, +his leg muscles answered with the readiness of familiarity with climbing. +At the top he saw why the pass had received its name of Galeria from the +Spanish. A great isosceles of precipitous walls formed a long, natural +gallery, which the heaving of the earth's crust had rent and time had +eroded. It lay near the present boundary line of two civilizations: in +the neutral zone of desert expanses, where the Saxon pioneer, with his +lips closed on English _s's_, had paused in his progress southward; and +the _conquistadore_, with tongue caressing Castilian vowels, had paused +in his progress northward. + +At the other side the traveller beheld a basin which was a thousand +feet higher than the one behind him. It approached the pass at a +gentler slope. It must be cooler than the other, its ozone a little +rarer. A sea of quivering and singing light in the afternoon glow, it +was lost in the horizon. + +Not far from the foot-hills floated a patch of foliage, checkered by the +roofs of the houses of an irrigation colony, hanging kitelike at the end +of the silver thread of a river whose waters had set gardens abloom in +sterile expanses. There seemed a refusal of intimacy with the one visible +symbol of its relations with the outer world; for the railroad, with its +lines of steel flashing across the gray levels, passed beyond the outer +edge of the oasis. + +"This beats any valley I've seen yet," and the traveller spoke with the +confidence of one who is a connoisseur of Arizona valleys. + +He paused for some time in hesitancy to take a farewell of the rapturous +vista. A hundred feet lower and the refraction of the light would present +it in different coloring and perspective. With his spell of visual +intoxication ran the consciousness of being utterly alone. But the egoism +of his isolation in the towering infinite did not endure; for the sound +of voices, a man's and a woman's, broke on his ear. + +The man's was strident, disagreeable, persistent. Its timbre was such as +he had heard coming out of the doors of border saloons. The woman's was +quiet and resisting, its quality of youth peculiarly emphasized by its +restrained emotion. + +Now the easy traveller took stock of his immediate surroundings, which +had interested him only as a foothold and vantage-point for the panorama +that he had been breathing in. Here, of all conceivable places, he was in +danger of becoming eavesdropper to a conversation which was evidently +very personal. Rounding the escarpment at his elbow he saw, on a shelf of +decaying granite, two waiting ponies. One had a Mexican saddle of the +cowboy type. The other had an Eastern side-saddle, which struck him as +exotic in a land where women mostly ride astride. And what woman, +whatever style of riding she chose, should care to come to this pass? + +Judging by the direction from which the voices came, the speakers were +hidden by still another turn in the defile. A few more steps brought eye +as well as ear back to the living world with the sight of a girl seated +on a bowlder. He could see nothing of her face except the cheek, which +was brown, and the tip of a chin, which he guessed was oval, and her +hair, which was dark under her hatbrim and shimmering with gold where it +was kissed by the rays of the sun. An impression as swift as a flash of +light could not exclude inevitable curiosity as to the full face; a +curiosity emphasized by the poised erectness of her slender figure. + +The man was bending over her in a familiar way. He was thirty, perhaps, +in the prime of physical vigor, square-jawed, cocksure, a six-shooter +slung at his hip. Though she was not giving way before him, her attitude, +in its steadiness, reflected distress in a bowstrung tremulousness. +Suddenly, at something he said which the easy traveller could not quite +understand, she sprang up aflame, her hand flying back against the rock +wall behind her for support. Then the man spoke so loud that he was +distinctly audible. + +"When you get mad like that you're prettier'n ever," he said. + +It was a peculiar situation. It seemed incredible, melodramatic, unreal, +in sight of the crawling freight train far out on the levels. + +"Aren't you overplaying your part, sir?" the easy traveller asked. + +The man's hand flew to his six-shooter, while the girl looked around in +swift and eager impulse to the interrupting voice. Its owner, the color +scheme of his attire emphasized by the glare of the low sun, expressed in +his pose and the inquiring flicker of a smile purely the element of the +casual. Far from making any movement toward his own six-shooter, he +seemed oblivious of any such necessity. With the first glimpse of her +face, when he saw the violet flame of her anger go ruddy with surprise +and relief, then fluid and sparkling as a culminating change of emotion, +he felt cheap for having asked himself the question--which now seemed so +superficial--whether she were good-looking or not. She was, undoubtedly, +yes, undoubtedly good-looking in a way of her own. + +"What business is it of yours?" demanded the man, evidently under the +impression that he was due to say something, while his fingers still +rested on his holster. + +"None at all, unless she says so," the deliverer answered. "Is it?" he +asked her. + +After her first glance at him she had lowered her lashes. Now she raised +them, sending a direct message beside which her first glance had been +dumb indifference. He was seeing into the depths of her eyes in the +consciousness of a privilege rarely bestowed. They gave wing to a +thousand inquiries. He had the thrill of an explorer who is about to +enter on a voyage of discovery. Then the veil was drawn before his ship +had even put out from port. It was a veil woven with fine threads of +appreciative and conventional gratitude. + +"It is!" she said decisively. + +"I'll be going," said the persecutor, with a grimace that seemed mixed +partly of inherent bravado and partly of shame, as his pulse slowed down +to normal. + +"As you please," answered that easy traveller. "I had no mind to exert +any positive directions over your movements." + +His politeness, his disinterestedness, and his evident disinclination to +any kind of vehemence carried an implication more exasperating than an +open challenge. They changed melodrama into comedy. They made his +protagonist appear a negligible quantity. + +"There's some things I don't do when women are around," the persecutor +returned, grudgingly, and went for his horse; while oppressive silence +prevailed. The easy traveller was not looking at the girl or she at him. +He was regarding the other man idly, curiously, though not contemptuously +as he mounted and started down the trail toward the valley, only to draw +rein as he looked back over his shoulder with a glare which took the easy +traveller in from head to foot. + +"Huh! You near-silk dude!" he said chokingly, in his rancor which had +grown with the few minutes he had had for self-communion. + +"If you mean my shirt, it was sold to me for pure silk," the easy +traveller returned, in half-diffident correction of the statement. + +"We'll meet again!" came the more definite and articulate defiance. + +"Perhaps. Who can tell? Arizona, though a large place, has so few people +that it is humanly very small." + +Now the other man rose in his stirrups, resting the weight of his body on +the palm of the hand which was on the back of his saddle. He was rigid, +his voice was shaking with very genuine though dramatic rage drawn to a +fine point of determination. + +"When we do meet, you better draw! I give you warning!" he called. + +There was no sign that this threat had made the easy traveller tighten a +single muscle. But a trace of scepticism had crept into his smile. + +"Whew!" He drew the exclamation out into a whistle. + +"Whistle--whistle while you can! You won't have many more chances! Draw, +you tenderfoot! But it won't do any good--I'll get you!" + +With this challenge the other settled back into the saddle and proceeded +on his way. + +"Whew!" The second whistle was anything but truculent and anything but +apologetic. It had the unconscious and spontaneous quality of the delight +of the collector who finds a new specimen in wild places. + +From under her lashes the girl had been watching the easy traveller +rather than her persecutor; first, studiously; then, in the confusion of +embarrassment that left her speechless. + +"Well, well," he concluded, "you must take not only your zoology, but +your anthropology as you find it!" + +His drollness, his dry contemplation of the specimen, and his +absurdly gay and unpractical attire, formed a combination of elements +suddenly grouped into an effect that touched her reflex nerves after +the strain with the magic of humor. She could not help herself: she +burst out laughing. At this, he looked away from the specimen; looked +around puzzled, quizzically, and, in sympathetic impulse, began +laughing himself. Thus a wholly unmodern incident took a whimsical +turn out of a horror which, if farcical in the abstract, was no less +potent in the concrete. + +"Quite like the Middle Ages, isn't it?" he said. + +"But Walter Scott ceased writing in the thirties!" she returned, quick to +fall in with his cue. + +"The swooning age outlasted him--lasted, indeed, into the era of +hoop-skirts; but that, too, is gone." + +"They do give medals," she added. + +"For rescuing the drowning only; and they are a great nuisance to carry +around in one's baggage. Please don't recommend me!" + +Both laughed again softly, looking fairly at each other in +understanding, twentieth-century fashion. She was not to play the +classic damsel or he the classic rescuer. Yet the fact of a young man +finding a young woman brutally annoyed on the roof of the world, five +or six miles from a settlement--well, it was a fact. Over the bump of +their self-introduction, free of the serious impression of her +experience, she could think for him as well as for herself. This struck +her with sudden alarm. + +"I fear I have made you a dangerous enemy," she said. "Pete Leddy is the +prize ruffian of our community of Little Rivers." + +"I thought that this would be an interesting valley," he returned, in +bland appreciation of her contribution of information about the habits of +the specimen. + + + + +II + +DINOSAUR OR DESPERADO + + +She faced a situation irritating and vitalizing, and inevitably, under +its growing perplexity, her observation of his appearance and +characteristics had been acute with feminine intuition, which is so +frequently right, that we forget that it may not always be. She imagined +him with a certain amiable aimlessness turning his pony to one side so as +not to knock down a danger sign, while he rode straight over a precipice. + +What would have happened if Leddy had really drawn? she asked herself. +Probably her deliverer would have regarded the muzzle of Leddy's gun in +studious vacancy before a bullet sent him to kingdom come. All +speculation aside, her problem was how to rescue her rescuer. She felt +almost motherly on his account, he was so blissfully oblivious to +realities. And she felt, too, that under the circumstances, she ought to +be formal. + +"Now, Mister--" she began; and the Mister sounded odd and stilted in her +ears in relation to him. + +"Jack is my name," he said simply. + +"Mine is Mary," she volunteered, giving him as much as he had given +and no more. "Now, sir," she went on, in peremptory earnestness, "this +is serious." + +"It _was_," he answered. "At least, unpleasant." + +"It is, _now_. Pete Leddy meant what he said when he said that he +would draw." + +"He ought to, from his repeated emphasis," answered Jack, in agreeable +affirmation. + +"He has six notches on his gun-handle--six men that he has killed!" +Mary went on. + +"Whew!" said Jack. "And he isn't more than thirty! He seems a hard worker +who keeps right on the job." + +She pressed her lips together to control her amusement, before she asked +categorically, with the precision of a school-mistress: + +"Do you know how to shoot?" + +He was surprised. He seemed to be wondering if she were not making +sport of him. + +"Why should I carry a six-shooter if I did not?" he asked. + +This convinced her that his revolver was a part of his play cowboy +costume. He had come out of the East thinking that desperado etiquette of +the Bad Lands was _opéra bouffe_. + +"Leddy is a dead shot. He will give you no chance!" she insisted. + +"I should think not," Jack mused. "No, naturally not; otherwise there +might have been no sixth notch. The third or the fourth, even the second +object of his favor might have blasted his fair young career as a +wood-carver. Has he set any limit to his ambition? Is he going to make it +an even hundred and then retire?" + +"I don't know!" she gasped. + +"I must ask," he added, thoughtfully. + +Was he out of his head? Certainly his eye was not insane. Its bluish-gray +was twinkling enjoyably into hers. + +"You exasperated him with that whistle. It was a deadly insult to his +desperado pride. You are marked--don't you see, marked?" she persisted. +"And I brought it on! I am responsible!" + +He shook his head in a denial so unmoved by her appeal that she was sure +he would send Job into an apoplectic frenzy. + +"Pardon me, but you're contradicting your own statement. You just said it +was the whistle," he corrected her. "It's the whistle that gives me Check +Number Seven. You haven't the least bit of responsibility. The whistle +gets it all, just as you said." + +This was too much. Confuting her with her own words! Quibbling with his +own danger in order to make her an accomplice of murder! She lost her +temper completely. That fact alone could account for the audacity of her +next remark. + +"I wonder if you really know enough to come in out of the rain!" +she stormed. + +"That's the blessing of living in Arizona," he returned. "It is such a +dry climate." + +She caught herself laughing; and this only made her the more intense a +second later, on a different tack. Now she would plead. + +"Please--please promise me that you will not go to Little Rivers +to-night. Promise that you will turn back over the pass!" + +"You put me between the devil and the dragon. What you ask is impossible. +I'll tell you why," he went on, confidentially. "You know this is the +land of fossil dinosaurs." + +"I had a brute on my hands," she thought; "now I have the Mad Hatter and +the March Hare in collaboration!" + +"There is a big dinosaur come to life on the other side," he proceeded. +"I just got through the pass in time. I could feel his breath on my +back--a hot, gun-powdery breath! It was awful, simply awful and horrible, +too. And just as I had resigned myself to be his entrée, by great luck +his big middle got wedged in the bottom of the V, and his scales scraped +like the plates of a ship against a stone pier!" + +To her disgust she was laughing again. + +"If I went back now out of fear of Pete Leddy," he continued, "that +dinosaur would know that I was such insignificant prey he would not even +take the trouble to knock me down with a forepaw. He would swallow me +alive and running! Think of that slimy slide down the red upholstery of +his gullet, not to mention the misery of a total loss of my dignity and +self-respect!" + +He had spoken it all as if he believed it true. He made it seem +almost true. + +"I like nonsense as much as anybody," she began, "and I do not forget +that you did me a great kindness." + +"Which any stranger, any third person coming at the right moment might +have done," he interrupted. "Sir Walter's age has passed." + +"Yes, but Pete Leddy belongs still farther back. We may laugh at his +ruffianly bravado, but no one may laugh at a forty-four calibre bullet! +Think what you are going to make me pay for your kindness! I must pay +with memory of the sound of a shot and the fall of a body there in the +streets of Little Rivers--a nightmare for life! Oh, I beg of you, though +it is fun for you to be killed, consider me! Don't go down into that +valley! I beg of you, go back over the pass!" + +There was no acting, no suspicion of a gesture. She stood quite still, +while all the power of her eyes reflected the misery which she pictured +for herself. The low pitch of her voice sounded its depths with that +restraint which makes for the most poignant intensity. As she reached her +climax he had come out of his languid pose. He was erect and rigid. She +saw him as some person other than the one to whom she had begun her +appeal. He was still smiling, but his smile was of a different sort. +Instead of being the significant thing about him in expression of his +casualness, it seemed the softening compensation for his stubbornness. + +"I'd like to, but it is hardly in human nature for me to do that. I +can't!" And he asked if he might bring up her pony. + +"Yes," she consented. + +She thought that the faint bow of courtesy with which he had accompanied +the announcement of his decision he would have given, in common +politeness, to anyone who pointed at the danger sign before he rode over +the precipice. + +"May I ride down with you, or shall I go ahead?" he inquired, after he +had assisted her to mount. + +"With me!" she answered, quickly. "You are safe while you are with me." + +The decisive turn to her mobile lips and the faint wrinkles of a frown, +coming and going in various heraldry, formed a vividly sentient and +versatile expression of emotions while she watched his silhouette against +the sky as he turned to get his own pony. + +"Come, P.D.--come along!" he called. + +In answer to his voice an equine face, peculiarly reflective of trail +wisdom, bony and large, particularly over the eyes, slowly turned toward +its master. P.D. was considering. + +"Come along! The trail, P.D.!" And P.D. came, but with democratic +independence, taking his time to get into motion. "He is never fast," +Jack explained, "but once he has the motor going, he keeps at it all day. +So I call him P.D. without the Q., as he is never quick." + +"Pretty Damn, you mean!" she exclaimed, with a certain spontaneous pride +of understanding. Then she flushed in confusion. + +"Oh, thank you! It was so human of you to translate it out loud! It isn't +profane. Look at him now. Don't you think it is a good name for him?" +Jack asked, seriously. + +"I do!" + +She was laughing again, oblivious of the impending tragedy. + + + + +III + +JACK RIDES IN COMPANY + + +Let not the Grundy woman raise an eyebrow of deprecation at the informal +introduction of Jack and Mary, or we shall refute her with her own +precepts, which make the steps to a throne the steps of the social +pyramid. If she wishes a sponsor, we name an impeccable majesty of the +very oldest dynasty of all, which is entirely without scandal. We remind +her of the ancient rule that people who meet at court, vouched for by +royal favor, need no introduction. + +These two had met under the roof of the Eternal Painter. His palette is +somewhere in the upper ether and his head in the interplanetary spaces. +His heavy eyebrows twinkle with star-dust. Dodging occasional flying +meteors, which harass him as flies harass a landscapist out of doors on a +hot day, he is ever active, this mighty artist of the changing desert +sky. So fickle his moods, so versatile his genius, so quick to creation +his fancy, that he never knows what his next composition will be till the +second that it is begun. + +No earthly rival need be jealous of him. He will never clog the +galleries. He always paints on the same canvas, scraping off one picture +to make room for another. And you do not mind the loss of the old. You +live for the new. + +His Majesty has no artistic memory. He is as young as he was the day +that he flung out his first tentative lunette after chaos. He is the +patron saint of all pilgrims from the city's struggle, where they found +no oases of rest. He melts "pasts" and family skeletons and hidden +stories of any kind whatsoever into the blue as a background with the +abandoned preoccupation of his own brushwork. His lieges, who seek +oblivion in the desert, need not worry about the water that will never +run over the millwheel again, or dwell in prophecy on floods to come. The +omnipotence of the moment transports and soothes them. + +"Time is nothing!" says the Eternal Painter. "If you feel important, +remember that man's hectic bustling makes but worm-work on the planet. +Live and breathe joyfully and magnificently! Do not strain your eyes over +embroidery! Come to my open gallery! And how do you like the way I set +those silver clouds a-tumbling? Do you know anything better under the +dome of any church or capitol? Shall I bank them? Line them with purple? +It is done! But no! Let us wipe it all out, change the tint of our +background, and start afresh!" + +With his eleven hundred million billionth sunset, or thereabouts, His +Majesty held a man and a woman who had met on the roof of the world in +thrall. He was lurid at the outset, dipping his camel's hair in at the +round furnace door sinking toward the hills, whose red vortex shot +tongues of flame into canyons and crevasses and drove out their lurking +shadows with the fire of its inquisition. The foliage of Little Rivers +became a grove of quivering leaves of gold, set on a vast beaten platter +of gold. And the man and the woman, like all things else in the +landscape, were suffused in this still, Parnassian, penetrating +brilliancy, which ought to make even a miser feel that his hoarded eagles +and sovereigns are ephemeral dross. + +"I love it all--all the desert!" said Mary Ewold. + +"And I, too!" + +"I have for six years." + +"I for five." + +The sentences had struck clearly as answering chimes, impersonally, in +their preoccupied gazing. + +"It gave me life!" he added. + +"And it gave me life!" + +Then they looked at each other in mutual surprise and understanding; each +in wonder that the other had ever been anything but radiant of +out-of-doors health. That fleck on the lungs which brought a doctor's +orders had long ago been healed by the physician of the ozone they were +breathing. + +"And you remained," he said. + +"And you, also," she answered. + +Their own silence seemed to become a thing apart from the silence of the +infinite. It was as if both recognized a common thought that even the +Eternal Painter could not compel oblivion of the past to which they did +not return; of the faith of cities to which they had been bred. But it is +one of the Eternal Painter's rules that no one of his subjects should ask +another of his subjects why he stays on the desert. Jack was the first to +speak, and his voice returned to the casual key. + +"Usually I watch the sunset while we make camp," he said. "I am very late +to-night--late beyond all habit; and sunset and sunrise do make one a +creature of habit out here. Firio and my little train will grow impatient +waiting for me." + +"You mean the Indian and the burro with the silver bells that came over +the pass some time before you?" + +Of course they belonged to him, she was thinking, even as she made the +inquiry. This play cowboy, with his absurdly enormous silver spurs, would +naturally put bells on his burro. + +"Yes, I sent Firio with Wrath of God and Jag Ear on ahead and told him to +wait at the foot of the descent. Wrath of God will worry--he is of a +worrying nature. I must be going." + +In view of the dinosaur nonsense she was already prepared for a variety +of inventional talk from him. As they started down from the pass in +single file, she leading, the sun sank behind the hills, leaving the +Eternal Painter, unhindered by a furnace glare in the centre of the +canvas, to paint with a thousand brushes in the radiant tints of the +afterglow. + +"You don't like that one, O art critics!" we hear him saying. "Well, here +is another before you have adjusted your _pince-nez,_ and I will brush it +away before you have emitted your first Ah! I do not criticise. I +paint--I paint for the love of it. I paint with the pigments of the +firmament and the imagination of the universe." + +The two did not talk of that sky which held their averted glances, while +knowing hoofs that bore their weight kept the path. For how can you talk +of the desert sky except in the banality of exclamations? It is _lèse +majesté_ to the Eternal Painter to attempt description. + +At times she looked back and their eyes met in understanding, as true +subjects of His Majesty, and then they looked skyward to see what changes +the Master's witchery had wrought. In supreme intoxication of the +senses, breathing that dry air which was like cool wine coming in long +sips to the palate, they rode down the winding trail, till, after a +surpassing outburst, the Eternal Painter dropped his brush for the night. + +It was dusk. Shadows returned to the crevasses. Free of the magic of the +sky, with the curtains of night drawing in, the mighty savagery of the +bare mountains in their disdain of man and imagination reasserted itself. +It dropped Mary Ewold from the azure to the reality of Pete Leddy. She +was seeing, the smoking end of a revolver and a body lying in a pool of +blood; and there, behind her, rode this smiling stranger, proceeding so +genially and carelessly to the fate which she had provided for him. + +With the last turn, which brought them level with the plain, they came +upon an Indian, a baggage burro, and a riding-pony. The Indian sprang up, +grinning: his welcome and doffing a Mexican steeple-hat. + +"I must introduce you all around," Jack told Mary. + +She observed in his manner something new!--a positive enthusiasm for his +three retainers, which included a certain well-relished vanity in their +loyalty and character. + +"Firio has Sancho Panza beaten to a frazzle," Jack said. "Sancho was fat +and unresourceful; even stupid. Fancy him broiling a quail on a spit! +Fancy what a lot of trouble Firio could have saved Don Quixote de la +Mancha! Why, confound it, he would have spoiled the story!" + +Firio was a solid grain, to take Jack's view, winnowed out of bushels of +aboriginal chaff; an Indian, all Indian, without any strain of Spanish +blood in the primitive southern strain. + +"And Firio rides Wrath of God," Jack continued, nodding to a pony with a +low-hung head and pendant lip, whose lugubrious expression was +exaggerated by a scar. "He looks it, don't you think?--always miserable, +whether his nose is in the oats or we run out of water. He is our sad +philosopher, who has just as dependable a gait as P.D. I have many +theories about the psychology of his ego. Sometimes I explain it by a +desire both to escape and to pursue unhappiness, which amounts to a +solemn kind of perpetual motion. But he has a positively sweet nature. +There is no more malice in his professional mournfulness than in the +cheerful humor of Jag Ear." + +"It is plain to see which is Jag Ear," she observed, "and how he earned +his name." + +Every time a burro gets into the corn, an Indian master cuts off a bit +of long, furry ear as a lesson. Before Jag Ear passed into kindlier +hands he had been clipped closer than a Boston terrier. Only a single +upstanding fragment remained in token of a graded education which had +availed him nothing. + +"There's no curtailing Jag Ear's curiosity," said Jack. "To him, +everything is worth trying. That is why he is a born traveller. He +has been with me from Colorado to Chihuahua, on all my wanderings +back and forth." + +While he spoke, Firio mounted Wrath of God and, with Jag Ear's bells +jingling, the supply division set out on the road. Jack and Mary +followed, this time riding side by side, pony nose to pony nose, in an +intimacy of association impossible in the narrow mountain trail. It was +an intimacy signalized by silence. There was an end to the mighty +transports of the heights; the wells of whimsicality had dried up. The +weight of the silence seemed balancing on a brittle thread. All the +afternoon's events aligned themselves in a colossal satire. In the half +light Jack became a gaunt and lonely figure that ought to be confined in +some Utopian kindergarten. + +Mary could feel her temples beating with the fear of what was waiting for +him in Little Rivers, now a dark mass on the levels, just dark, without +color or any attraction except the mystery that goes with the shroud of +night. She knew how he would laugh at her fears; for she guessed that he +was unafraid of anything in the world which, however, was no protection +from Pete Leddy's six-shooter. + +"I--I have a right to know--won't you tell me how you are going to defend +yourself against Pete Leddy?" she demanded, in a sudden outburst. + +"I hadn't thought of that. Certainly, I shall leave it to Pete himself to +open hostilities. I hadn't thought of it because I have been too busy +thinking out how I was going to break a piece of news to Firio. I have +been an awful coward about it, putting it off and putting it off. I had +planned to do it on my birthday two weeks ago, and then he gave me these +big silver spurs--spent a whole month's wages on them, think of that! I +bought this cowboy regalia to go with them. You can't imagine how that +pleased him. It certainly was great fun." + +Mary could only shake her head hopelessly. + +"Firio and Jag Ear and Wrath of God and old P.D. here--we've sort of +grown used to one another's foolishness. Now I can't put it off any +longer, and I'd about as soon be murdered as tell him that I am going +East in the morning." + +"You mean you are going to leave here for good?" She mistrusted her +own hearing. She was dazzled by this sudden burst of light through +the clouds. + +"Yes, by the first train. This is my last desert ride." + +Why had he not said so at first? It would not only have saved her from +worry, but from the humiliation of pleading with a stranger. Doubtless he +had enjoyed teasing her. But no matter. The affair need not last much +longer, now. She told herself that, if necessary, she would mount guard +over him for the remaining twelve hours of his stay. Once he was aboard +the Pullman he would be out of danger; her responsibility would be over +and the whole affair would become a bizarre memory; an incident closed. + +"Back to New York," he said, as one who enters a fog without a +compass. "Back to fight pleosaurs, dinosaurs, and all kinds of +monsters," he added, with a cheeriness which rang with the first false +note she had heard from him. "I don't care," he concluded, and broke +into a Spanish air, whose beat ran with the trickling hoof-beats of +the ponies in the sand. + +"That is it!" she thought. "That explains. He just does not care about +anything." + +Ahead, the lamps were beginning to twinkle in the little settlement which +had sent such a contrast in citizenship as Mary Ewold and Pete Leddy out +to the pass. They were approaching a single, isolated building, from the +door of which came a spray of light and the sound of men's voices. + +"That is Bill Lang's place," Mary explained. "He keeps a store, with a +bar in the rear. He also has the post-office, thanks to his political +influence, and this is where I have to stop for the mail when I return +from the pass." + +She had not spoken with any sense of a hint which it was inevitable he +should accept. + +"Let me get it for you;" and before she had time to protest, he had +dismounted, drawing rein at the edge of the wooden steps. + +She rode past where his pony was standing. When he entered the door, his +tallness and lean ease of posture silhouetted in the light, she could +look in on the group of idling male gossips. + +"Don't!" + +It was a half cry from her, hardly audible in an intensity which she knew +was futile in the surge of her torturing self-incrimination. Why had she +not thought that it would be here that Pete Leddy was bound to wait for +anyone coming in by the trail from Galeria? The loungers suddenly dropped +to the cover of boxes and barrels, as a flicker of steel shot upward, and +behind the gleaming rim of a revolver muzzle held rigid was a brown hand +and Leddy's hard, unyielding face. + +What matter if the easy traveller could shoot? He was caught like a man +coming out of an alley. He had no chance to draw in turn. In the click of +a second-hand the thing would be over. Mary's eyes involuntarily closed, +to avoid seeing the flash from the revolver. She listened for the report; +for the fall of a body which should express the horror she had visualized +for the hundredth time. A century seemed to pass and there was no sound +except the beat of her heart, which ran in a cataract throb to her +temples; no sound except that and what seemed to be soft, regular steps +on the bare floor of the store. + +"Coward!" she told herself, with the agony of her suspense +breaking. "He saved you from inexpressible humiliation and you are +afraid even to look!" + +She opened her eyes, prepared for the worst. Had she gone out of her +head? Could she no longer trust her own eyesight? What she saw was +inconceivable. The startled faces of the loungers were rising from +behind the boxes and barrels. Pete Leddy's gun had dropped to his side +and his would-be victim had a hand on Pete's shoulder. Jack was talking +apparently in a kindly and reasoning tone, but she could not make out +his words. + +One man alone evidently had not taken cover. It was Jim Galway, a +rancher, who had been standing at the mail counter. To judge by his +expression, what Jack was saying had his approval. + +With a nod to Leddy and then a nod to the others, as if in amicable +conclusion of the affair, Jack wheeled around to the counter, disclosing +Leddy's face wry with insupportable chagrin. His revolver was still in +his hand. In the swift impulse of one at bay who finds himself released, +he brought it up. There was murder, murder from behind, in the catlike +quickness of his movement; but Jim Galway was equally quick. He threw his +whole weight toward Leddy in a catapult leap, as he grasped Leddy's wrist +and bore it down. Jack faced about in alert readiness. Seeing that Galway +had the situation pat, he put up his hand in a kind of questioning, +puzzled remonstrance; but Mary noticed that he was very erect. He spoke +and Galway spoke in answer. Evidently he was asking that Leddy be +released. To this Galway consented at length, but without drawing back +until he had seen Leddy's gun safe in the holster. + +Then Leddy raised himself challengingly on tiptoes to Jack, who turned to +Galway in the manner of one extending an invitation. On his part, Leddy +turned to Ropey Smith, another of Little Rivers' ruffians. After this, +Leddy went through the door at the rear; the loungers resumed their seats +on the cracker barrels and gazed at one another with dropped jaws, while +Bill Lang proceeded with his business as postmaster. + + + + +IV + +HE CARRIES THE MAIL + + +When the suspense was over for Mary, the glare of the store lamp went +dancing in grotesque waves, and abruptly, uncannily, fell away into the +distant, swimming glow of a lantern suffused with fog. She swayed. Only +the leg-rest kept her from slipping off the pony. Her first returning +sense of her surroundings came with the sound of a voice, the same +careless, pleasant voice which she had heard at Galeria asking Pete Leddy +if he were not overplaying his part. + +"You were right," said the voice. "It was the whistle that made him +so angry." + +Indistinctly she associated a slowly-shaping figure with the voice and +realized that she had been away in the unknown for a second. Yes, it was +all very well to talk about Sir Walter being out of fashion, but she had +been near to fainting, and in none of the affectation of the hoop-skirt +age, either. Had she done any foolish thing in expression of a weakness +that she had never known before? Had she extended her hand for support? +Had he caught her as she wobbled in the saddle? No. She was relieved to +see that he was not near enough for that. + +"By no stretch of ethics can you charge yourself with further +responsibility or fears," he continued. "Pete and I understand each other +perfectly, now." + +But in his jocularity ran something which was plain, if unspoken. It was +that he would put an end to a disagreeable subject. His first words to +her had provided a bridge--and burned it--from the bank of the +disagreeable to the bank of agreeable. Her own desire, with full mastery +of her faculties coming swiftly, fell in with his. She wanted to blot out +that horror and scotch a sudden uprising of curiosity as to the exact +nature of the gamble in death through which he had passed. It was enough +that he was alive. + +The blurry figure became distinct, smiling with inquiry in a glance from +her to the stack of papers, magazines, and pamphlets which crowded his +circling arms. He seemed to have emptied the post-office. There had not +been any Pete Leddy; there had been no display of six-shooters. He had +gone in after the mail. Here he was ready to deliver it by the bushel, +while he waited for orders. She had to laugh at his predicament as he +lowered his chin to steady a book on the top of the pile. + +"Oh, I meant to tell you that you were not to bring the second-class +matter!" she told him. "We always send a servant with a basket for that. +You see what comes of having a father who is not only omnivorous, but has +a herbivorous capacity." + +He saw that the book had a row of Italian stamps across the wrapper. +Unless that popular magazine stopped slipping, both the book and a heavy +German pamphlet would go. He took two hasty steps toward her, in mock +distress of appeal. + +"I'll allow salvage if you act promptly!" he said. + +She lifted the tottering apex just in time to prevent its fall. + +"I'll take the book," she said. "Father has been waiting months for +it. We can separate the letters and leave the rest in the store to be +sent for." + +"The railroad station is on the other side of the town, isn't it?" he +asked. + +"Yes." + +"I shall camp nearby, so it will be no trouble to leave my burden at your +door as I pass." + +"He does have the gift of oiling the wheels in either, big or little +moments," she thought, as she realized how simple and considerate had +been his course from the first. He was a stranger going on his way, +stopping, however, to do her or any other traveller a favor _en route_. + +"Firio, we're ready to hear Jag Ear's bells!" he called. + +"_SÃ_!" answered Firio. + +All the while the Indian had kept in the shadow, away from the spray of +light from the store lamp, unaware of the rapid drama that had passed +among the boxes and barrels. He had observed nothing unusual in the young +lady, whose outward manifestation of what she had, witnessed was the +closing of her eyes. + +It was out of the question that Jack should mount a horse when both +arms were crowded with their burden. He walked beside Mary's stirrup +leather in the attitude of that attendant on royalty who bears a crown +on a cushion. + +"Little Rivers is a new town, isn't it?" he asked. + +"Yes, the Town Wonderful," she answered. "Father founded it." + +She spoke with an affection which ran as deep into the soil as young +roots after water. If on the pass she had seemed a part of the desert, +of great, lonely distances and a far-flung carpet of dreams, here she +seemed to belong to books and gardens. + +"I wish I had time to look over the Town Wonderful in the morning, but my +train goes very early, I believe." + +After his years of aimless travelling, to which he had so readily +confessed, he had tied himself to a definite hour on a railroad +schedule as something commanding and inviolable. Such inconsistency +did not surprise her. Had she not already learned to expect +inconsistencies from him? + +"Oh, it is all simple and primitive, but it means a lot to us," she said. + +"What one's home and people mean to him is pretty well all of one's own +human drama," he returned, seriously. + +The peace of evening was in the air and the lights along the single +street were a gentle and persistent protest of human life against the +mighty stretch of the enveloping mantle of night. From the cottages of +the ranchers came the sound of voices. The twang of a guitar quivering +starward made medley with Jag Ear's bells. + +Here, for a little distance, the trail, in its long reach on the desert, +had taken on the dignity of the urban name of street. On either side, +fronting the cottages, ran the slow waters of two irrigation ditches, +gleaming where lamp-rays penetrated the darkness. The date of each +rancher's settlement was fairly indicated by the size of the +quick-growing umbrella and pepper-trees which had been planted for shade. +Thus all the mass of foliage rose like a mound of gentle slope toward the +centre of the town, where Jack saw vaguely the outlines of a rambling +bungalow, more spacious if no more pretentious than its neighbors in its +architecture. At a cement bridge over the ditch, leading to a broad +veranda under the soft illumination of a big, wrought-iron lantern, Mary +drew rein. + +"This is home," she said; "and--and thank you!" + +He could not see her face, which was in the shadow turned toward him, as +he looked into the light of the lantern from the other side of her pony. + +"And--thank you!" + +It was as if she had been on the point of saying something else and +could not get the form of any sentence except these two words. Was there +anything further to say except "Thank you"? Anything but to repeat +"Thank you"? + +There he stood, this stranger so correctly introduced by the Eternal +Painter, with his burden, waiting instructions in this moment of awkward +diffidence. He looked at her and at the porch and at his bundle of mail +in a quizzical appeal. Then she realized that, in a peculiar lapse of +abstraction, she had forgotten about his encumberment. + +Before she could speak there was a sonorous hail from the house; a hail +in keeping with the generous bulk of its owner, who had come through the +door. He was well past middle-age, with a thatch of gray hair half +covering his high forehead. In one hand he held the book that he had been +reading, and in the other a pair of big tortoise-shell glasses. + +"Mary, you are late--and what have we here?" + +He was beaming at Jack as he came across the bridge and he broke into +hearty laughter as he viewed Jack's preoccupation with the +second-class matter. + +"At last! At last we have rural free delivery in Little Rivers! We are +the coming town! And your uniform, sir"--Jasper Ewold took in the cowboy +outfit with a sweeping glance which warmed with the picturesque +effect--"it's a great improvement on the regulation; fit for free +delivery in Little Rivers, where nobody studies to be unconventional in +any vanity of mistaking that for originality, but nobody need be +conventional." + +He took some of the cargo in his own hands. With the hearty breeze of his +personality he fairly blew Jack onto the porch, where magazines and +pamphlets were dropped indiscriminately in a pile on a rattan settee. + +"You certainly have enough reading matter," said Jack. "And I must be +getting on to camp." + +For he had no invitation to stay from Mary and the conventional fact +that he had to recognize is that a postman's call is not a social call. +As he turned to go he faced her coming across the bridge. An Indian +servant, who seemed to have materialized out of the night, had taken +charge of her pony. + +"To camp! Never!" said Jasper Ewold. "Sir Knight, slip your lance in the +ring of the castle walls--but having no lance and this being no castle, +well, Sir Knight in _chaparejos_--that is to say, Sir Chaps--let me +inform you"--here Jasper Ewold threw back his shoulders and tossed his +mane of hair, his voice sinking to a serious basso profundo--"yes, inform +you, sir, that there is one convention, a local rule, that no stranger +crosses this threshold at dinner-time without staying to dinner." There +was a resonance in his tone, a liveliness to his expression, that was +infectious. + +"But Firio and Jag Ear and Wrath of God wait for me," Jack said, entering +with real enjoyment into the grandiose style. + +"High sounding company, sir! Let me see them!" demanded Jasper Ewold. + +Jack pointed to his cavalcade waiting in the half shadows, where the +lamp-rays grew thin. Wrath of God's bony face was pointed lugubriously +toward the door; Jag Ear was wiggling his fragment of ear. + +"And Moses on the mountain-top says that you stay!" declared +Jasper Ewold. + +Jack looked at Mary. She had not spoken yet and he waited on her word. + +"Please do!" she said. "Father wants someone to talk to." + +"Yes, Sir Chaps, I shall talk; otherwise, why was man given a tongue in +his head and ideas?" + +Refusal was out of the question. Accordingly, Firio was sent on to make +camp alone. + +"Now, Sir Chaps, now, Mr.--" began Jasper Ewold, pausing blankly. "Why, +Mary, you have not given me his city directory name!" + +"Mr.--" and Mary blushed. She could only pass the, blame back to the +Eternal Painter's oversight in their introduction. + +"Jack Wingfield!" said Jack, on his own account. + +"Jack Wingfield!" repeated Jasper Ewold, tasting the name. + +A flicker of surprise followed by a flicker of drawn intensity ran over +his features, and he studied Jack in a long glance, which he masked just +in time to save it from being a stare. Jack was conscious of the +scrutiny. He flushed slightly and waited for some word to explain it; +but none came. Jasper Ewold's Olympian geniality returned in a +spontaneous flood. + +"Come inside, Jack Wingfield," he said. "Come inside, Sir Chaps--for that +is how I shall call you." + +The very drum-beat of hospitality was in his voice. It was a wonderful +voice, deep and warm and musical; not to be forgotten. + + + + +V + +A SMILE AND A SQUARE CHIN + + +When a man comes to the door book in hand and you have the testimony of +the versatility and breadth of his reading in half a bushel of mail for +him, you expect to find his surroundings in keeping. But in Jasper +Ewold's living-room Jack found nothing of the kind. + +Heavy, natural beams supported the ceiling. On the gray cement walls were +four German photographs of famous marbles. The Venus de Milo looked +across to the David of Michael Angelo; the Flying Victory across to +Rodin's Thinker. In the centre was a massive Florentine table, its broad +top bare except for a big ivory tusk paper-knife free from any mounting +of silver. On the shelf underneath were portfolios of the reproductions +of paintings. + +An effect which at first was one of quiet spaciousness became impressive +and compelling. Its simplicity was without any of the artificiality that +sometimes accompanies an effort to escape over-ornamentation. No one +could be in the room without thinking through his eyes and with his +imagination. Wherever he sat he would look up to a masterpiece as the +sole object of contemplation. + +"This is my room. Here, Mary lets me have my way," said Jasper Ewold. +"And it is not expensive." + +"The Japanese idea of concentration," said Jack. + +Jasper Ewold, who had been watching the effect of the room on Jack, as he +watched it on every new-comer, showed his surprise and pleasure that this +young man in cowboy regalia understood some things besides camps and +trails; and this very fact made him answer in the vigorous and enjoyed +combatancy of the born controversialist. + +"Japanese? No!" he declared. "The little men with their storks and vases +have merely discovered to us in decoration a principle which was Greek in +a more majestic world than theirs. It was the true instinct of the +classic motherhood of our art before collectors mistook their residences +for warehouses." + +"And the books?" Jack asked, boyishly. "Where are they? Yes, what do you +do with all the second-class matter?" + +The question was bait to Jasper Ewold. It gave him an opportunity for +discourse. + +"When I read I want nothing but a paper-cutter close at hand--a good, big +paper-cutter, whose own weight carries it through the leaves. And I want +to be alone with that book. If I am too lazy to go to the library for +another, then it is not worth reading. When I get head-achy with print +and look up, I don't want to stare at the backs of more books. I want +something to rest and fill the eye. I--" + +"Father," Mary admonished him, "I fear this is going to be long. Why not +continue after Mr. Wingfield has washed off the dust of travel and we are +at table?" + +"Mary is merely jealous. She wants to hurry you to the dining-room, which +was designed to her taste," answered her father, with an affectation of +grand indignation. "The dust of travel here is clean desert dust--but I +admit that it is gritty. Come with me, Sir Chaps!" + +He bade Jack precede him through a door diagonally opposite the one by +which he had entered from the veranda. On the other side Jack found +himself surrounded by walls of books, which formed a parallelogram around +a great deal table littered with magazines and papers. Here, indeed, the +printed word might riot as it pleased in the joyous variety and chaos of +that truly omnivorous reader of herbivorous capacity. Out of the library +Jack passed into Jasper Ewold's bedroom. It was small, with a soldier's +cot of exaggerated size that must have been built for his amplitude of +person, and it was bare of ornament except for an old ivory crucifix. + +"There's a pitcher and basin, if you incline to a limited operation for +outward convention," said Jasper Ewold; "and through that door you will +find a shower, if you are for frank, unlimited submersion of the +altogether." + +"Have I time for the altogether?" Jack asked. + +"When youth has not in this house, it marks a retrocession toward +barbarism for Little Rivers which I refuse to contemplate. Take your +shower, Sir Chaps, and"--a smile went weaving over the hills and valleys +of Jasper Ewold's face--"and, mind, you take off those grand boots or +they will get full of water! You will find me in the library when you are +through;" and, shaking with subterranean enjoyment of his own joke, he +closed the door. + +Cool water from the bowels of the mountains fell on a figure as slender +as that of the great Michael's David pictured in the living-room; a +figure whose muscles ran rippling with leanness and suppleness, without +the bunching over-development of the athlete. He bubbled in shivery +delight with the first frigid sting of the downpour; he laughed in +ecstasy as he pulled the valve wide open, inviting a Niagara. + +While he was still glowing with the rough intimacy of the towel, he +viewed the trappings thrown over the chair and his revolver holster on +the bureau in a sense of detachment, as if in the surroundings of +civilization some voice of civilization made him wish for flannels in +which to dine. Then there came a rap at the door, and an Indian appeared +with an envelope addressed in feminine handwriting. On the corner of the +page within was a palm-tree--a crest to which anybody who dwelt on the +desert might be entitled; and Jack read: + +"DEAR MR. WINGFIELD: + +"Please don't tell father about that horrible business on the pass. It +will worry him unnecessarily and might interfere with my afternoon rides, +which are everything to me. There is not the slightest danger in the +future. After this I shall always go armed. + +"Sincerely yours, + +"MARY EWOLD." + +The shower had put him in such lively humor that his answer was born in a +flash from memory of her own catechising of him on Galeria. + +"First, I must ask if you know how to shoot," he scribbled beneath her +signature. + +The Indian seemed hardly out of the doorway before he was back +with a reply: + +"I do, or I would not go armed," it said. + +She had capped his satire with satire whose prick was, somehow, +delicious. He regarded the sweep of her handwriting with a lingering +interest, studying the swift nervous strokes before he sent the note back +with still another postscript: + +"Of course I had never meant to tell anybody," he wrote. "It is not a +thing to think of in that way." + +This, he thought, must be the end of the correspondence; but he was +wrong. The peripatetic go-between reappeared, and under Jack's last +communication was written, "Thank you!" He could hardly write "Welcome!" +in return. It was strictly a case of nothing more to say by either +duelist. In an impulse he slipped the sheet, with its palm symbolic of +desert mystery and oasis luxuriance, into his pocket. + +"Here I am in the midst of the shucks and biting into the meat of the +kernel," said Jasper Ewold, as Jack entered the library to find him +standing in the midst of wrappings which he had dropped on the floor; +"yes, biting into very rich meat." + +He held up the book which was evidently the one that had balanced +uncertainly on the pile which Jack had brought from the post-office. + +"Professor Giuccamini's researches! It is as interesting as a novel. But +come! You are hungry!" + +Book in hand, and without removing his tortoise-shell spectacles, he +passed out into the garden at the rear. There a cloth was laid under +a pavilion. + +"In a country where it never rains," said the host, "where it is eternal +spring, walls to a house are conventions on which to stack books and hang +pictures. Mary has chosen nature for her decorative effect--cheaper, +even, than mine. In the distance is Galeria; in the foreground, what was +desert six years ago." + +The overhead lamp deepened to purple the magenta of the bougainvillea +vines running up the pillars of the pavilion; made the adjacent rows of +peony blossoms a pure, radiant white; while beyond, in the shadows, was a +broad path between rows of young palms. + +Mary appeared around a hedge which hid the open-air kitchen. The girl of +the gray riding-habit was transformed into a girl in white. Jack saw her +as a domestic being. He guessed that she had seen that the table was set +right; that she had had a look-in at the cooking; that the hands whose +boast it was that they could shoot, had picked the jonquils in the +slender bronze vase on the table. + +"Father, there you are again, bringing a book to the dining-room against +the rules," she warned him; "against all your preachments about reading +at meals!" + +"That's so, Mary," said Jasper Ewold, absently, regarding the book as if +some wicked genius had placed it in his hand quite unbeknown to him. +"But, Mary, it is Professor Giuccamini at last! Giuccamini that I have +waited for so long! I beg your pardon, Sir Chaps! When I have somebody to +talk to I stand doubly accused. Books at dinner! I descend into dotage!" + +In disgust he started toward the house with the book. But in the very +doorway he paused and, reopening the book, turned three or four pages +with ravenous interest. + +"Giuccamini and I agree!" he shouted. "He says there is no doubt that +Burlamacchi and Pico were correct. Cosmo de' Medici did call Savonarola +to his death-bed, and I am glad of it. I like good stories to turn out +true! But here I have a listener--a live listener, and I ramble on about +dead tyrants and martyrs. I apologize--I apologize!" and he disappeared +in the library. + +"Father does not let me leave books in the living-room, which is his. +Why should he bring them to the dining-room, which is mine?" Mary +explained. + +"There must be law in every household," Jack agreed. + +"Yes, somebody fresh to talk to, at, around, and through!" called Jasper +Ewold, as he reappeared. "Yes, and over your head; otherwise I shall not +be flattered by my own conversation." + +"He glories in being an intellectual snob," Mary said. "Please pretend at +times not to understand him." + +"Thank you, Mary. You are the corrective that keeps my paternal +superiority in balance," answered her father, with a comprehending wave +of his hand indicating his sense of humor at the same time as playful +insistence on his role as forensic master of the universe. + +How he did talk! He was a mill to which all intellectual grist was +welcome. Over its wheel the water ran now singing, again with the roar of +a cataract. He changed theme with the relish of one who rambles at will, +and the emotion of every opinion was written on the big expanse of his +features and enforced with gestures. He talked of George Washington, of +Andrea del Sarto, of melon-growing, trimming pepper-trees, the Divina +Commedia, fighting rose-bugs, of Schopenhauer and of Florence--a great +deal about Florence, a city that seemed to hang in his mind as a sort of +Renaissance background for everything else, even for melon-growing. + +"You are getting over my head!" Jack warned him at times, politely. + +"That is the trouble," said Jasper Ewold. "Consider the hardship of +being the one wise man in the world! I find it lonely, inconvenient, +stupefying. Why, I can't even convince Jim Galway that I know more about +dry farming than he!" + +Jack listened raptly, his face glowing. Once, when he looked in his +host's direction suddenly, after speaking to Mary, he found that he was +the object of the same inquiring scrutiny that he had been on the porch. +In lulls he caught the old man's face in repose. It had sadness, then, +the sadness of wreckage; sadness against which he seemed to fence in his +wordy feints and thrusts. + +"Christian civilization began in the Tuscan valley," the philosopher +proceeded, harking back to the book which had arrived by the evening's +mail. "Florence was a devil--Florence was divine. They raised geniuses +and devils and martyrs: the most cloud-topping geniuses, the worst +devils, the most saintly martyrs. But better than being a drone in a +Florence pension is all this"--with a wave of his hand to the garden and +the stars--"which I owe to Mary and the little speck on her lungs which +brought us here after--after we had found that we had not as much money +as we thought we had and an old fellow who had been an idling student, +mostly living abroad all his life, felt the cramp of the material facts +of board-and-clothes money. It made Mary well. It made me know the +fulness of wisdom of the bee and the ant, and it brought me back to the +spirit of America--the spirit of youth and accomplishment. Instead of +dreaming of past cities, I set out to make a city like a true American. +Here we came to camp in our first travelled delight of desert spaces for +her sake; and here we brought what was left of the fortune and started a +settlement." + +The spectator-philosopher attitude of audience to the world's stage +passed. He became the builder and the rancher, enthusiastically dwelling +on the growth of orchards and gardens in expert fondness. As Jack +listened, the fragrance of flowers was in his nostrils and in intervals +between Jasper Ewold's sentences he seemed to hear the rustle of borning +leaf-fronds breaking the silence. But the narrative was not an idyll. +Toil and patience had been the handmaidens of the fecundity of the soil. +Prosperity had brought an entail of problems. Jasper Ewold mentioned them +briefly, as if he would not ask a guest to share the shadows which they +brought to his brow. + +"The honey of our prosperity brings us something besides the bees. It +brings those who would share the honey without work," said he. "It brings +the Bill Lang hive and Pete Leddy." + +At the mention of the name, Jack's and Mary's glances met. + +"You have promised not to tell," hers was saying. + +"I will not," his was answering. + +But clearly he had grasped the fact that Little Rivers was getting out of +its patron's hands, and every honest man in that community wanted to be +rid of Pete Leddy. + +"I should think your old friend, Cosmo de' Medici, would have found a +way," Jack suggested. + +"Cosmo is for talk," said Mary. "At heart father is a Quaker." + +"Some are for lynching," said Jasper Ewold, thoughtfully. "Begin to +promote order with disorder and where will you end?" he inquired, +belligerently. "This is not the Middle Ages. This is the Little Rivers +of peace." + +Then, after a quotation from Cardinal Newman, which seemed pretty +far-fetched to deal with desert ruffians, he was away again, setting out +fruit trees and fighting the scale. + +"And our Date Tree Wonderful!" he continued. "This year we get our first +fruit, unless the book is wrong. You cannot realize what this first-born +of promise means to Little Rivers. Under the magic of water it completes +the cycle of desert fecundity, from Scotch oats and Irish potatoes to the +Arab's bread. Bananas I do not include. Never where the banana grows has +there been art or literature, a good priesthood, unimpassioned +law-makers, honest bankers, or a noble knighthood. It is just a little +too warm. Here we can build a civilization which neither roasts us in +summer nor freezes us in winter." + +There was a fluid magnetism in the rush of Jasper Ewold's junketing +verbiage which carried the listener on the bosom of a pleasant stream. +Jack was suddenly reminded that it must be very late and he had far +overstayed the retiring hour of the desert, where the Eternal Painter +commands early rising. + +"Going--going so soon!" protested Jasper Ewold. + +"So late!" Jack smiled back. + +To prove that it was, he called attention to the fact, when they passed +through the living-room to the veranda, that not a light remained in any +ranch-house. + +"I have not started my talk yet," said Jasper. "But next time you come I +will really make a beginning--and you shall see the Date Tree Wonderful." + +"I go by the morning train," Jack returned. + +"So! so!" mused Jasper. "So! so!" he objected, but not gloomily. "I get a +good listener only to lose him!" + +But Jack was hardly conscious of the philosopher's words. In that +interval he had still another glimpse of Mary's eyes without the veil and +saw deeper than he had before; saw vast solitudes, inviting yet offering +no invitation, where bright streams seemed to flash and sing under the +sunlight and then disappear in a desert. That was her farewell to the +easy traveller who had stopped to do her a favor on the trail. And he +seemed to ask nothing more in that spellbound second; nor did he after +the veil had fallen, and he acquitted himself of some spoken form of +thanks for an evening of happiness. + +"A pleasant journey!" Mary said. + +"Luck, Sir Chaps, luck!" called Jasper Ewold. + +Jack's easy stride, as he passed out into the night, confirmed the last +glimpse of his smiling, whimsical "I don't care" attitude, which never +minded the danger sign on the precipice's edge. + +"He does not really want to go back to New York," Mary remarked, and was +surprised to find that she had spoken her thought aloud. + +"I hardly agree with that opinion," said her father absently, his +thoughts far afield from the fetter of his words. "But of one thing I am +sure, John Wingfield! A smile and a square chin!" + + + + +VI + +OBLIVION IS NOT EASY + + +"A smile and a square chin!" Mary repeated, as they went back into the +living-room. + +"Yes, hasn't he both, this Wingfield?" asked her father. + +"This Wingfield"--on the finish of the sentence there was a halting, +appreciable accent. He moved toward the table with the listlessness of +some enormous automaton of a man to whom every step of existence was a +step in a treadmill. There was a heavy sadness about his features which +rarely came, and always startled her when it did come with a fear that +they had so set in gloom that they would never change. He raised his hand +to the wick screw of the lamp, waiting for her to pass through the room +before turning off the flame which bathed him in its rays, giving him the +effect of a Rodinesque incarnation of memory. + +Any melancholy that beset him was her own enemy, to be fought and +cajoled. Mary slipped to his side, dropping her head on his shoulder and +patting his cheek. But this magic which had so frequently rallied him +brought only a transient, hazy smile and in its company what seemed a +random thought. + +"And you and he came down the pass together? Yes, yes!" he said. His tone +had the vagueness of one drawing in from the sea a net that seemed to +have no end. + +Had Jack Wingfield been more than a symbol? Had he brought something +more than an expression of culture, manner, and ease of a past which +nothing could dim? Had he suggested some personal relation to that past +which her father preferred to keep unexplained? These questions crowded +into her mind speculatively. They were seeking a form of conveyance when +she realized that she had been adrift with imaginings. He was getting +older. She must expect his preoccupation and his absent-mindedness to +become more exacting. + +"Yes, yes!" His voice had risen to its customary sonority; his eyes were +twinkling; all the hard lines had become benignant wrinkles of Olympian +charm. "Yes, yes! You and this funny tourist! What a desert it is! I +wonder--now, I wonder if he will go aboard the Pullman in that stage +costume. But come, come, Mary! It's bedtime for all pastoral workers and +subjects of the Eternal Painter. Off you go, or we shall be playing +blind-man's-buff in the dark!" He was chuckling as he turned down the +wick. "His enormous spurs, and Jag Ear and Wrath of God!" he said. + +Her fancy ran dancing rejoicingly with his mood. + +"Don't forget the name of his pony!" she called merrily from the stairs. +"It's P.D." + +"P.D.!" said her father, with the disappointment of one tempted by a good +morsel which he finds tasteless. "There he seems to have descended to +alphabetic commonplace. No imagery in that!" + +"He is a slow, reliable pony," put in Mary, "without the Q." + +"Pretty Damn, without the Quick! Oh, I know slang!" + +Jasper Ewold burst into laughter. It was still echoing through the house +when she entered her room. As it died away it seemed to sound hollow and +veiled, when the texture of sunny, transparent solidity in his laugh was +its most pronounced characteristic. + +Probably this, too, was imagination, Mary thought. It had been an +overwrought day, whose events had made inconsiderable things supreme over +logic. She always slept well; she would sleep easily to-night, because it +was so late. But she found herself staring blankly into the darkness and +her thoughts ranging in a shuttle play of incoherency from the moment +that Leddy had approached her on the pass till a stranger, whom she never +expected to see again, walked away into the night. What folly! What folly +to keep awake over an incident of desert life! But was it folly? What +sublime egoism of isolated provincialism to imagine that it had been +anything but a great event! Naturally, quiet, desert nerves must still be +quivering after the strain. Inevitably, they would not calm instantly, +particularly as she had taken coffee for supper. She was wroth about the +coffee, though she had taken less than usual that evening. + +She heard the clock strike one; she heard it strike two, and three. And +he, on his part--this Sir Chaps who had come so abruptly into her life +and evidently set old passions afire in her father's mind--of course he +was sleeping! That was the exasperating phlegm of him. He would sleep on +horseback, riding toward the edge of a precipice! + +"A smile and a square chin--and dreamy vagueness," she kept repeating. + +The details of the scene in the store recurred with a vividness which +counting a flock of sheep as they went over a stile or any other trick +for outwitting insomnia could not drive from her mind. Then Pete Leddy's +final look of defiance and Jack Wingfield's attitude in answer rose out +of the pantomime in merciless clearness. + +All the indecisiveness of the interchange of guesses and rehearsed +impressions was gone. She got a message, abruptly and convincingly. This +incident of the pass was not closed. An ultimatum had been exchanged. +Death lay between these two men. Jack had accepted the issue. + +The clock struck four and five. Before it struck again daylight would +have come; and before night came again, what? To lie still in the torment +of this new experience of wakefulness with its peculiar, half-recognized +forebodings, had become unbearable. She rose and dressed and went down +stairs softly, candle in hand, aware only that every agitated fibre of +her being was whipping her to action which should give some muscular +relief from the strain of her overwrought faculties. She would go into +the garden and walk there, waiting for sunrise. But at the edge of the +path she was arrested by a shadow coming from the servants' +sleeping-quarters. It was Ignacio, the little Indian who cared for her +horse, ran errands, and fought garden bugs for her--Ignacio, the +note-bearer. + +"Señorita! señorita!" he exclaimed, and his voice, vibrant with something +stronger than surprise, had a certain knowing quality, as if he +understood more than he dared to utter. "Señorita, you rise early!" + +"Sometimes one likes to look at the morning stars," she remarked. + +But there were no stars; only a pale moon, as Ignacio could see +for himself. + +"Señorita, that young man who was here and Pete Leddy--do you know, +señorita?" + +"The young man who came down from the pass with me, you mean?" she asked, +inwardly shamed at her simulation of casual curiosity. + +"Yes, he and Leddy--bad blood between them'" said Ignacio. "You no know, +señorita? They fight at daybreak." + +The pantomime in the store, Jack's form disappearing with its easy step +into the night, analyzed in the light of this news became the natural +climax of a series of events all under the spell of fatality. + +"Come, Ignacio!" she said. "We must hurry!" And she started around the +house toward the street. + + + + +VII + +WHAT HAPPENED AT LANG'S + + +While Jack had been playing the pioneer of rural free delivery in Little +Rivers, Pete Leddy, in the rear of Bill Lang's store, was refusing all +stimulants, but indulging in an unusually large cud of tobacco. + +"Liquor ain't no help in drawing a bead," he explained to the loungers +who followed him through the door after Jack had gone. + +If Pete did not want to drink it was not discreet to press him, +considering the mood he was in. The others took liberal doses, which +seemed only to heighten the detail of the drama which they had witnessed. +To Mary it had been all pantomime; to them it was dynamic with language. +It was something beyond any previous contemplation of possibility in +their cosmos. + +The store had been enjoying an average evening. All present were +expressing their undaunted faith in the invincibility of James J. +Jeffries, when a smiling stranger appeared in the doorway. He was dressed +like a regular cowboy dude. His like might have appeared on the stage, +but had never been known to get off a Pullman in Arizona. And the instant +he appeared, up flashed Pete Leddy's revolver. + +The gang had often discussed when and how Pete would get his seventh +victim, and here they were about to be witnesses of the deed. Instinct +taught them the proper conduct on such occasions. The tenderfoot was as +good as dead; but, being a tenderfoot and naturally a bad shot and prone +to excitement, he might draw and fire wild. They ducked with the avidity +of woodchucks into their holes--all except Jim Galway, who remained +leaning against the counter. + +"I gin ye warning!" they heard Pete say, and closed their eyes +involuntarily--all except Jim Galway--with their last impression the +tenderfoot's ingenuous smile and the gleam on Pete's gun-barrel. They +waited for the report, as Mary had, and then they heard steps and looked +up to see that dude tenderfoot, still smiling, going straight toward the +muzzle pointed at his head, his hands at his side in no attempt to draw. +The thing was incredible and supernatural. + +"Pete is letting him come close first," they thought. + +But there, unbelievable as it was, Pete was lowering his revolver and +the tenderfoot's hand was on his shoulder in a friendly, explanatory +position. Pete seemed in a trance, without will-power over his trigger +finger, and Pete was the last man in the world that you would expect +to lose his nerve. Jim Galway being the one calm observer, whose +vision had not been disturbed by precipitancy in taking cover, let us +have his version. + +"He just walked over to Pete--that's all I can say--walked over to him, +simple and calm, like he was going to ask for a match. All I could think +of and see was his smile right into that muzzle and the glint in his +eyes, which were looking into Pete's. Someway you couldn't shoot into +that smile and that glint, which was sort of saying, 'Go ahead! I'm +leaving it to you and I don't care!'--just as if a flash of powder was +all the same to him as a flash of lightning." + +The desert had given Jack life; and it would seem as if what the desert +had given, it might take away. He was not going to humble himself by +throwing up his arms or standing still for execution. He was on his way +into the store and he continued on his way. If something stopped him, +then he would not have to take the train East in the morning. + +"Now if you want to kill me, Pete Leddy," the astonished group heard this +stranger say, "why, I'm not going to deny you the chance. But I don't +want you to do it just out of impulse, and I know that is not your own +reasoned way. You certainly would want sporting rules to prevail and that +I should have an equal chance of killing you. So we will go outside, +stand off any number of paces you say, let our gun-barrels hang down even +with the seams of our trousers, and wait for somebody to say 'one, two, +three--fire!'" + +Not once had that peculiar smile faded from Jack's lips or the glint in +his eyes diverted from its probe of Leddy's eyes. His voice went well +with the smile and with an undercurrent of high voltage which seemed the +audible corollary of the glint. Every man knew that, despite his gay +adornment, he was not bluffing. He had made his proposition in deadly +earnest and was ready to carry it out. Pete Leddy shuffled and bit the +ends of his moustache, and his face was drawn and white and his shoulder +burning under the easy grip of Jack's hand. From the bore of the +unremitting glance that had confounded him he shifted his gaze +sheepishly. + +"Oh, h--l!" he said, and the tone, in its disgust and its attempt to +laugh off the incident, gave the simplicity of an exclamation from his +limited vocabulary its character. "Oh, h--l! I was just trying you out as +a tenderfoot--a little joke!" + +At this, all the crowd laughed in an explosive breath of relief. The +inflection of the laugh made Pete go red and look challengingly from face +to face, with the result that all became piously sober. + +"Then it is all right? I meant in no way to wound your feelings or even +your susceptibilities," said Jack; and, accepting the incident as closed, +he turned to the counter and asked for the Ewold mail. + +Free from that smile and the glint of the eyes, Pete came to in a torrent +of reaction. He, with six notches on his gun-handle, had been trifled +with by a grinning tenderfoot. Rage mounted red to his brow. No man who +had humiliated him should live. He would have shot Jack in the back if it +had not been for Jim Galway, lean as a lath, lantern-jawed, with deep-set +blue eyes, his bearing different from that of the other loungers. Jim had +not joined in the laugh over Pete's explanation; he had remained +impassive through the whole scene; but the readiness with which he +knocked Leddy's revolver down showed that this immovability had let +nothing escape his quiet observation. + +When Jack looked around and understood what had passed, his face +was without the smile. It was set and his body had stiffened free +of the counter. + +"I'll take the gun away from him. It's high time somebody did," +said Galway. + +"I think you had better, if that is the only way that he knows how to +fight," said Jack. "I have wondered how he got the six. Presumably he +murdered them." + +"To their faces, as I'll get you!" Leddy answered. "I'll play your way +now, one, two, three--fire!" + +Galway, convinced that this stranger did not know how to shoot, +turned to Jack: + +"It's not worth your being a target for a dead shot," he said. + +"In the morning, yes," answered Jack; and he was smiling again in a way +that swept the audience with uncanniness. "But to-night I am engaged. +Make it early to-morrow, as I have to take the first train East." + +"Well, are you going to let me go?" Leddy asked Jim, while he looked in +appeal to the loungers, who were his men. + +"Yes, by all means," Jack told Galway. "And as I shall want a man with +me, may I rely on you? Four of us will be enough, with a fifth to give +the word." + +"Ropey Smith can go with me," said Leddy. + +It scarcely occurred to them to give the name of duel to this meeting, +which Jack held was the only fair way when one felt that he must have +satisfaction from an adversary in the form of death. An _arroyo_ a mile +from town was chosen and the time dawn, for a meeting which was to +reverse the ethics of that boasted fair-play in which the man who first +gets a bead is the hero. + +"It seems a mediaeval day for me," Jack said, when the details were +concluded. "Good-night, gentlemen," he added, after Bill Lang, with +fingers that bungled from agitation, had filled his arms with +second-class matter. + +Jim Galway resumed his position, leaning against the counter watchfully +as the gang filed out to the rear to wet up, and in his right hand, which +was in his pocket, nestled an automatic pistol. + +"I'd shot Pete Leddy dead--'twas the first real fair chance within the +law--so help me, God! I would," he thought, "if there had been time to +spare, and save that queer tenderfoot's life. And me a second in a +regular duel! Well, I'll be--but it ain't no regular duel. One of 'em is +going to drop--that is, the tenderfoot is. I don't just know how to line +him up. He beats me!" + + + + +VIII + +ACCORDING TO CODE + + +It was the supreme moment of night before dawn. A violet mist shrouded +everything. The clamminess of the dew touched Mary's forehead and her +hand brushed the moisture-laden hedge as she left the Ewold yard. She +remembered that Jack had said that he would camp near the station, so +there was no doubt in which direction she should go. Hastening along the +silent street, it was easy for her to imagine that she and Ignacio were +the only sentient beings, abroad in a world that had stopped breathing. + +Softly, impalpably, with both the graciousness of a host and the +determinedness of an intruder who will not be gainsaid, the first rays of +morning light filtered into the mist. The violet went pink. From pale +pink it turned to rose-pink; to the light of life which was as yet as +still as the light of the moon. The occasional giant cactus in the open +beyond the village outskirts ceased to be spectral. + +For the first time Mary Ewold was in the presence of the wonder of +daybreak on the desert without watching for the harbinger of gold in the +V of the pass, with its revelation of a dome of blue where unfathomable +space had been. For the first time daybreak interested her only in +broadening and defining her vision of her immediate surroundings. + +When the permeating softness suddenly yielded to full transparency, +spreading from the fanfare of the rising sun come bolt above the range, +and the mist rose, she left the road at sight of two ponies and a burro +in a group, their heads together in drooping fellowship. She knew them at +once for P.D., Wrath of God, and Jag Ear. Nearby rose a thin spiral of +smoke and back of it was a huddled figure, Firio, preparing the morning +meal. Animals and servant were as motionless as the cactus. Evidently +they did not hear her footsteps. They formed a picture of nightly +oblivion, unconscious that day had come. Firio's face was hidden by his +big Mexican hat; he did not look up even when she was near. She noted the +two blanket-rolls where the two comrades of the trail had slept. She saw +that both were empty and knew that Jack had already gone. + +"Where is Mr. Wingfield?" she demanded, breathlessly. + +Firio was not startled. To be startled was hardly in his Indian nature. +The hat tipped upward and under the brim-edge his black eyes gleamed, as +the sandy soil all around him gleamed in the dew. He shrugged his +shoulders when he recognized the lady speaking as the one who had delayed +him at the foot of the pass the previous afternoon. Thanks to her, he had +been left alone without his master the whole evening. + +"He go to stretch his legs," answered Firio. + +Apparently, Sir Chaps had been disinclined to disturb the routine of camp +by telling Firio anything about the duel. + +"Where did he go? In which direction?" Mary persisted. + +Firio moved the coffee-pot closer to the fire. This seemed to require +the concentration of all his faculties, including that of speech. He was +a fit servant for one who took duels so casually. + +"Where? Where?" she repeated. + +"Where? Have you no tongue?" snapped Ignacio. + +Firio gazed all around as if looking for Jack; then nodded in the +direction of rising ground which broke at the edge of a depression about +fifty yards away. Her impatience had made the delay of a minute seem +hours, while the brilliance of the light had now become that of broad +day. She forgot all constraint. She ran, and as she ran she listened for +a shot as if it were something inevitable, past due. + +And then she uttered a muffled cry of relief, as the scene in a +depression which had been the bed of an ancient river flashed before her +with theatric completeness. In the bottom of it were five men, two +moving and three stationary. Jim Galway and Ropey Smith were walking +side by side, keeping a measured step as they paced off a certain +distance, while Bill Lang and Pete Leddy and Jack stood by. Leddy and +Lang were watching the process inflexibly. Jack was in the costume which +had flushed her curiosity so vividly on the pass and he appeared the +same amused, disinterested and wondering traveller who had then come +upon strange doings. + +She stopped, her temples throbbing giddily, her breaths coming in gasps; +stopped to gain mastery of herself before she decided what she would do +next. On the opposite bank of the _arroyo_ was a line of heads, like +those of infantry above a parapet, and she comprehended that, in the +same way that news of a cock-fight travels, the gallery gods of Little +Rivers had received a tip of a sporting event so phenomenal that it +changed the sluggards among them into early risers. They were making +themselves comfortable lying flat on their stomachs and exposing as +little as possible of their precious bodies to the danger of that +tenderfoot firing wild. + +It was a great show, of which they would miss no detail; and all had +their interest whetted by some possible new complication of the plot when +they saw the tall, familiar figure of Jasper Ewold's daughter standing +against the skyline. She felt the greedy inquiry of their eyes; she +guessed their thoughts. + +This new element of the situation swept her with a realization of the +punishment she must suffer for that chance meeting on Galeria and then +with resentful anger, which transformed Jack Wingfield's indifference to +callous bravado. + +Must she face that battery of leers from the town ruffians while she +implored a stranger, who had been nothing to her yesterday and would be +nothing tomorrow, to run away from a combat which was a creation of his +own stubbornness? She was in revolt against herself, against him, and +against the whole miserable business. If she proceeded, public opinion +would involve her in a sentimental interest in a stranger. She must live +with the story forever, while to an idle traveller it was only an +adventure at a way-station on his journey. + +She had but to withdraw in feigned surprise from the sight of a scene +which she had come upon unawares and she would be free of any association +with it. For all Little Rivers knew that she was given to random walks +and rides. No one would be surprised that she was abroad at this early +hour. It would be ascribed to the nonsense which afflicted the Ewolds, +father and daughter, about sunrises. + +Yes, she had been in a nightmare. With the light of day she was seeing +clearly. Had she not warned him about Leddy? Had not she done her part? +Should she submit herself to fruitless humiliation? Go to him in as much +distress as if his existence were her care? If he would not listen to her +yesterday, why should she expect him to listen to her now? + +She would return to her garden. Its picture of content and isolation +called her away from the stare of the faces on the other bank. She turned +on her heel abruptly, took two or three spasmodic steps and stopped +suddenly, confronted with another picture--one of imagination--that of +Jack Wingfield lying dead. The recollection of a voice, the voice that +had stopped the approach of Leddy's passion-inflamed face to her own on +the pass, sounded in her ears. + +She faced around, drawn by something that will and reason could not +overcome, to see that Jim Galway and Ropey Smith had finished their task +of pacing off the distance. The two combatants were starting for their +stations, their long shadows in the slant of the morning sunlight +travelling over the sand like pursuing spectres. Leddy went with the +quick, firm step which bespoke the keenness of his desire; Jack more +slowly, at a natural gait. His station was so near her that she could +reach him with a dozen steps. And he was whistling--the only sound in a +silence which seemed to stretch as far as the desert--whistling gaily in +apparent unconsciousness that the whole affair was anything but play. +The effect of this was benumbing. It made her muscles go limp. She sank +down for very want of strength to keep erect; and Ignacio, hardly +observed, keeping close to her dropped at her side. + +"Ignacio, tell the young man, the one who was our guest last evening, +that I wish to see him!" she gasped. + +With flickering, shrewd eyes Ignacio had watched her distress. He craved +the word that should call him to service and was off with a bound. His +rushing, agitated figure was precipitated into a scene hard set as men on +a chess-board in deadly serenity. Leddy and Jack, were already facing +each other. + +"Señor! Señor!" Ignacio shouted, as he ran. "Señor Don't Care of the Big +Spurs--wait!" + +The message which he had to give was his mistress's and, therefore, +nobody else's business. He rose on tiptoes to whisper it into Jack's +ear. Jack listened, with head bent to catch the words. He looked over to +Mary for an instant of intent silence and then raised his empty left +hand in signal. + +"Sorry, but I must ask for a little delay!" he called to Leddy. His tone +was wonderful in its politeness and he bowed considerately to his +adversary. + +"I thought it was all bluff!" Leddy answered. "You'll get it, +though--you'll get it in the old way if you haven't the nerve to take it +in yours!" + +"Really, I am stubbornly fond of my way," Jack said. "I shall be only a +minute. That will give you time to steady your nerves," he added, in the +encouraging, reassuring strain of a coach to a man going to the bat. + +He was coming toward Mary with his easy, languid gait, radiant of casual +inquiry. The time of his steps seemed to be reckoned in succeeding +hammer-beats in her brain. He was coming and she had to find reasons to +keep him from going back; because if it had not been for her he would be +quite safe. Oh, if she could only be free of that idea of obligation to +him! All the pain, the confusion, the embarrassment was on her side. His +very manner of approach, in keeping with the whole story of his conduct +toward her, showed him incapable of such feelings. She had another +reaction. She devoutly wished that she had not sent for him. + +Had not his own perversity taken his fate out of her hands? If he +preferred to die, why should it be her concern? Should she volunteer +herself as a rescuer of fools? The gleaming sand of the _arroyo_ rose in +a dazzling mist before her eyes, obscuring him, clothing him with the +unreality of a dream; and then, in physical reality, he emerged. He was +so near as she rose spasmodically that she could have laid her hand on +his shoulder. His hat under his arm, he stood smiling in the bland, +questioning interest of a spectator happening along the path, even as he +had in her first glimpse of him on the pass. + +"I don't care! Go on! Go on!" she was going to say. "You have made sport +of me! You make sport of everything! Life itself is a joke to you!" + +The tempest of the words was in her eyes, if it did not reach her +tongue's end. It was halted by the look of hurt surprise, of real pain, +which appeared on his face. Was it possible, after all, that he could +feel? The thought brought forth the passionate cry of her mission after +that sleepless night. + +"I beg of you--I implore you--don't!" + +Had anyone told her yesterday that she would have been begging any man +in melodramatic supplication for anything, she would have thought of +herself as mad. Wasn't she mad? Wasn't he mad? Yet she broke into +passionate appeal. + +"It is horrible--unspeakable! I cannot bear it!" + +A flood of color swept his cheeks and with it came a peculiar, feminine, +almost awkward, gentleness. His air was that of wordless humility. He +seemed more than ever an uncomprehending, sure prey for Leddy. + +"Don't you realize what death is?" she asked. + +The question, so earnest and searching, had the contrary effect on him. +It changed him back to his careless self. He laughed in the way of one +who deprecates another's illusion or passing fancy. This added to her +conviction that he did not realize, that he was incapable of realizing, +his position. + +"Do you think I am about to die?" he asked softly. + +"With Pete Leddy firing at you twenty yards away--yes! And you pose--you +pose! If you were human you would be serious!" + +"Pose?" He repeated the word. It startled him, mystified him. "The +clothes I bought to please Firio, you mean?" he inquired, his face +lighting. + +"No, about death. It is horrible--horrible! Death for which I am +responsible!" + +"Why, have you forgotten that we settled all that?" he asked. "It was not +you. It was the habit I had formed of whistling in the loneliness of the +desert. I am sorry, now, that I did not stick to singing, even at the +expense of a sore throat." + +Now he called to Leddy, and his voice, high-pitched and powerful, seemed +to travel in the luminous air as on resilient, invisible wires. + +"Leddy, wasn't it the way I whistled to you the first time we met that +made you want satisfaction? You remember"--and he broke into a whistle. +His tone was different from that to Leddy on the pass; the whistle was +different. It was shrill and mocking. + +"Yes, the whistle!" yelled Leddy. "No man can whistle to me like that +and live!" + +Jack laughed as if he appreciated all the possibilities of humor inherent +in the picture of the bloodthirsty Leddy, the waiting seconds and the +gallery. He turned to Mary with a gesture of his outstretched hands: + +"There, you see! I brought it on myself." + +"You are brutal! You are without feeling--you are ridiculous--you--" she +stormed, chokingly. + +And in face of this he became reasoning, philosophical. + +"Yes, I admit that it is all ridiculous, even to farce, this little +_comédie humaine_. But we must remember that beside the age of the desert +none of us last long. Ridiculous, yes; but if I will whistle, why, then, +I must play out the game I've started." + +He was looking straight into her eyes, and there was that in his gaze +which came as a surprise and with something of the effect of a blade out +of a scabbard. It chilled her. It fastened her inactive to the earth with +a helplessness that was uncanny. It mixed the element of fear for him +with the element of fear of him. + +"Remember I am of age--and I don't mind," he added, with the faintest +glint of satire in his reassurance. + +He was walking away, with a wave of his hand to Leddy; he was going +over the precipice's edge after thanking the danger sign. He did not +hasten, nor did he loiter. The precipice resolved itself into an +incident of a journey of the same order as an ankle-deep stream +trickling across a highway. + + + + +IX + +THE DEVIL IS OUT + + +She had done her best and she had failed. What reason was there for her +to remain? Should she endure witnessing in reality the horror which she +had pictured so vividly in imagination? A flash of fire! The fall of a +careening figure to the earth! Leddy's grin of satisfaction! The +rejoicing of his clan of spectators over the exploit, while youth which +sang airs to the beat of a pony's hoofs and knew the worship of the +Eternal Painter lay dead! + +What reason to remain except to punish herself! She would go. But +something banished reason. She was held in the leash of suspense, staring +with clearness of vision in one second; staring into a mist the next; +while the coming and going of Ignacio's breaths between his teeth was the +only sound in her ears. + +"Señor Don't Care of the Big Spurs will win!" he whispered. + +"He will?" she repeated, like one marvelling, in the tautness of every +nerve and muscle, that she had the power of speech. + +She peered into Ignacio's face. Its Indian impassivity was gone. His lips +were twitching; his eyes were burning points between half-closed lids. + +"Why?" she asked. "How?" + +"I know. I watch him. I have seen a mountain lion asleep in a tree. His +paw is like velvet. He smiles. There seems no fight in him. I know. There +is a devil, a big devil, in Señor Don't Care. It sleeps so much it very +terrible when it awakes. And Pete Leddy--he is all the time awake; all +the time too ready. Something in him will make his arm shake when the +moment to shoot comes and something in Señor Don't Care--his devil--will +make his arm steady." + +Could Ignacio be right? Did Jack really know how to shoot? Was he +confident of the outcome? Were his smiles the mask of a conviction that +he was to kill and not to be killed? After all, had his attitude toward +her been merely acting? Had she undergone this humiliation as the fish on +the line of the mischievous play of one who had stopped over a train in +order to do murder? No! If he were capable of such guile he knew that +Leddy could shoot well and that twenty yards was a deadly range for a +good shot. He was taking a chance and the devil in him was laughing at +the chance, while it laughed at her for thinking that he was an innocent +going to slaughter in expression of a capricious sense of chivalry. + +"He will win--he will win if Leddy plays fair!" Ignacio repeated. + +Now she was telling herself that it was solely for the sake of her +conscience that she wanted to see Señor Don't Care survive; solely for +the sake of her conscience that she wanted to see him go aboard the train +safe. After that, she could forget ever having owed this trifler the +feeling of gratitude for a favor done. Literally, he must live in order +to be a dead and unremembered incident of her existence. + +And Jack was back at his station, with the bright sunlight heightening +the colors of his play cowboy attire, his weight on the ball of his right +foot thrown well ahead of the other, his head up, but the whole effect +languid, even deferential. He seemed about to take off his hat to the +joyous sky of a fair day in May. His shadow expressed the same feeling as +his pose, that of tranquil youth with its eyes on the horizon. Leddy had +the peculiar slouch of the desperado, which is associated with the spread +of pioneering civilization by the raucous criers of red-blooded +individualism. If Jack's bearing was amateurish, then Pete's was +professional in its threatening pose; and his shadow, like himself, had +an unrelieved hardness of outline. + +Both drew their guns from their holsters and lowered them till the +barrels lay even with the trousers seams. They awaited the word to fire +which Bill Lang, who stood at an angle equidistant from the two men, +was to give. + +"Wait!" Jack called, in a tone which indicated that something had +recurred to him. Then a half laugh from him fell on the brilliant, +shining, hard silence with something of the sound of a pebble slipping +over glare ice. + +"Leddy, it has just occurred to me that we are both foolish--honestly, we +are!" he said. "The idea when Arizona is so sparsely settled of our +starting out to depopulate it in such a premeditated manner on such a +beautiful morning, and all because I was such an inept whistler! Why, if +I had realized what a perfectly bad whistler I was I would never have +whistled again. If my whistle hurt your feelings I am sorry, and I--" + +"No, you don't!" yelled Leddy. "I've waited long enough! It's +fight, you--" + +"Oh, all right! You are so emphatic," Jack answered. His voice was still +pleasant, but shot with something metallic. The very shadow of him seemed +to stiffen with the stiffening of his muscles. + +"Ready!" called Bill Lang. + +The ruling passion that had carved six notches on his gun-handle +overwhelmed Pete Leddy. At least, let us give him the benefit of the +doubt and say that this and not calculation was responsible for his +action. Before the word for preparation was free of Lang's lips, and +without waiting for the word to fire, his revolver came up in a swift +quarter-circle. He was sure of his aim at that range with a ready draw. +Again and again he had thus hit his target in practice and six times he +had winged his man by such agile promptness. + +With the flash from the muzzle all the members of the gallery rose on +hands and knees. They were as sure that there was to be a seventh notch +as of their identity. There was no question in their minds but Pete had +played a smart trick. They had known from the first that he would win. +And the proof of it was in the sudden, uncontrollable movement of the +adversary. + +Jack whirled half round. He was falling. But even as he fell he was still +facing his adversary. He plunged forward unsteadily and came to rest on +his left elbow. A trickle of blood showed on the chap of his left leg, +which had tightened as his knee twisted under him. Leddy's rage had been +so hot that for once his trigger finger had been too quick. He had aimed +too low. But he was sure that he had done for his man and he looked +triumphantly toward the gallery gods whose hero he was. They had now +risen to their feet. In answer to their congratulations he waved his +left hand, palm out, in salutation. His gun-hand had dropped back to his +trousers seam. + +Even as it dropped, Jack's revolver had risen, his own gun-hand steadied +in the palm of his left hand, which had an elbow in the sand for a rest. +Victor and spectators, in their preoccupation with the relief and elation +of a drama finished, had their first warning of what was to come in a +voice that did not seem like the voice of the tenderfoot as they had +heard it, but of another man. And Leddy was looking at a black hole in a +rim of steel which, though twenty yards away, seemed hot against his +forehead, while he turned cold. + +"Now, Pete Leddy, do not move a muscle!" Jack told him. "Pete Leddy, +you did not play my way. I still have a shot due, and I am going to +kill you!" + +Jack's face seemed never to have worn a smile. It was all chin, and thin, +tightly-pressed lips, and solid, straight nose, bronze and unyielding. + +"And I am going to kill you!" + +This was surely the devil of Ignacio's imagery speaking in him--a cold, +passionless, gray-eyed devil. Though they had never seen him shoot, +everybody felt now that he could shoot with deadly accuracy and that +there was no play cowboy in his present mood. He had the bead of death +on Leddy and he would fire with the first flicker of resistance. His +call seemed to have sunk the feet of everyone beneath the sand to +bed-rock and riveted them there. Lang and the two seconds were as +motionless as statues. + +Mary recalled Leddy's leer at her on the pass, with its intent of +something more horrible than murder. Savagery rose in her heart. It was +right that he should be killed. He deserved his fate. But no sooner was +the savagery born--born, she felt, of the very hypnosis of that carved +face--than she cast it out shudderingly in the realization that she had +wished the death of a fellow human being! She looked away from Jack; and +then it occurred to her that he must be bleeding. He was again a +companion of the trail, his strength ebbing away. Her impulse was +retarded by no fear of the gallery now. It brought her to her feet. + +"But first drop your revolver!" she heard Jack call, as she ran. + +She saw it fall from Leddy's trembling hand, as a dead leaf goes free of +a breeze-shaken limb. All the fight was out of him. The courage of six +notches was not the courage to accept in stoicism the penalty of foul +play. And that black rim was burning his forehead. + +"Galway, you have a gun?" Jack asked. + +"Yes," Galway answered, mechanically. His presence of mind, which had +been so sure in the store, was somewhat shaken. He had seen men killed, +but never in such deliberate fashion. + +"Take it out'" + +There was a quality in the command like frosty madness, which one +instinctively obeyed. The half-prostrate figure of the tenderfoot seemed +to dominate everything--men, earth, and air. + +Mary had a glimpse of Galway drawing an automatic pistol from his pocket +when she dropped at Jack's side. She knew that Jack had not heard or seen +her approach. All his will was flowing out along a pistol's sight, even +as his blood was flowing out on the sand in a broadening circle of red. + +It was well that she had come. Her fingers were splashed as she felt for +the artery, which she closed by leaning her whole weight on the thumb. + +Ignacio had followed her and immediately after him came Firio, who had +been startled in his breakfast preparations by the sound of a shot and +had set out to investigate its cause. He was as changed as his master; a +twitching, fierce being, glaring at her and at the wound and then +prolongedly and watchfully at Pete Leddy. + +"Can you shoot to kill?" Jack asked Galway, in a piercing summons. + +"Yes," drawled Galway. + +"Then up with your gun--quick! There! A bead on Ropey Smith!" + +Galway had the bead before Ropey could protest. + +"Give Ropey ten seconds to drop his gun or we will care for him at the +same time as Pete'" Jack concluded. + +Ropey did not wait the ten seconds. He was over-prompt for the +same reasons of temperament that made Pete Leddy prefer his own +way of fighting. + +"I take it that we can count on the neutrality of our spectators. They +cannot be interested in the success of either side," Jack observed, with +dry humor, but still methodically. "All they ask is a spectacle." + +"Yes, you bet!" came a voice from the gallery, undisguisedly eager +to concur. + +"Now, Pete and Ropey," Jack began, and broke off. + +There was a poignant silence that waited on the processes of his mind. +Not only was there no sound, but to Mary there seemed no movement +anywhere in the world, except the pulse of the artery trying to drive its +flood past the barrier of her thumb. Jack kept his bead unremittingly on +Pete. It was Firio who broke the silence. + +"Kill him! He is bad! He hates you!" said Firio. + +"_SÃ, sÃ_! If you do not kill him now, you must some time," said Ignacio. + +Mary felt that even if Jack heard them he would not let their advice +influence him. On the bank before she had hastened to him a strange and +awful visitor in her heart had wished for Leddy's death. Now she wished +for him to go away unharmed. She wished it in the name of her own +responsibility for all that had happened. Yet her tongue had no urging +word to offer. She waited in a supernatural and dreadful curiosity on +Jack's decision. It was as if he were to answer one more question in +explanation of the mystery of his nature. Could he deliberately shoot +down an unarmed man? Was he that hard? + +"I am thinking just how to deal with you, Pete and Ropey," Jack +proceeded. "As I understand it, you have not been very useful citizens of +Little Rivers. You can live under one condition--that you leave town and +never return armed. Half a minute to decide!" + +"I'll go!" said Pete. + +"I'll go!" said Ropey. + +"And keep your words?" + +"Yes!" they assented. + +But neither moved. The fact that Jack had not yet lowered his +revolver made them cautious. They were obviously over-anxious to play +safe to the last. + +"Then go!" called Jack. + +Pete and Ropey slouched away, leaving behind Ropey's gun, which was +unimportant as it had only one notch, and Pete's precious companion of +many campaigns with its six notches, lying on the sand. + +"And, gentlemen," Jack called to the spectators, "our little +entertainment is over now. I am afraid that you will be late for +breakfast." + +Apparently it came as a real inspiration to all at once that they might +be, for they began to withdraw with a celerity that was amazingly +spontaneous. Their heads disappeared below the skyline and only the +actors were left. Pete and Ropey--Bill Lang following--walked away along +the bed of the _arroyo_, instead of going over the bank. Pete paused when +he was out of range. The old threat was again in his pose. + +"I'm not through with you, yet!" he called. + +"Why, I hope you are!" Jack answered. + +He let his revolver fall with a convulsion of weakness. Mary wondered if +he were going to faint. She wondered if she herself were not going to +faint, in a giddy second, while the red spot on the sand shaped itself in +revolving grotesquery. But the consciousness that she must not lift her +weight from the artery was a centering idea to keep her faculties in some +sort of equilibrium. + +He was looking around at her, she knew. Now she must see his face after +this transformation in him which had made her fears of his competency +silly imaginings; after she had linked her name with his in an +overwhelming village sensation. She was stricken by unanalyzable emotions +and by a horror of her nearness to him, her contact with his very blood, +and his power. She was conscious of a glimpse of his turning profile, +still transfixed with the cool purpose of action. Then they were gazing +full at each other, eyes into eyes, directly, questioningly. He was +smiling as he had on the pass; as he had when he stood with his arms +full of mail waiting for the signal to deposit his load. His devil had +slipped back into his inner being. + +He spoke first, and in the voice that went with his vaguest mood; the +voice in which he had described his escape from the dinosaur whose scales +had become wedged in the defile at the critical moment. + +"You have a strong thumb and it must be tired, as well as all +bluggy," he said, falling into a childhood symbol for taking the +whole affair in play. + +Could he be the same man who had said, "I am going to kill you!" so +relentlessly? He had eased the situation with the ready gift he had for +easing situations; but, at the same time, he had made those unanalyzable +emotions more complex, though they were swept into the background for the +moment. He glanced down at his leg with comprehending surprise. + +"Now, certainly, you are free of all responsibility," he added. "You kept +the strength in me to escape the fate you feared. Jim Galway will make a +tourniquet and relieve you." + +The first available thing for tightening the tourniquet was the barrel +of Pete Leddy's gun and the first suggestion for material came from her. +It was the sash of her gown, which Galway knotted with his strong, +sunburned fingers. + +When she could lift her numbed thumb from its task and rose to her feet +she had a feeling of relief, as if she were free of magnetic bonds and +uncanny personal proximity. The incident was closed--surely closed. She +was breathing a prayer of thanks when a remark from Galway to Jack +brought back her apprehension. + +"I guess you will have to postpone catching to-day's train," he said. + +Certainly, Jack must remain until his wound had healed and his strength +had returned. And where would he go? He could not camp out on the desert. +As Jasper Ewold had the most commodious bungalow it seemed natural that +any wounded stranger should be taken there. The idea chilled her as an +insupportable intrusion. Jack hesitated a moment. He was evidently +considering whether he could not still keep to his programme. + +"Yes, Jim, I'm afraid I shall have to ask you for a cot for a few days," +he said, finally. + +Again he had the right thought at the right moment. Had he surmised what +was passing in her mind? + +"Seeing that you've got Pete Leddy out of town, I should say that you +were fairly entitled to a whole bed," Jim drawled. "These two Indians +here can make a hustle to get some kind of a litter." + +Now she could go. That was her one crying thought: She could go! And +again he came to her rescue with his smiling considerateness. + +"You have missed your breakfast, I'll warrant," he said to her. "Please +don't wait. You were so brave and cool about it all, and--I--" A faint +tide of color rose to his cheeks, which had been pale from loss of blood. +For once he seemed unable to find a word. + +Mary denied him any assistance in his embarrassment. + +"Yes," she answered, almost bluntly. Then she added an excuse: "And you +should have a doctor at once. I will send him." + +She did not look at Jack again, but hastened away. When she was over the +bank of the _arroyo_ out of sight she put her fingers to her temples in +strong pressure. That pulse made her think of another, which had been +under her thumb, and she withdrew her fingers quickly. + +"It is the sun! I have no hat," she said to herself, "and I didn't +sleep well." + + + + +X + +MARY EXPLAINS + + +Dr. Patterson was still asleep when Mary rapped at his door. Having +aroused him to action by calling out that a stranger had been wounded in +the _arroyo_, she did not pause to offer any further details. With her +eyes level and dull, she walked rapidly along the main street where +nobody was yet abroad, her one thought to reach her room uninterrupted. +As she approached the house she saw her father standing on the porch, his +face beaming with the joy of a serenely-lived moment as he had his +morning look at the Eternal Painter's first display for the day. She had +crossed the bridge before he became conscious of her presence. + +"Mary! You are up first! Out so early when you went to bed so late!" he +greeted her. + +"I did not sleep well," she explained. + +"What, Mary, you not sleep well!" All the preoccupation with the +heavens went from his eyes, which swept her from head to foot. "Mary! +Your hand is covered with blood! There is blood on your dress' What +does this mean?" + +She looked down and for the first time saw dark red spots on her skirt. +The sight sent a shiver through her, which she mastered before she spoke. + +"Oh, nothing--or a good deal, if you put it in another way. A real +sensation for Little Rivers!" she said. + +"But you are not telling!" + +"It is such a remarkable story, father, it ought not to be spoiled by +giving away its plot," she said, with assumed lightness. "I don't feel +equal to doing full justice to it until after I've had my bath. I will +tell you at breakfast. That's a reason for your waiting for me." + +And she hastened past him into the house. + +"Was it--was it something to do with this Wingfield?" he called excitedly +after her. + +"Yes, about the fellow of the enormous spurs--Señor Don't Care, as +Ignacio calls him," she answered from the stair. + +Some note underneath her nonchalance seemed to disturb, even to distress +him. He entered the house and started through the living-room on his way +to the library. But he paused as if in answer to a call from one of the +four photographs on the wall, Michael Angelo's young David, in the +supple ease of grace. The David which Michael made from an imperfect +piece of marble! The David which sculptors say is ill-proportioned! The +David into which, however, the master breathed the thing we call genius, +in the bloom of his own youth finding its power, even as David found his +against Goliath. + +This David has come out of the unknown, over the hills, with the dew of +morning freshness on his brow. He is unconscious of self; of everything +except that he is unafraid. If all other aspirants have failed in downing +the old champion, why, he will try. + +Now, Jasper Ewold frowned at David as if he were getting no answer to a +series of questions. + +"I must make a change. You have been up a long time, David," he +thought; for he had many of these photographs which he kept in a +special store-room subject to his pleasure in hanging. "Yes, I will +have a Madonna--two Madonnas, perhaps, and a Velasquez and a Rembrandt +next time." + +In the library he set to reading Professor Giuccamini; but he found +himself disagreeing with the professor. + +"I want your facts which you have dug out of the archives," he said, +speaking to the book as if it were alive. "I don't want your opinions. +Confound it!" he threw Giuccamini on the table. "I'll make my own +opinions! Nothing else to do out here on the desert. Time enough to +change them as often as I want, too." + +He went into the garden--the garden which, next to Mary, was the most +intimate thing in his affections. Usually, every new leaf that had burst +forth over night set itself in the gelatine of his mind like so many +letterpress changes on a printed page to a proof-reader. This time, +however, a new palm leaf, a new spray of bougainvillea blossoms, a bud +on the latest rose setting which he had from Los Angeles, said "Good +morning," without any response from him. + +He paced back and forth, his hands clasped behind him, his head bowed +moodily, and his shoulders drawn together in a way that made him seem +older and more portly. With each turn he looked sharply, impatiently, +toward the door of the house. + +Never had Mary so felt the charm of her room as on this morning; never +had it seemed so set apart from the world and so personal. It was the +breadth of the ell and the size of her father's library and bedroom +combined. The windows could hardly be called windows in a Northern sense, +for there was no glass. It was unnecessary to seal up the source of +light and air in a dry climate, where a blanket at night supplied all the +extra warmth one's body ever required. The blinds swung inward and the +shades softened the light and added to the privacy which the screen of +the growing young trees and creeping vines were fast supplying. Here she +could be more utterly alone than on the summit of the pass itself. She +paused in the doorway, surveying familiar objects in the enjoyed triumph +of complete seclusion. + +While she waited for the water to run into the bowl, she looked fixedly +at the stains of a fluid which had been so warm in its touch. It was only +blood, she told herself. It would wash off, and she held her hands in the +water and saw the spread of the dye through the bowl in a moment of +preoccupation. Then she scrubbed as vigorously as if she were bent on +removing the skin itself. After she had held up her dripping fingers in +satisfied inspection, the spots on her gown caught her eye. For a moment +they, too, held her staring attention; then she slipped out of the gown +precipitately. + +With this, her determined haste was at an end. She was about to enjoy the +feminine luxury of time. The combing of her hair became a delightful and +leisurely function in the silky feel of the strands in her fingers and +the refreshing pull at the roots. The flow of the bath water made the +music of pleasurable anticipation, and immersion set the very spirit of +physical life leaping and tingling in her veins. And all the while she +was thinking of how to fashion a narrative. + +When she started down-stairs she was not only refreshed but remade. She +was going to breakfast at the usual hour, after the usual processes of +ushering herself from the night's rest into the day's activities. There +had been no stealthy trip out to the _arroyo_; no duel; no wound; no +Señor Don't Care. She had only a story which involved all these elements, +a most preposterous story, to tell. + +"Now you shall hear all about it!" she called to her father as soon as +she saw him; "the strangest, most absurd, most amusing affair"--she piled +up the adjectives--"that has ever occurred in Little Rivers!" + +She began at once, even before she poured his coffee, her voice a trifle +high-pitched with her simulation of humor. And she was exactly veracious, +avoiding details, yet missing nothing that gave the facts a pleasant +trail. She told of the meeting with Leddy on the pass and of the arrival +of the gorgeous traveller; of Jack's whistle; of Pete's challenge. + +Jasper Ewold listened with stoical attentiveness. He did not laugh, even +when Jack's vagaries were mentioned. + +"Why didn't you tell me last night?" was his first question. + +"To be honest, I was afraid that it would worry you. I was afraid that +you would not permit me to go to the pass alone again. But you will?" She +slipped her hand across the table and laid her fingers appealingly on the +broad back of his heavily tanned hand, from which the veins rose in +bronze welts. "And he was nice about it in his ridiculous, big-spurs +fashion. He said that it was all due to the whistle." + +"Go on! Go on! There must be more!" her father insisted impatiently. + +She gave him the pantomime of the store, not as a bit of tragedy--she was +careful about that--but as something witnessed by an impersonal +spectator and narrator of stories. + +"He walked right toward a muzzle, this Wingfield?" Jasper asked, his +brows contracting. + +"Why, yes. I told you at the start it was all most preposterous," +she answered. + +"And he was not afraid of death--this Wingfield!" Jasper repeated. + +He was looking away from her. The contraction of his brows had become a +scowl of mystification. + +"Why do you always speak of him as 'this Wingfield,'" she demanded, "as +if the town were full of Wingfields and he was a particular one?" + +He looked around quickly, his features working in a kind of confusion. +Then he smiled. + +"I was thinking of the whistle," he explained. "Well, we'll call him this +Sir Chaps, this Señor Don't Care, or whatever you please. As for his +walking into the gun, there is nothing remarkable in that. You draw on a +man. You expect him to throw up his hands or reach for his gun. He does +nothing but smile right along the level of the sight into your eyes. It +was disturbing to Pete's sense of etiquette on such occasions. It threw +him off. There are similar instances in history. A soldier once put a +musket at Bonaparte's head. Some of Caesar's legionaries once pressed +their swords at his breast. Such old hands in human psychology had the +presence of mind to smile. And the history of the West is full of +examples which have not been recorded. Go on, Mary!" + +"Ignacio says he has a devil in him," she added. + +"That little Indian has a lot of primitive race wisdom. Probably he is +right," her father said soberly. + +"It explains what followed," she proceeded. + +She was emphatic about the reason for her part. She went out to the +_arroyo_ on behalf of her responsibility for a human life. + +"But why did you not rouse me? Why did you go alone?" he asked. + +"I didn't think--there wasn't time--I was upset and hurried." + +She proceeded in a forced monotone which seemed to allow her hardly a +single full breath. + +"And I am going to kill you!" she repeated, shuddering, at the close of +the narrative. + +"When he said that did his face change completely? Did it seem like the +face of another man? Yes, did it seem as if there were one face that +could charm and another that could kill?" Jasper's words came slowly and +with a drawn exactness. They formed the inquiry of one who expected +corroboration of an impression. + +"Yes." + +"You felt it--you felt it very definitely, Mary?" + +"Yes." + +She was living over the moment of Jack's transformation from silk to +steel. The scene in the _arroyo_ became burning clear. Under the strain +of the suppression of her own excitement, concentrated in her purpose to +make all the realism of the duel an absurdity, she did not watch keenly +for the signs of expression by which she usually knew what was passing +in her father's mind. But she was not too preoccupied to see that he was +relieved over her assent that there was a devil in Jack Wingfield, which +struck her as a puzzle in keeping with all that morning's experience. +It added to the inward demoralization which had suddenly dammed her +power of speech. + +"Ignacio saw it, too, so I was interested," Jasper added quickly, +in a more natural tone, settling back into his chair. His agitation +had passed. + +So that was it. Her father's dominant, fine old egoism was rejoicing in +another proof of his excellence as a judge of character. + +"Finis! The story is told!" he continued softly. + +All told! And it had been a success. Mary caught her breath in a gay, +high-pitched exclamation of realization that she had not to go on with +explanations. + +"Our singular cavalier is safe!" she said. "My debt is paid. I need not +worry any further lest someone who did me a favor should suffer for it!" + +"True! true!" + +Jasper's outburst of laughter when he had paused in turning down the wick +of the lamp the previous evening had been as a forced blast from the +brasses. Anyone with strong lungs may laugh majestically; but it takes +depth of feeling and years rich with experience to express the +gratification that now possessed him. He stretched his hands across the +table to her and the laugh that came then came as a cataract of +spontaneity. + +"Exactly, Mary! The duel provided the way to pay a debt," he said. "Why, +it is you who have done our Big Spurs a favor! He has a wound to show to +his friends in the East! I am proud that you could take it all so coolly +and reasonably." + +She improved her opportunity while he held her hands. + +"I will go armed next time, and I do know how to shoot, so you won't +worry"--she put it that way, rather than openly ask his consent--"if I +ride out to the pass?" + +"Mary, I have every reason to believe that you know how to take care of +yourself," he answered. + +And that very afternoon she rode out to Galeria, starting a little +earlier than usual, returning a little later than usual, in +jubilant mood. + +"Everything is the same!" she had repeated a dozen times on the road. +"Everything is the same!" she told herself before she fell asleep; +and her sleep was long and sweet, in nature's gratitude for rest +after a storm. + +The sunlight breaking through the interstices of the foliage of a poplar, +sensitive to a slight breeze, came between the lattices in trembling +patchwork on the bed, flickering over her face and losing itself in the +strands of her hair. + +"Everything is the same!" she said, when her faculties were cleared of +drowsiness. + +For the second time she gave intimate, precious thanks for a simple thing +that had never occurred to her as a blessing before: for the seclusion +and silence of her room, free from all invasion except of her own +thoughts. The quicker flow of blood that came with awaking, the expanding +thrill of physical strength and buoyancy of life renewed, brought with it +the moral courage which morning often brings to flout the compromises of +the confusion of the evening's weariness. The inspiriting, cool air of +night electrified by the sun cleared her vision. She saw all the pictures +on the slate of yesterday and their message plainly, as something that +could not be erased by any Buddhistic ritual of reiterated phrase. + +"No, everything is not the same, not even the ride--not yet!" she +admitted. "But time will make it so--time and a sense of humor, which I +hope I have." + + + + +XI + +SEÑOR DON'T CARE RECEIVES + + +Jack lounged in an armchair in the Galway sitting-room with his bandaged +leg bolstered on a stool after Dr. Patterson had fished a bit of lead +out of the wound. Tribute overflowed from the table to the chairs and +from the chairs to the floor; pineapples, their knobby jackets all +yellow from ripening in the field, with the full succulency of root-fed +and sun-drawn flavor; monstrous navel oranges, leaden with the weight of +juice, richer than cloth of gold and velvet soft; and every fruit of the +fertile soil and benignant climate; and jellies, pies, and custards. But +these were only the edibles. There were flowers in equal abundance. They +banked the windows. + +"It's Jasper Ewold's idea to bring gifts when you call," explained Jim +Galway. "Jasper is always sowing ideas and lots of them have sprung up +and flourished." + +Jack had not been in Little Rivers twenty-four hours, and he had played a +part in its criminal annals and become subject to all the embarrassment +of favors of a royal bride or a prima donna who is about to sail. In a +bower, amazed, he was meeting the world of Little Rivers and its wife. +Men of all ages; men with foreign accent; men born and bred as farmers; +men to whom the effect of indoor occupation clung; men still weak, but +with red corpuscles singing a song of returning health in their +arteries--strapping, vigorous men, all with hands hardened by manual +labor and in their eyes the far distances of the desert, in contrast to +the sparkle of oasis intimacy. + +Women with the accent of college classrooms; women who made plural nouns +the running mates of singular verbs; women who were novices in +housework; women drilled in drudgery from childhood--all expanding, all +dwelling in a democracy that had begun its life afresh in a new land, +and all with the wonder of gardens where there had been only sagebrush +in their beings. + +There was something at odds with Jack's experience of desert towns in the +picture of a bronzed rancher, his arms loaded with roses, saying, in +boyish diffidence: + +"Mister, you fit him fair and you sure fixed him good. Just a few +roses--they're so thick over to our place that they're getting a pest. +Thought mebbe they'd be nice for you to look at while you was tied up to +a chair nursing Pete's soovenir!" + +One visitor whose bulk filled the doorway, the expansion of his smile +spreading over a bounteous rotundity of cheek, impressed himself as a +personality who had the distinction in avoirdupois that Jim Galway had in +leanness. In his hand he had five or six peonies as large as saucers. + +"Every complete community has a fat man, seh!" he announced, with a +certain ample bashfulness in keeping with his general amplitude and a +musical Southern accent. + +"If it wants to feel perfectly comfortable it has!" said Jack, by way +of welcome. + +"Well, I'm the fat man of Little Rivers, name being Bob Worther!" +said he, grinning as he came across the room with an amazingly quick, +easy step. + +"No rivals?" inquired Jack. + +"No, seh! I staked out the first claim and I've an eye out for any +new-comers over the two hundred mark. I warn them off! Jasper Ewold is up +to two hundred, but he doesn't count. Why, you ought to have seen me, +seh, before I came to this valley!" + +"A living skeleton?" + +"No, seh! Back in Alabama I had reached a point where I broke so many +chairs and was getting so nervous from sudden falls in the midst of +conversation, when I made a lively gesture that I didn't dare sit down +away from home except at church, where they had pews. I weighed three +hundred and fifty!" + +"And now?" + +"I acknowledge two hundred and forty, including my legs, which are very +powerful, having worked off that extra hundred. I've got the boss job +for making a fat man spider-waisted--inspector of ditches and dams. Any +other man would have to use a horse, but I hoof it, and that's economy +all around. And being big I grow big things. Violets wouldn't be much +more in my line than drawnwork. I've got this whole town beat on +peonies and pumpkins. Being as it's a fat man's pleasure to cheer +people up, I dropped in to bring you a few peonies and to say that, +considering the few well-selected words you spoke to Pete Leddy on this +town's behalf, I'm prepared to vote for you for anything from coroner +to president, seh!" + +Later, after Bob had gone, a small girl brought a spray of gladiolus, +their slender stems down to her toe-tips and the opening blossoms half +hiding her face. Jack insisted on having them laid across his knee She +was not a fairy out of a play, as he knew by her conversation. + +"Mister, did you yell when you was hit?" she asked. + +Jack considered thoughtfully. It would not do to be vagarious under such +a shrewd examination; he must be exact. + +"No, I don't think I did. I was too busy." + +"I'll bet you wanted to, if you hadn't been so busy. Did it hurt much?" + +"Not so very much." + +"Maybe that was why you didn't yell. Mother says that all you can see is +a little black spot--except you can't see it for the bandages. Is that +the way yours is?" + +"I believe so. In fact, I'll tell you a secret: That's the fashion +in wounds." + +"Mother will be glad to know she's right. She sets a lot by her opinion, +does mother. Say, do you like plums?" + +Jack already had a peck of plums, but another peck would not add much to +the redundancy as far as he was concerned. + +"I'll bring you some. We've got the biggest plums in Little Rivers--oh, +so big! Bigger'n Mr. Ewold's! I'll bring some right away." She paused, +however, in the doorway. "Don't you tell anybody I said they were +bigger'n Mr. Ewold's," she went on. "It might hurt his feelings. He's +what they call the o-rig-i-nal set-tler, and we always agree that he +grows the biggest of everything, because--why, because he's got such a +big laugh and such a big smile. Mother says sour-faced people oughtn't to +have a face any bigger'n a crab apple; but Mr. Ewold's face couldn't be +too big if it was as big as all outdoors! Good-by. I reckon you won't be +s'prised to hear that I'm the dreadful talker of our family." + +"Wait!" Jack called. "You haven't told me your name." + +"Belvedere Smith. Father says it ain't a name for living things. But +mother is dreadfully set in her ideas of names, and she doesn't like it +because people call me Belvy; but they just naturally will." + +"Belvedere, did you ever hear of the three little blue mice"--Jack was +leaning toward her with an air of fascinating mystery--"that thought they +could hide in the white clover from the white cat that had two black +stripes on her back?" + +There was a pellmell dash across the room and her face, with wide-open +eyes dancing in curiosity, was pressed close to his: + +"Why did the cat have two black stripes? Why? why?" + +"Just what I was going to tell," said the pacifier of desperadoes. + +"They were off on a tremendous adventure, with anthills for mountains +and clover-stems for the tree-trunks of forests in the path. Tragedy +seemed due for the mice, when a bee dropped off a thistle blossom for a +remarkable reason--none other than that a hummingbird cuffed him in the +ear with his wing--and the bee, looking for revenge with his stinger on +the first vulnerable spot, stung the cat right in the Achilles tendon of +his paw, just as that paw was about to descend with murderous purpose. +The cat ran away crying, with both black stripes ridges of fur sticking +up straight, while the rest of the fur lay nice and smooth; and the +mice giggled so that their ears nearly wiggled off their heads. So all +ended happily." + +"He does beat all!" thought Mrs. Galway, who had overheard part of the +nonsense from the doorway. "Wouldn't it make Pete Leddy mad if he could +hear the man who took his gun away getting off fairy stuff like that!" + +Mrs. Galway had brought in a cake of her own baking. She was +slightly jealous of the neighbors' pastry as entering into her own +particular field of excellence. Jack saw that the supply of cake in +the Galway pantry must be as limitless as the pigments on the +Eternal Painter's palette. + +"The doctor said that I was to have a light diet," he expostulated; "and +I am stuffed to the brim." + +"I'll make you some floating island," said Mrs. Galway, refusing to +strike her colors. + +"That isn't filling and passes the time," Jack admitted. + +"Jim says if you had to Fletcherize on floating island you would starve +to death and your teeth would get so used to missing a step on the stairs +that they would never be able to deal with real victuals at all." + +"Mrs. Galway," Jack observed sagely, dropping his head on the back of the +chair, "I see that it has occurred to you and Jim that it is an excellent +world and full of excellent nonsense. I am ready to eat both fluffy isles +and the yellow sea in which they float. I am ready to keep on getting +hungry with my efforts, even though you make it continents and oceans!" + +From his window he had a view, over the dark, polished green of Jim's +orange trees, of the range, brown and gray and bare, holding steady +shadows of its own and host to the shadows of journeying clouds, with the +pass set in the centre as a cleft in a forbidding barrier. In the yard +Wrath of God, Jag Ear, and P.D. were tethered. Deep content illumined the +faces of P.D. and Jag Ear; but Wrath of God was as sorrowful as ever. A +cheerful Wrath of God would have excited fears for his health. + +"Yet, maybe he is enjoying his rest more than the others," Jack told +Firio, who kept appearing at the window on some excuse or other. "Perhaps +he takes his happiness internally. Perhaps the external signs are only +the last stand of a lugubriousness driven out by overwhelming forces of +internal joy." + +"_SÃ, sÃ_!" said Firio. + +"Firio, you are eminently a conversationalist," said Jack. "You agree +with any foolishness as if it were a new theory of ethics. You are an +ideal companion. I never have to listen to you in order that I may in +turn have my say." + +"_SÃ_," said Firio. He leaned on the windowsill, his black eyes shining +with ingenuous and flattering appeal: "I will broil you a quail on a +spit," he whispered. "It's better than stove cooking." + +"Don't talk of that!" Jack exclaimed, almost sharply. The suggestion +brought a swift change to sadness over his face and drew a veil of +vagueness over his eyes. "No, Firio, and I'll tell you why: the odor of a +quail broiled on a spit belongs at the end of a day's journey, when you +camp in sight of no habitation. You should sit on a dusty blanket-roll; +you should eat by the light of the embers or a guttering candle. No, +Firio, we'll wait till some other day. And it's not exactly courtesy to +our hostess to bring in provender from the outside." + +The trail had apparently taught Firio all the moods of his master. He +knew when it was unwise to persist. + +"_SÃ_!" he whispered, and withdrew. + +Jack looked at Galeria and then back quickly, as if resisting its call. +He smiled half wryly and readjusted his position in the chair. Over the +hedge he could see the heads and shoulders of passers-by. Jim Galway had +come into the room, when Jasper Ewold's broad back and great head hove +in sight with something of the steady majesty of progress of a +full-rigged ship. + +"The Doge!" Jack exclaimed, brightening. + +Jim was taken unawares. Was it the name of a new kind of semi-tropical +fruit not yet introduced into Arizona? + +"Not the Doge of Venice--hardly, when Mr. Ewold's love runs to Florence! +The Doge of Little Rivers!" + +"Why, the Doge--of course!" Jim was "on" now and grinning. "I didn't +think of my history at first. That's a good one for Jasper Ewold!" + +"O Doge of Little Rivers, I expected you in a gondola of state!" said +Jack, with a playfully grandiloquent gesture, as Jasper's abundance +filled the doorway. "But it is all the more compliment to me that you +should walk." + +"Doge, eh?" Jasper tasted the word. "Pooh!" he said. "Persiflage! +persiflage! I saw at once yesterday that you had a weakness for it." + +"And Miss Ewold? How is she?" Jack asked. Remembering the promise +that Mary had exacted from him, he took care not to refer to her part +in the duel. + +His question fell aptly for what Jasper had to say. Being a man used to +keeping the gate ever open to the full flood of spontaneity, he became +stilted in the repetition of anything he had thought out and rehearsed. +He was overcheerful, without the mellowness of tone which gave his cheer +its charm on the previous evening. + +"She's not a bit the worse. Why, she went for a ride out to the pass this +afternoon as usual! I've had the whole story, from the pass till the +minute that Jim put the tourniquet on your leg. She recognizes the great +kindness you did her." + +"Not a kindness--an inevitable interruption by any passer-by," +Jack put in. + +"Naturally she felt that it was a kindness, a service, and when she knew +you were in danger she acted promptly for herself, with a desert girl's +self-reliance. When it was all over she saw the whole thing in its proper +perspective, as an unpleasant, preposterous piece of barbarism which had +turned out fortunately." + +"Oh, I am glad of that!" Jack exclaimed, in relief that spoke rejoicing +in every fibre. "I had worried. I had feared lest I had insisted too much +on going on. But I had to. And I know that it was a scene that only men +ought to witness--so horrible I feared it might leave a disagreeable +impression." + +"Ah, Mary has courage and humor. She sees the ridiculous. She laughs at +it all, now!" + +"Laughs?" asked Jack. "Yes, it was laughable;" and he broke into +laughter, in which Jasper joined thunderously. + +Jasper kept on laughing after Jack stopped, and in genuine relief to find +that the affair was to be as uninfluencing a chapter in the easy +traveller's life as in Mary's. + +"Our regret is that we may have delayed you, sir," Jasper proceeded. "You +may have had to postpone an important engagement. I understand that you +had planned to take the train this morning." + +"When one has been in the desert for a long time," Jack answered, "a few +days more or less hardly matter in the time of his departure. In a week +Dr. Patterson says that I may go. Meanwhile, I shall have the pleasure +of getting acquainted with Little Rivers, which, otherwise, I should +have missed." + +"I am glad!" Jasper Ewold exclaimed with dramatic quickness. "Glad that +your wound is so slight--glad that you need not be shut up long when you +are due elsewhere." + +What books should he bring to the invalid to while away the time? "The +Three Musketeers" or "Cyrano"? Jack seemed to know his "Cyrano" so well +that a copy could be only a prompt. He settled deeper in his chair and, +more to the sky than to Jasper Ewold, repeated Cyrano's address to his +cadets, set to a tune of his own. His body might be in the chair, with a +bandaged leg, but clearly his mind was away on the trail. + +"Yes, let me see," he said, coming back to earth. "I should like the +'Road to Rome,' something of Charles Lamb, Aldrich's 'Story of a Bad +Boy,' Heine---but no! What am I saying? Bring me any solid book on +economics. I ought to be reading economics. Economics and Charles Lamb, +that will do. Do you think they could travel together?" + +"All printed things can, if you choose. I'll include Lamb." + +"And any Daudet lying loose," Jack added. + +"And Omar?" + +"I carry Omar in my head, thank you, O Doge!" + +"Sir Chaps of the enormous spurs, you have a broad taste for one who +rides over the pass of Galeria after five years in Arizona," said the +Doge as he rose. He was covertly surveying that soft, winning, dreamy +profile which had turned so hard when the devil that was within came to +the surface. + +"I was fed on books and galleries in my boyhood," Jack said; but +with a reticence that indicated that this was all he cared to tell +about his past. + + + + +XII + +MARY BRINGS TRIBUTE + + +Every resident except the cronies of Pete Leddy considered it a duty, +once a day at least, to look over the Galway hedge and ask how Señor +Don't Care was doing. That is, everyone with a single exception, which +was Mary. Jack had never seen her even pass the house. It was as if his +very existence had dropped out of her ken. The town remarked the anomaly. + +"You have not been in lately," Mrs. Galway reminded her. + +"My flowers have required a lot of attention; also, I have been riding +out to the pass a good deal," she answered, and changed the subject to +geraniums, for the very good reason that she had just been weeding her +geranium bed. + +Mrs. Galway looked at her strangely and Mary caught the glance. She +guessed what Mrs. Galway was thinking: that she had been a little +inconsiderate of a man who had been wounded in her service. + +"Probably it is time I bore tribute, too," she said to herself. + +That afternoon she took down a glass of jelly from the pantry shelves and +set forth in the line of duty, frowning and rehearsing a presentation +speech as she went. With every step toward the Galway cottage she was +increasingly confused and exasperated with herself for even thinking of a +speech. As she drew near she heard a treble chorus of "ohs!" and "ahs!" +and saw Jack on the porch surrounded by children. + +"It's dinosaur foolishness again!" she thought, pungently. + +He was in the full fettle of nonsense, his head a little to one side and +lowered, while he looked through his eyebrows at his hearers, measuring +the effect of his words. She thought of that face when he called to +Leddy, "I am going to kill you!" and felt the pulse of inquiry beat over +all that lay in this man's repertory between the two moods. + +"Then, counting each one in his big, deep, bass voice, like this," he was +saying, "that funny little dwarf kept dropping oranges out of the tree on +the big giant, who could not wiggle and was squeaking in protest in his +little, old woman's voice. Every orange hit him right on the bridge of +his nose, and he was saying: 'You know I never could bear yellow! It +fusses me so.'" + +"He doesn't need any jelly! I am going on!" Mary thought. + +Then Jack saw a slim, pliant form hastening by and a brown profile under +hair bare of a hat, with eyes straight ahead. Mary might have been a unit +of marching infantry. The story stopped abruptly. + +"Yes--and--and--go on!" cried the children. + +Jack held up his hand for silence. + +"How do you do?" he called, and she caught in his tone and in her first +glimpse of his face a certain mischievousness, as if he, who missed no +points for idle enjoyment of any situation, had a satisfaction in taking +her by surprise with his greeting. This put her on her mettle with the +quickness of a summons to fence. She was as nonchalant as he. + +"And you are doing well, I learn," she answered. + +"Oh, come in and hear it, Miss Ewold! It's the best one yet!" cried +Belvedere Smith. "And--and--" + +"And--and--" began the chorus. + +Mary went to the hedge. She dropped the glass of jelly on the thick +carpet of the privet. + +"I have just brought my gift. I'll leave it here. Belvy will bring it +when the story is over. I am glad you are recovering so rapidly." + +"And--and--" insisted the chorus. + +"You oughtn't to miss this story. It's a regular Jim dandy!" +Belvedere shouted. + +"Yes, won't you come in?" Jack begged in serious urgency. "I pride +myself that it is almost intellectual toward the close." + +"I have no doubt," she said, looking fairly at him from under her hand, +which she held up to shade her face, so he saw only the snap of her eyes +in the shadow. "But I am in a hurry." + +And he was looking at a shoulder and a quarter profile as she +turned away. + +"Did you make the jelly yourself?" he called. + +"Yes, I am not afraid of the truth--I did!" she answered with a backward +glance and not stopping. + +"Oh, bully!" he exclaimed with great enthusiasm, in which she detected a +strain of what she classified as impudence. + +"But all the time the giant was fumbling in his pocket for his green +handkerchief. You know the dwarf did not like green. It fussed him just +as much as yellow fussed the giant. But it was a narrow pocket, so narrow +that he could only get his big thumb in, and very deep. So, you see--" +and she heard the tale proceeding as she walked on to the end of the +street, where she turned around and came back across the desert and +through the garden. + +On the way she found it amusing to consider Jack judicially as a human +exhibit, stripped of all the chimera of romance with which Little Rivers +had clothed his personality. If he had not happened to meet her on the +pass, the townspeople would have regarded this stranger as an invasion of +real life by a character out of a comic opera. She viewed the specimen +under a magnifying glass in all angles, turning it around as if it were a +bronze or an ivory statuette. + +1. In his favor: Firstly, children were fond of him; but his extravagance +of phrase and love of applause accounted for that. Secondly, Firio was +devoted to him. Such worshipful attachment on the part of a native Indian +to any Saxon was remarkable. Yet this was explained by his love of color, +his foible for the picturesque, his vagabond irresponsibility, and, +mostly, by his latent savagery--which she would hardly have been willing +to apply to Ignacio's worshipful attachment to herself. + +2. Against him: Everything of any importance, except in the eyes of +children and savages; everything in logic. He would not stand analysis at +all. He was without definite character. He was posing, affected, pleased +with himself, superficial, and theatrical, and interested in people only +so long as they amused him or gratified his personal vanity. + +"I had the best of the argument in leaving the jelly on the hedge, and +that is the last I shall hear of it," she concluded. + +Not so. Mrs. Galway came that evening, a bearer of messages. + +"He says it is the most wonderful jelly that ever was," said Mrs. Galway. +"He ate half the glass for dinner and is saving the rest for +breakfast--I'm using his own words and you know what a killing way he has +of putting things--saving it for breakfast so that he will have something +to live through the night for and in the morning the joy of it will not +be all a memory. He wants to know if you have any more of the same kind." + +"Yes, a dozen glasses," Mary returned. "Tell him we are glad of the +opportunity of finishing last year's stock, and I send it provided he +eats half a glass with every meal." + +"I don't know what his answer will be to that," said Mrs. Galway, +contracting her brow studiously at Mary. "But he would have one quick. He +always has. He's so poetic and all that, we're planning to go to the +station to see him off and pelt him with flowers; and Dr. Patterson is +going to fashion a white cat out of white carnations, with deep red ones +for the black stripes, for the children to present." + +"Hurrah!" exclaimed Mary blithely, and went for the jelly. + +She was spared further bulletins on the state of health of the wounded +until her father returned from his daily call the next morning. She was +in the living-room and she knew by his step on the porch, vigorous yet +light, that he was uplifted by good news or by the anticipation of the +exploitation of some new idea--a pleasure second only to that of the +idea's birth. Such was his elation that he broke one of his own rules by +tossing some of the books loaned to Jack onto the broad top of the table +of the living-room, which was sacred to the isolation of the ivory +paper-knife. + +"He has named the date!" shouted the Doge. "He goes by to-morrow's train! +It will be a gala affair, almost an historical moment in the early +history of this community. I am to make a speech presenting him with the +freedom of the whole world. Between us we have hit on a proper modern +symbol of the gift. He slips me his Pullman ticket and I formally offer +it to him as the key to the hospitality of the seven seas, the two +hemispheres, and the teeming cities that lie beyond the range. It will be +great fun, with plenty of persiflage. And, Mary, they suggest that you +write some verses--ridiculous verses, in keeping with the whole +nonsensical business." + +"You mean that I am to stand on the platform and read poetry dedicated to +him?" she demanded. + +"Poetry, Mary? You grow ambitious. Not poetry--foolish doggerel. Or +someone will read it for you." + +He had not failed to watch the play of her expression. She had received +all his nonsense, announced in his best style of simulated forensic +grandeur, with a certain unchanging serenity which was unamused: which +was, indeed, barely interested. + +"And someone else shall write it, for I don't think of any verses," +she said, with a slight shrug of the shoulder. "Besides, I shall not +be there." + +"Not be there! People will remark your absence!" + +"Will they?" she asked, thoughtfully, as if that had not occurred to her. +"No, they will be too occupied with the persiflage. I am going to ride +out to the pass in the morning very early--before daybreak." + +"But"--he was positively frolicsome as he caught her hands and waved +them back and forth, while he rocked his shoulders--"when you are +stubborn, Mary, have your way. I will make your excuses. And I to work +now. It is the hour of the hoe," as he called all hours except those of +darkness and the hot midday. + +For Jasper Ewold was no idler in the affairs of his ranch or of the town. +Few city men were so busy. His everlasting talk was incidental, like the +babbling of a brook which, however, keeps steadily flowing on; and the +stored scholarship of his mind was supplemented by long evenings with no +other relaxation but reading. Now as he went down the path he broke into +song; and when the Doge sang it was something awful, excusable only by +the sheer happiness that brought on the attack. + +Mary had important sewing, which this morning she chose to do in her room +rather than in her favorite spot in the garden. She closed the shutters +on the sunny side and sat down by the window nearest the garden, +peculiarly sensible of the soft light and cool spaciousness of an inner +world. The occasional buzz of a bee, the flutter of the leaves of the +poplar, might have been the voice of the outer world in Southern Spain or +Southern Italy, or anywhere else where the air is balmy. + +And to-morrow! Out to Galeria in the fervor of a pilgrim to some shrine, +with the easy movement of her pony and the rigid lines of the pass +gradually drawing nearer and the sky ever distant! She would be mistress +of her thoughts in all the silent glamour of morning on the desert. She +would hear the train stop at the station, its heavy effort as it pulled +out, and watch it winding over the flashing steel threads in a clamor of +stridency and harshness, which grew fainter and fainter. And she would +smile as it disappeared around a bend in the range. She would smile at +him, at the incident, just as carelessly as he had smiled when he told of +the dinosaur. + + + + +XIII + +A JOURNEY ON CRUTCHES + + +The sun became benign in its afternoon slant. Little Rivers was beginning +to move after its siesta, with the stretching of muscles that would grow +more vigorous as evening approached and freshened life came into the air +with the sprinkle of sunset brilliance. + +To Jack the hour palpably brought a reminder of the misery of the moment +when a thing long postponed must at last be performed. The softness of +speculative fancy faded from his face. His lips tightened in a way that +seemed to bring his chin into prominence in mastery of his being. As he +called Firio, his voice unusually high-pitched, he did not look out at +P.D. and Wrath of God and Jag Ear. + +Firio came with the eagerness of one who is restless for action. He +leaned on the windowsill, his elbows spread, his chin cupped in his +hands, his Indian blankness of countenance enlivened by the glow of his +eyes, as jewels enliven dull brown velvet. + +"Firio, I have something to tell you." + +"_SÃ_!" + +There was a laboring of Jack's throat muscles, and then he forced out the +truth in a few words. + +"Firio," he said, "this is my trail end. I am going back to New York +to-morrow." + +"_SÃ_!" answered Firio, without a tremor of emotion; but his eyes glowed +confidently, fixedly, into Jack's. + +"There will be money for you, and--" + +"_SÃ_!" said Firio mechanically, as if repeating the lines of a lesson. + +Was this Indian boy prepared for the news? Or did he not care? Was he +simply clay that served without feeling? The thought made Jack wince. He +paused, and the dark eyes, as in a spell, kept staring into his. + +"And you get P.D. and Wrath of God and Jag Ear and, yes, the big spurs +and the chaps, too, to keep to remember me by." + +Firio did not answer. + +"You are not pleased? You--" + +"_SÃ_! I will keep them for you. You will want them; you will come back +to all this;" and suddenly Firio was galvanized into the life of a single +gesture. He swept his arm toward the sky, indicating infinite distance. + +"No, I shall never come back! I can't!" Jack said; and his face had set +hard, as if it were a wall about to be driven at a wall. "I must go and I +must stay." + +"_SÃ_!" said Firio, resuming his impassiveness, and slipped around the +corner of the house. + +"He does care!" Jack cried with a smile, which, however, was not the +smile of gardens, of running brooks, and of song. "I am glad--glad!" + +He picked up his crutches and went out to the three steeds of +trail memory: + +"And _you_ care--_you_ care!" he repeated to them. + +He drew a lugubrious grimace in mockery at Wrath of God. He tickled the +sliver of the donkey's ear, whereat Jag Ear wiggled the sliver in +blissful unconsciousness that he had lost any of the ornamental equipment +of his tribe. + +"You are like most of us; we don't see our deformities, Jag Ear," Jack +told him. "And if others were also blind to them, why, we should all be +good-looking!" + +His arm slipped around P.D.'s neck and he ran a finger up and down P.D.'s +nose with a tickling caress. + +"You old plodder!" he said. "You know a lot. It's good to have the love +of any living thing that has been near me as long as you have." + +This preposterous being was preposterously sentimental over a pair of +ponies and an earless donkey. When Mrs. Galway, who had watched him from +the window, came out on the porch she saw that he was on his way through +the gate in the hedge to the street. + +"Look here! Did the doctor say you might?" she called. + +"No, my leg says it!" Jack answered, gaily. "Just a little walk! +Back soon." + +It was his first enterprise in locomotion outside the limits of Jim +Galway's yard since he had been wounded. He turned blissful traveller +again. Having come to know the faces of the citizens, now he was to look +into the faces of their habitations. The broad main street, with its rows +of trees, narrowed with perspective until it became a gray spot of desert +sand. Under the trees leisurely flowed those arteries of ranch and +garden-life, the irrigation ditches. Continuity of line in the +hedge-fences was evidently a municipal requirement; but over the hedges +individualism expressed itself freely, yet with a harmony which had been +set by public fashion. + +The houses were of cement in simple design. They had no architectural +message except that of a background for ornamentation by the genius of +the soil's productivity. They waited on vines to cover their sides and +trees to cast shade across their doorways. One need not remain long to +know the old families in this community, where the criterion of local +aristocracy was the size of your plums or the number of crops of alfalfa +you could grow in a year. + +Already Jack felt at home. It was as if he were friends with a whole +world, lacking the social distinctions which only begin when someone +acquires sufficient worldly possessions to give exclusive, formal +dinners. He knew every passer-by well enough to address him or her by the +Christian name. Women called to him from porches with a dozen invitations +to visit gardens. + +"Just a saunter, just a try-out before I take the train. Not going far," +he always answered; yet there was something in his bearing that suggested +a definite mission. + +"We hate to lose you!" called Mrs. Smith. + +"I hate to be lost!" Jack called back; "but that is just my +natural luck." + +"I suppose you've got your work cut out for you back East, same's +everybody else, somewhere or other, 'less they're millionaires, who all +stay in the city and try to run from microbes in their automobiles." + +"Yes, I have work--lots of it," said Jack, ruefully. He shifted his +weight on the crutches, paused and looked at the sky. The Eternal Painter +was dipping his brush lightly and sweeping soft, silvery films, as a kind +of glorified finger-exercise, over an intangible blue. + +"Why care? Why care?" His Majesty was asking. "Why not leave all the +problems of earthly existence to your lungs? Why not lie back and look on +at things and breathe my air? That is enough to keep your whole being in +tune with the Infinite." + +It was his afternoon mood. At sunset he would have another. Then he would +be crying out against the folly of wasting one precious moment in the +eons, because that moment could never return to be lived over. + +Jack kept on until he recognized the cement bridge where he had stopped +when he came from the post-office with Mary. Left bare of its +surroundings, the first habitation in Little Rivers, with the ell which +had been added later, would have appeared a barracks. But Jasper Ewold +had the oldest trees and the most luxuriant hedge and vines as the reward +of his pioneerdom. + +When Jack crossed the bridge and stood in the opening of the hedge there +was no one on the porch in the inviting shade of the prodigal +bougainvillea vines. So he hitched his way up the steps. Feeling that it +was a formal occasion, he searched for the door-bell. There was none. He +rapped on the casing and waited, while he looked at the cool, quiet +interior, with the portrait of David facing him from the wall. + +"David, you seem to be the only one at home," he remarked, for there had +been no answer to his raps; "and you are too busy getting a bead on +Goliath to answer the immaterial questions of a wayfarer." + +Accepting the freedom of the Little Rivers custom on such occasions, he +followed the path to the rear. His head knocked off the dead petals of a +rambler rose blossom, scattering them at his feet. Rounding the corner of +the house, he saw the arbor where he had dined the night of his arrival, +and beyond this an old-fashioned flower garden separated by a path from +a garden of roses. There was a sound of activity from the kitchen behind +a trellis screen, but he did not call out for guidance. He would trust to +finding his own way. + +When he came to the broad path, its stretch lay under a crochet-work of +shadows from the ragged leaves of two rows of palms which ran to the edge +of an orange grove, and the centre of this path was in a straight line +with the bottom of the V of Galeria. + +Jasper Ewold had laid out his little domain according to a set plan +before the water was first let go in laughing triumph over the parched +earth, and this plan, as one might see on every hand, was expressive of +the training of older civilizations in landscape gardening, which ages of +men striving for harmonious forms of beauty in green and growing things +had tested, and which the Doge, in all his unconventionalism of +personality, was as little inclined to amend as he was to amend the +classic authors. An avenue of palms is the epic of the desert; a +bougainvillea vine its sonnet. + +Between the palms to the right and left Jack had glimpses of a vegetable +garden; of rows of berry bushes; of a grove of young fig-trees; of rows +of the sword-bundles of pineapple tops. Everything except the +old-fashioned flower-bed, with its border of mignonette, and the generous +beds of roses and other flowers of the bountiful sisterhood of petals of +artificial cultivation, spoke of utility which must make the ground pay +as well as please. + +Jack took each step as if he were apprehensive of disturbing the quiet +Midway of the avenue of palms ran a cross avenue, and at the +meeting-point was a circle, which evidently waited till the oranges and +the olives should pay for a statue and surrounding benches. Over the +breadth of the cross avenue lay the glossy canopy of the outstretched +branches of umbrella-trees. A table of roughly planed boards painted +green and green rattan chairs were in keeping with the restful effect, +while the world without was aglare with light. + +Here Mary had brought her sewing for the afternoon. She was working so +intently that she had not heard his approach. He had paused just as his +line of vision came flush with the trunks of the umbrella-trees. For the +first time he saw his companion in adventure in repose, her head bent, +leaving clear the line of her neck from the roots of her hair to the +collar, and the soft light bringing out the delicate brown of her skin. + +There seemed no movement anywhere in the world at the moment, except the +flash of her needle in and out. + + + + +XIV + +"HOW FAST YOU SEW!" + + +And she had not seen him! He was touched with a sense of guilt for +having looked so long; for not having at once called to her; and rather +than give her the shock of calling now, he moved toward her, the scuff +of his limp, pendent foot attracting her attention. Her start at the +sound was followed, when she saw him, with amazement and a flush and a +movement as if she would rise. But she controlled the movement, if not +the flush, and fell back into her chair, picking up her sewing, which +had dropped on the table. + +It was like him, she might well think, to come unexpectedly, without +invitation or announcement. She was alert, ready to take the offensive as +the best means of defence, and wishing, in devout futility, that he had +stayed away. He was smiling happily at everything in cosmos and at her as +a part of it. + +"Good afternoon!" + +"Good afternoon!" + +"That last lot of jelly was better than the first," he said softly. + +"Was it? You must favor vintage jelly!" + +"I came to call--my p.p.c. call--and to see your garden," he added. + +"Is there any particular feature that interests you?" she asked. "The +date-trees? The aviary? The nursery?" + +"No," he answered, "not just yet. It is very cool here under the +umbrella-trees, isn't it? I have walked all the way from the Galways and +I'll rest a while, if I may." + +He was no longer the play cavalier in overornamented _chaparejos_ and +cart-wheel spurs, but a lame fellow in overalls, who was hitching toward +her on crutches, his cowpuncher hat held by the brim and flopping with +every step. But he wore the silk shirt and the string tie, and somehow he +made even the overalls seem "dressy." + +"Pray sit down," she said politely. + +Standing his crutches against the table, he accepted the invitation. She +resumed her sewing, eyes on the needle, lips pressed into a straight line +and head bending low. He might have been a stranger on a bench in a +public park for all the attention she was paying to him. She realized +that she was rude and took satisfaction in it as the only way of +expressing her determination not to reopen a closed incident. + +"It's wonderful--wonderful!" he observed, in a voice of contemplative +awe. + +"What is?" she asked. + +"Why, how fast you sew!" + +"Yes?" she said, as automatically as she stitched. "Your wound is quite +all right? No danger of infection?" + +"I don't blame you!" he burst out. His tone had turned sad and urgent. + +She looked up quickly, with the flare of a frown. His remark had brought +her out of her pose and she became vivid and real. + +"Blame me!" she demanded, sharply, as one who flies to arms. + +But she met a new phase--neither banter, nor fancy, nor unvarying +coolness in the face of fire. He was all contrition and apology. Must she +be the audience to some fresh exhibition of his versatility? + +"I do not blame you for feeling the way that you do," he said. + +"How do you know how I feel?" she asked; and as far as he could see into +her eyes there was nothing but the flash of sword-points. + +"I don't. I only know how I think you feel--how you might well feel," he +answered delicately. "After Pete let his gun drop in the store I should +not have named terms for an encounter. I should have turned to the law +for protection for the few hours that I had to remain in town." + +"But to you that would have been avoiding battle!" she exclaimed. + +"Which may take courage," he rejoined. "What I did was selfish. It was +bravado, with no thought of your position." + +"It is late to worry about that now. What does it matter? I did not want +anyone killed on my account, and no one was," she insisted. "Besides, you +should not be blue," this with a ripple of satire; "it is not quite all +bravado to face Pete Leddy's gun at twenty yards." + +"And it is not courage. Courage is a force of will driving you into +danger for some high purpose. I want you to realize that I am not such a +barbarian that I do not know that I could have kept you out of it all if +I had had proper self-control. Though probably, on the impulse, I would +do the fool thing over again! Yes, that's the worst of it!" + +"There is a devil in him!" Ignacio's words were sounding in her ears. To +how many men had he said, "I am going to kill you?" What other quarrels +had he known in his wanderings from Colorado to Chihuahua? + +"If you really want my opinion, I am glad, so far as I am concerned, that +you did fight," she said lightly. "Aren't you a hero? Isn't the town free +of Leddy? And you take the train in the morning!" + +"Yes." + +The monosyllable was drawn out rather faintly. For the first time since +they had met on the pass she felt she was mistress of the situation. +This time she had not to plead with him in fear for his life. She could +regard him without any sense of obligation, this invader of her garden +retreat who had to put in one more afternoon in a dull desert town +before he was away to that outside world which she might know only +through books and memory. + +She rose exultantly, disregarding any formality that she would owe to the +average guest; for an average guest he was not. Her attitude meant that +she was having the last word; that she was showing her mettle. + +He did not rise. He was staring into the sunlight, as if it were darkness +alive with flitting spectres which baffled identification. + +"Yes, back--back to armies of Leddys!" he said slowly. + +But this she saw as still another pose. It did not make her pause in +gathering up her sewing. She was convinced that there was nothing more +for her to say, except to give their parting an appearance of ease and +unconcern. + +"Is it work you mean? You are not used to that, I take it?" she inquired +a little sarcastically. + +"Yes, call it work," he answered, looking away from the spectres and +back to her. + +"And you have never done any work!" she added. + +"Not much," he admitted, with his old, airy carelessness. He was smiling +at the spectres now, as he had at the dinosaur. + +"As there is nothing particular about the garden that I can show you--" +she was moving away. + +"No, I will be walking back to the house," he said after she had taken a +few steps. "Will you wait on my slow pace?" + +He reached for his crutches, lifted himself to his feet and swung to +her side. She who wished that the interview were over saw that it must +be prolonged. Then suddenly she realized the weakness as well as the +brusqueness of her attitude. She had been about to fly from him as +from something that she feared. It was not necessary. It was foolish, +even cowardly. + +"I thought perhaps you preferred to be alone, you seemed so abstracted," +she said, lamely; and then, as they came out into the sunlight in the +circle, she began talking of the garden as she would to any visitor; of +its beginnings, its growth, and its future, when her father's plans +should have been fulfilled. + +"And in all these years you have never been back East?" he asked. + +"No. We are always planning a trip, but the money which we save for it +goes into more plantings." + +They had been moving slowly toward the house, but now he stopped and his +glance swept the sky and rested on Galeria. + +"It is the best valley of all! I knew it as soon as I saw it from the +pass!" and the rapture of the scene was sounding in every syllable like +chimes out of the distance. She knew that he was far away from the +garden, and delaying, still delaying. If she spoke she felt that he would +not hear what she said. If she went on it seemed certain that she would +leave him standing there like a statue. + +"And there is more land here to make gardens like this?" he asked +slowly, absorbed. + +"Yes, with water and labor and time." + +Though his face was in the full light of the sun, it seemed at times in +shadow; then it glowed, as if between two passions. For an instant it was +grim, the chin coming forward, the brows contracting; then it was +transformed with something that was as a complete surrender to the +transport of irresistible temptation. He looked down at her quickly and +she saw him in the mood of story-telling to the children, suffused with +the radiance of a decision. + +"I prefer the Leddys of Little Rivers to the Leddys of New York," he +said. "I am not going to-morrow! I am going to have land and a home under +the aegis of the Eternal Painter and in sight of Galeria, and worship at +the shrine of fecund peace. Will you and the Doge help me?" he asked with +an enthusiasm that was infectious. "May I go to his school of +agriculture, horticulture, and floriculture?" + +Dumfounded, she bent her head and stared at the ground to hide her +astonishment. + +"You want citizens, industrious young citizens, don't you?" he persisted. + +"Yes, yes!" she said hastily and confusedly. + +"Do you know a good piece of land?" he continued. + +"Yes, several parcels," she answered, recovering her poise and smiling +in mockery. + +"Come on!" he cried. + +He was taking long, jumping steps on his crutches as they went up the +path. + +"You will take me to look at the land, won't you, please--now? I want to +get acquainted with my future estate. I mean to beat the Smiths at plums, +Jim Galway at alfalfa, even rival Bob Worther at pumpkins and peonies. +And you will help me lay out the flower garden, won't you? You see, I +shall have to call in the experts in every line to start with, before I +begin to improve on them and make them all jealous. I may find a kind of +plum that will grow on alfalfa stalks," he hazarded. "What a +horticultural sensation!" + +"And a spineless cactus called the Leddy!" + +His eyes were laughing into hers and hers irresistibly laughed back. She +guessed that he was only joking. He had acted so well in the latest rôle +that she had actually believed in his sincerity for a moment. He meant to +take the train, of course, but his resourceful capriciousness had +supplied him with a less awkward exit from the garden than she had +provided. He would yet have the last word if she did not watch out--a +last mischievous word at her expense. + +"First, you will have to plow the ground, in the broiling hot sun," she +said tauntingly, when they had passed around to the porch. She was +starting into the house with nervous, precipitate triumph. The last word +was hers, after all. + +"But you are going to show me the land now!" + +His tone was so serious and so hurt that she paused. + +"And"--with the seriousness electrified by a glance that sought for +mutual understanding--"and we are to forget about that duel and the whole +hero-desperado business. I am a prospective settler who just arrived this +afternoon. I came direct to headquarters to inquire about property. The +Doge not being at home, won't you show me around?" + +Again he had said the right thing at the right time, with a delightful +impersonality precluding sentiment. + +"I couldn't be unaccommodating," she admitted. "It is against all Little +Rivers ethics." + +"I feel like a butterfly about to come out of his miserable chrysalis! +Haven't you a walking-stick? I am going to shed the crutches!" + +She became femininely solicitous at once. + +"Are you sure you ought? Did the doctor say you might? Is the +wound healed?" + +"There isn't any wound!" he answered. "That is one of the things which we +are to forget." + +She brought a stick and he laid the crutches on the porch. + +He favored the lame leg, yet he kept up a clipping pace, talking the +while as fast as the Doge himself as they passed through one of the side +streets out onto the cactus-spotted, baking, cracked levels. + +"This is it!" she said finally. "This is all that father and I had to +begin with." + +"Enough!" he answered, and held out his hands, palms open. "With +callouses I will win luxuriance!" + +She showed him the irrigation ditch from which he should draw his water; +she told him of the first steps; She painted all the difficulties in the +darkest colors, without once lessening the glow of his optimism. He was +so overwhelmingly, boyishly happy that she had to be happy with him in +making believe that he was about to be a real rancher. But he should not +have the sport all on his side. He must not think that she accepted this +latest departure of his imagination incarnated by his Thespian gift in +anything but his own spirit. + +"You plowing! You spraying trees for the scale! You digging up weeds! You +stacking alfalfa! You settling down in one place as a unit of co-ordinate +industry! You earning bread by the sweat of your brow! You with +callouses!" Thus she laughed at him. + +Very seriously he held out his hands and ran a finger around a palm and +across the finger-joints: + +"That is where I shall get them," he said. "But not on the thumb. I +believe you get them on the thumb only by playing golf." + +He asked about carpenters and laborers; he chose the site for his house; +he plotted the walks and orchards. She could not refuse her advice. Who +can about the planning of new houses and gardens? He had everything +quite settled except the land grant from the Doge when they started +back; while the sun, with the swift passage of time in such fascinating +diversion, had swung low in its ellipse. When they reached the main +street the Doge was on the porch passing his opinion on the Eternal +Painter's evening work. + +"Some very remarkable purples to-night, I admit, Your Majesty, without +any intention of giving you too good an opinion of yourself; but +otherwise, you are not up to your mark. There must have been a downpour +in the rainy world on the other side of the Sierras that moistened your +pigments. Next thing we know you will be turning water-colorist!" he was +saying, when he heard Jack's voice. + +"Here's a new settler!" Jack called. "I am going to stay in Little Rivers +and win all the prizes." + +"You are joking!" gasped the Doge. + +"Not joking," said Jack. "I want to close the bargain to-night." + +"You bring color and adventure--yes! I did not expect the honor--the +town will be delighted! I am overwhelmed! Will you plow with Pete +Leddy's gun drawn by Wrath of God, sir, and harrow with your spurs drawn +by Jag Ear? Shall you make a specialty of olives? Do you dare to aspire +as high as dates?" + +The Doge's speech had begun incoherently, but steadied into rallying +humor at the close. + +"I haven't seen the date-tree yet," said Jack. "Not until I have can I +judge whether or not I shall dare to rival the lord of the manor in his +own specialty. And there are business details which I must settle with +you, O Doge of this city of slender canals!" + +"O youth, will you tarry with peace between wars?" answered the Doge, in +quick response to the spirit of nonsense as a basis for their new +relations. "Come, and I will show you our noblest product of peace, the +Date-Tree Wonderful!" he said, leading the way to the garden, while Mary +hurried rather precipitately into the house. + +Jasper Ewold was at his best, a glowing husbandman, when he pointed aloft +to the clusters of fruit pendent from the crotches of the stiff +branches, enclosed in cloth bags to keep them free of insects. + +"Do you see strange lettering on the cloth?" he asked. + +"Yes, it looks like Arabic." + +"So it is! Among other futile diversions in a past incarnation I studied +Arabic a little, and I still have my lexicon. Perhaps my construction +might not please the grammarians of classic Bagdad, but the sentiment is +there safe enough in the language of the mother romance world of the +date: 'All hail, first-born of our Western desert fecundity!' It is +calling out to the pass and the range from the wastes where the +sagebrush has had its own way since the great stir that there was in the +world at genesis." + +"With the unlimited authority I have in bestowing titles," said Jack, "I +have a mind to make you an Emir. But it's a pity that you haven't a camel +squatting under your date-tree and placidly chewing his cud." + +"A tempting thought!" declared the Doge unctuously. + +"Bob Worther could ride him on the tours of inspection. I think the +jounce would be almost as good a flesh-reducer as pedestrianism." + +"There you go! You would have the camel wearing bells, with reins of red +leather and a purple saddle-cloth hung with spangles, and Bob--our +excellent Bob--in a turban! Persiflage, sir! A very demoralization of +the faculties with cataracts of verbiage, sir!" declared the Doge as he +started back to the house. "Little Rivers is a practical town," he +proceeded seriously. "We indulge in nonsense only after sunset and when a +stranger appears riding a horse with a profane name. Yes, a practical +town; and I am surprised at your disloyalty to your own burro by +mentioning camels." + +"It rests with you, I believe, to let me have the land and also the +water," said Jack. + +"We grow businesslike!" returned the Doge with a change of manner. + +"Very!" declared Jack. + +"The requirement is that you become a member of the water users' +association and pay your quota of taxes per acre foot; and the price you +pay for your land also goes to the association. But I decide on the +eligibility of the applicant." + +They were in front of the house by this time, and again the Doge gave +Jack that sharp, quick, knowing glance of scrutiny through his heavy, +tufted eyebrows, before he proceeded: + +"The concession for the use of the river for irrigation is mine, +administered by the water users' association as if it were theirs, under +the condition that no one who has not my approval can have membership. +That is, it is practically mine, owing to my arrangement with old Mr. +Lefferts, who lives upstream. He is an eccentric, a hermit. He came here +many years ago to get as far away from civilization as he could, I judge. +That gives him an underlying right. Originally he had two partners, squaw +men. Both are dead. He had made no improvements beyond drawing enough +water for a garden and for his horse and cow. When I came to make a +bargain with him he named an annual sum which should keep him for the +rest of his life; and thus he waived his rights. First, Jim Galway, then +other settlers drifted in. I formed the water users' association. All +taxes and sums for the sale of land go into keeping the dam and ditches +in condition." + +"You take nothing for yourself!" + +"A great deal. The working out of an idea--an idea in moulding a little +community in my old age in a fashion that pleases me; while my own +property, of course, increases in value. At my death the rights go to the +community. But no Utopia; Sir Chaps! Just hard-working, cheerful men and +women in a safe refuge!" + +"And I am young!" exclaimed Jack, with a hopeful smile. "I have good +health. I mean to work. I try to be cheerful. Am I eligible?" + +"Sir Chaps, you--you have done us a great favor. Everybody likes you. Sir +Chaps"--the Doge hesitated for an instant, with a baffling, unspoken +inquiry in his eyes--"Sir Chaps, I like your companionship and your +mastery of persiflage. Jim Galway, who is secretary of the association, +will look after details of the permit and Bob Worther will turn the water +on your land, and the whole town will assist you with advice! Luck, Sir +Chaps, in your new vocation!" + +That evening, while the Doge took down the David and set a fragment from +the frieze of the Parthenon in its place, Little Rivers talked of the +delightful news that it was not to lose its strange story-teller and +duelist. Little Rivers was puzzled. Not once had Jack intimated a thought +of staying. By his own account, so far as he had given any, his wound had +merely delayed his departure to New York, where he had pressing business. +He had his reservation on the Pullman made for the morning express; he +had paid a farewell call at the Ewolds, and apparently then had changed +his mind and his career. These were the only clues to work on, except the +one suggested by Mrs. Galway, who was the wise woman of the community, +while Mrs. Smith was the propagandist. + +"I guess he likes the way Mary Ewold snubs him!" said Mrs. Galway. + +But there was one person in town who was not surprised at Jack's +decision. When Jack sang out as he entered the Galway yard on returning +from the Doge's, "We stay, Firio, we stay!" Firio said: "_SÃ_, Señor +Jack!" with no change of expression except a brighter gleam than usual in +his velvety eyes. + + + + +XV + +WHEN THE DESERT BLOOMS + + +Perhaps we may best describe this as a chapter of Incidents; or, to use a +simile, a broad, eddying bend in a river on a plateau, with cataracts and +canyons awaiting it on its route to the sea. Or, discarding the simile +and speaking in literal terms, in a search for a theme on which to hang +the incidents, we revert to Mary's raillery at the announcement of an +easy traveller that he was going to turn sober rancher. + +"You plowing! You blistering your hands! You earning your bread by the +sweat of your brow!" + +But there he was in blue overalls, sinking his spade deep for settings, +digging ditches and driving furrows through the virgin soil, while the +masons and carpenters built his ranch house. + +"They are straight furrows, too!" Jack declared. + +"Passably so!" answered Mary. + +"And look at the blisters!" he continued, exhibiting his puffy palms. + +"You seem to think blisters a remarkable human phenomenon, a sensational +novelty to a laboring population!" + +"Now, would you advise pricking?" he asked, with deference to her +judgment. + +"It is so critical in your case that you ought to consult a doctor rather +than take lay advice." + +"Jim Galway says that the thorough way, I mulched my soil before +putting in my first crop of alfalfa is a model for all future settlers," +he ventured. + +She remarked that Jim was always encouraging to new-comers, and remarked +this in a way that implied that some new-comers possibly needed hazing. + +"And I am up at dawn and hard at it for six hours before midday." + +"Yes, it is wonderful!" she admitted, with a mock show of being +overwhelmingly impressed. "Nobody in the world ever worked ten hours a +day before!" + +"I'm doing more than any man that I pay two-fifty. I do perspire, and if +you don't call that earning your bread with the sweat of your brow, why +this is an astoundingly illogical world!" + +"There is a great difference between sporadic display and that continuity +which is the final proof of efficiency," she corrected him. + +"Long, involved sentences often indicate the loss of an argument!" +declared Jack. + +"There isn't any argument!" said Mary with superior disinterestedness. + +By common inspiration they had established a truce of nonsense. She still +called him Jack; he still called her Mary. It was the only point of tacit +admission that they had ever met before he asked her to show a +prospective settler a parcel of land. + +Their new relations were as the house of cards of fellowship: cards of +glass, iridescent and brittle, mocking the idea that there could be +oblivion of the scene in Lang's store, the crack of Leddy's pistol in the +_arroyo_, or the pulse of Jack's artery under her thumb! She was sure +that he could forget these experiences, even if she could not. That was +his character, as she saw it, free of clinging roots of yesterday's +events, living some new part every day. + +In the house of cards she set up a barrier, which he saw as a veil over +her eyes. Not once had he a glimpse of their depths. There was only the +surface gleam of sunbeams and sometimes of rapier-points, merry but +significant. She frequently rode out to the pass and occasionally, when +his day's work was done, he would ride to the foot of the range to meet +her, and as they came back he often sang, but never whistled. Indeed, he +had ceased to whistle altogether. Perhaps he regarded the omission as an +insurance against duels. + +Aside from nonsense they had common interests in cultural and daily life, +from the Eternal Painter's brushwork to how to dress a salad. She did +extend her approval for the generous space which he was allowing for +flower-beds, and advised him in the practical construction of his +kitchen; while the Doge decorated the living-room with Delia Robbias, +which, however, never arrived at the express office. He was a neighbor +always at home in the Ewold house. The Doge revelled in their +disputations, yet never was really intimate or affectionate as he was +with Jim Galway, who knew not the Pitti, the Prado, nor the Louvre, and +could not understand the intoning of Dante in the original as Jack could, +thanks to his having been brought up in libraries and galleries. + +The town, which was not supposed to ask about pasts, could not help +puzzling about his. What was the story of this teller of stories? The +secluded little community was in a poor way to find out, even if the +conscientious feeling about a custom had not been a restraint that kept +wonder free from inquiring hints. They took him for what he was in all +their personal relations; that was the delightful way of Little Rivers, +which inner curiosity might not alloy. His broader experience of that +world over the pass which stretched around the globe and back to the +other range-wall of the valley, seemed only to make him fall more easily +into the simple ways of the fellow-ranchers of the Doge's selection, who +were genuine, hall-marked people, whatever the origin from which the +individual sprang. He knew the fatigue of productive labor as something +far sweeter than the fatigue that comes from mere exercise, and the +neophyte's enthusiasm was his. + +"I'm sitting at the outer edge of the circle," he told Jim Galway. +"But when my first crop is harvested I shall be on the inside--a +real rancher!" + +"You've already got one foot over the circle," said Jim. + +"And with my first crop of dates I'll be in the holy of holies of +pastoral bliss!" + +"Yes, I should say so!" Jim responded, but in a way that indicated +surprise at the thought of Jack's remaining in Little Rivers long enough +for such a consummation. + +When his alfalfa covered the earth with a green carpet Jack was under a +spell of something more than the never-ending marvel of dry seeds +springing into succulent abundance without the waving of any magic wand. + +"I made it out of the desert!" he cried. "It laughs in triumph at the +bare stretches around it, waiting on water!" + +"That is it," said Jim; "waiting on water!" + +"The promise of what might come!" + +"It will come! Some day, Jack, you and I will ride up into the river +canyon and I will show you a place where you can see the blue sky between +precipitous walls two hundred feet high. The abyss is so narrow you can +throw a stone across it." + +"What lies beyond?" asked Jack, his eyes lighting vividly. + +"A great basin which was the bed of an ancient lake before the water wore +its way through." + +"A dam between those walls--and you have another lake!" + +"Yes, and the spring freshets from the northern water-shed all held in a +reservoir--none going to waste! And, Jack, as population spreads the dam +must come." + +"Why, the Doge has a kingdom!" + +"Yes, that's the best of it, the rights being in his hands. He shares +up with everybody and we get it when he dies. That's why we are ready +to accept the Doge's sentiments as kind of gospel. If ornamental hedges +waste water and bring bugs and are contrary to practical ranching +ideas, why--well, why not? It's our Little Rivers to enjoy as we +please. We aren't growing so fast, but we're growing in a clean, +beautiful way, as Jasper Ewold says. What if that river was owned by +one man! What if we had to pay the price he set for what takes the +place of rain, as they do in some places in California? We're going to +say who shall build that dam!" + +"Think of it! Think of it!" Jack half whispered, his imagination in play. +"Plot after plot being added to this little oasis until it extends from +range to range, one sea of green! Many little towns, with Little Rivers +the mother town, spreading its ideas! Yes, think of being in at the +making of a new world, seeing visions develop into reality as, stone by +stone, an edifice rises! I--I--" Jack paused, a cloud sweeping over his +features, his eyes seeming to stare at a wall. His body alone seemed in +Little Rivers, his mind on the other side of the pass. He was in one of +those moods of abstraction that ever made his fellow-ranchers feel that +he would not be with them permanently. + +Indeed, he had whole days when his smile had a sad turn; when, though he +spoke pleasantly, the inspiration of talk was not in him and when Belvy +Smith could not rouse any action in the cat with two black stripes down +its back. But many Little Riversites, including the Doge, had their sad +days, when they looked away at the pass oftener than usual, as if seeing +a life-story framed in the V. His came usually, as Mrs. Smith observed, +when he had a letter from the East. And it was then that he would pretend +to cough to Firio. These mock coughing spells were one of the few +manifestations that made the impassive Firio laugh. + +"Now you know I am not well, don't you, Firio?" he would ask, waggishly, +the very thought seeming to take him out of the doldrums. "I could never +live out of this climate. Why, even now I have a cough, kuh-er!" + +Firio had turned a stove cook. He accepted the humiliation in a spirit of +loyalty. But often he would go out among the sagebrush and return with a +feathery tribute, which he would broil on a spit in a fire made in the +yard. Always when Jack rode out to meet Mary at the foot of the range, +Firio would follow; and always he had his rifle. For it was part of +Jack's seeming inconsistency, emphasizing his inscrutability, that he +would never wear his revolver. It hung beside Pete's on the wall of the +living-room as a second relic. Far from being a quarrel-maker, he was +peaceful to the point of Quakerish predilection. + +"Nobody ever hears anything of Leddy," said Jim; "but he will never +forget or forgive, and one day he will show up unexpectedly." + +"Not armed!" said Jack. + +"Do you think he will keep his word?" + +"I know he will. I asked him and he said he would." + +"You're very simple, Jack. But mind, he can keep his word and still use +a gun outside the town!" + +"So he might!" admitted Jack, laughing in a way that indicated that the +subject was distasteful to him; for he would never talk of the duel. + +Now we come to that little affair of Pedro Nogales. Pedro was a +half-breed, whose God among men was Pete Leddy no less than Jack was +Firio's and the Doge was Ignacio's. In his shanty back of Bill Lang's the +Mexicans and Indians lost their remaining wages in gambling after he had +filled them with _mescal_. It happened that Gonzalez, head man of the +laborers under Bob Worther, who had saved quite a sum, came away +penniless after taking but one drink. Every ounce of Bob's avoirdupois +was in a rage. + +"It's time we cleaned out Pedro's place, seh!" he told Jack; "and you and +Jim Galway have got to help me do it!" + +"I don't like to get into a row," said Jack very soberly. + +"Then I'll undertake the job alone," Bob retorted. "That will be a good +deal worse, for when I get going I lose my temper and I tell you, seh, +I've got a lot to lose! And, Jack, are you going to stand by and see +robbery done by the meanest, most worthless greaser in the valley--and a +good Indian the victim?" + +"Yes, Jack," said Jim, "you've got such a formidable reputation since +your set-to with Leddy that the Indians think you are a regular master of +magic. You're just the one to make Pedro come to terms." + +"A formidable reputation without firing a shot!" admitted Jack +quizzically, and consented. + +"You'll surely want your gun this time!" Bob warned him. + +"No," said Jack. + +"But--" + +"I have hung up my gun!" Jack said decisively. "We'll try to handle this +peacefully. Come on!" + +"Well, we've got our guns, anyway!" Jim put in. + +It was mid-afternoon, a slack hour for Pedro's kind of trade, and the +shanty was empty of customers when the impromptu vigilance committee +entered. Pedro himself was half dozing in the faro dealer's chair. His +small, ferret eyes flashed a spark at the visitors as he rose, but he was +politeness itself. + +"Señores! It is great honor! Be seated, señores!" he said with eloquent +deference. + +The very sight of him set all the ounces in Bob quivering in an outburst: + +"No chairs for us! You fork over Gonzalez's money that you tricked +out of him!" + +"I take Gonzalez's money! I? Señores?" + +"It's a hundred and twenty dollars that he earned honestly, and the +quicker you lay your hands on it the better for you!" Bob roared back. + +Pedro was quite impassive. + +"Señores, if Gonzalez need money--señores, I honest man! Señores, sit +down! We talk!" Pedro dropped back into his chair and his hand, with +cat-like quickness, shot under the faro table. + +Jack had come through the door after Jim and Bob. He was standing a +little behind them, and while they had been watching Pedro's face he had +watched Pedro's movements. + +"Pedro, take your hand out from under the table and without your gun!" +said Jack; and Jim Galway caught a thrill in Jack's voice that he had +heard in the _arroyo_. + +Pedro looked into Señor Don't Care's eyes and saw a bead, though they +were not looking along the glint of a revolver barrel. + +"_SÃ_, señor!" said Pedro, settling back in the chair with palms out in +intimation of his pacific intentions. + +"Now, Pedro, you have Gonzalez's money, haven't you?" Jack went on, in +the reasoning fashion that he had adopted to Leddy in the store. "And +you aren't going to make yourself or Bob trouble. You are going to +give it back!" + +"_SÃ_, señor!" said Pedro wincing. + +While he was producing the money and counting it, his furtive glance kept +watch of Jack. Then, as the committee turned to go, he suddenly exclaimed +with angry surprise and disillusion: + +"You got no gun!" + +While Jim and Bob waited for Jack to precede them out of the door Jim had +time to note Pedro's baleful, piercing look at Jack's back. + +"Just as I told you, Jack--and I reckon you saved a big row. You just +put a scare into that hellion with a word, like you had a thousand devils +in you!" said Jim. + +"It's all over!" Jack answered, looking more hurt than pleased over the +congratulations. "Very fortunately over." + +"But," Jim observed, tensely, "Pedro is not only Leddy's bitter +partisan and ready to do his bidding, Pedro's a bit loco, besides--the +kind that hesitates at nothing when he gets a grudge. You've got to +look out for him." + +"Oh, no!" said Jack, in the full swing of a Señor Don't Care mood. + +Jim and Bob began to entertain the feelings of Mary on the pass, when she +thought of Jack as walking over precipices regardless of danger signs. +After all, did he really know how to shoot? If he would not look after +himself, it was their duty to look after him. Jim suggested that the rule +which Jack had made for Leddy should have universal application. No one +whosoever should wear arms in Little Rivers without a permit. The new +ordinance had the Doge's approval; and Jim and Bob, both of whom had +permits, kept watch that it was enforced, particularly in the case of +Pedro Nogales. + +Meanwhile, Jack kept the ten-hour-a-day law. His alfalfa was growing +with prolific rapidity, but Firio had the air of one who waits +between journeys. + +"Never the trail again?" he asked temptingly, one day. + +"Never the trail again!" Jack declared firmly. + +"_SÃ, sÃ, sÃ_--the trail again!" + +"You think so? Then why do you ask?" + +"To make a question," answered Firio. "The big sadness will be too +strong. It will make you move--_sÃ_!" + +"The big sadness!" Jack exclaimed. He seized Firio by the shoulders and +looked narrowly at him, and Firio met the gaze with soft, puzzling lights +in his eyes. "Ho! ho! A big sadness! How do you know?" he laughed. + +"I learn on the trail when I watch you look at the stars. And Señorita +Ewold, she know; but she think the big sadness a devil. She--" and he +paused. + +"She--yes?" Jack asked. + +"She--" Firio started again. + +Jack suddenly raised his hands from Firio's shoulders in a gesture of +interruption. It was not exactly Firio's place to hazard opinions about +Mary Ewold. + +"Never mind!" he said, rather sharply. + +But Firio proceeded fixedly to finish what he had to say. + +"She has a big sadness, which makes her ride to the pass. She rides out +so she can ride back smiling." + +"Firio, don't mistake your imagination for divination!" Jack warned him. + +As Firio did not understand the meaning of this he said nothing. Probably +he would have said nothing even if he had understood. + +"I'll show you the nature of the big sadness and that the devil is a joy +devil when we harvest our first crop of alfalfa," Jack concluded. "Then I +shall make a holiday! Then I shall be a real rancher and something is +going to happen!" + +"The trail!" exclaimed Firio, and the soft light in his eyes flashed. +"_SÃ_! The trail and the big spurs and the revolver in the holster!" + +"No!" + +But Firio said "_SÃ_"! with the supreme confidence of one who holds that +belief in fulfilment will make any wish come true. + + + + +XVI + +A CHANGE OF MIND + + +It was Sunday afternoon; or, to date it by an epochal event, the day +after Jack's alfalfa crop had fallen before the mower. Mary was seated on +the bench under the avenue of umbrella-trees reading a thin edition of +Marcus Aurelius bound in flexible leather. Of late she had developed a +fondness for the more austere philosophers. Jack, whose mood was entirely +to the sonneteers, came softly singing down the avenue of palms and +presented himself before her in a romping spirit of interruption. + +"O expert in floriculture!" he said, "the humble pupil acting as a +Committee of One has failed utterly to agree with himself as to the form +of his new flowerbed. There must be a Committee of Two. Will you come?" + +"Good! I am weary of Marcus. I can't help thinking that he too far +antedates the Bordeaux mixture!" she answered, springing to her feet with +positive enthusiasm. + +He rarely met positive enthusiasm in her and everything in him called for +it at the moment. He found it so inspiring that the problem of the bed +was settled easily by his consent to all her suggestions--a too-ready +consent, she told herself. + +"After all, it is your flower garden," she reminded him. + +"No, every flower garden in Little Rivers is yours!" he declared. + +The way he said this made her frown. She saw him taking a step on the +other side of that barrier over which she mounted guard. + +"Never make your hyperboles felonious!" she warned him. "Besides, if +you are going to be a real Little Riversite you should have opinions of +your own." + +"I haven't any to-day--none except victory!" and he held out his palms, +exhibiting their yellowish plates. "Look! Even corns on the joints!" + +"Yes, they look quite real," she admitted, censoriously. + +"Haven't I made good? Do you remember how you stood here on the very site +of my house and lectured me? I would not work! I would not--" + +"You have worked a little--a little!" she said grudgingly, and showed him +as much of the wondrous sparkle in her eyes as he could see out of the +corners between the lashes. She never allowed him to look into her eyes +if she apprehended any attempt to cross the barrier. But she could see +well enough out of the corners to know that his glances had a kind of +hungry joy and a promise of some new demonstration in his attitude toward +her. She must watch that barrier very shrewdly. + +"Look at my hedge!" he went on. "It is knee-high already, and my +umbrella-trees cast enough shade for anybody, if he will wrap himself +around the trunk. But such things are ornamental. I have a more practical +appeal. Come on!" + +His elation was insistent, superior to any prickling gibes of banter, as +they walked on the mealy earth between rows of young orange settings, +and the sweet odor of drying alfalfa came to their nostrils, borne by a +vagrant breeze. He swept his hand toward the field in a gesture of pride, +his shoulders thrown back in a deep breath of exultation. + +"The callouses win!" And he exhibited them again. + +But she refused even to glance at them this time. + +"You seem to think callouses phenomenal. Most people in Little Rivers +accept them as they do the noses on their faces." + +"They certainly are phenomenal on me. So is my first crop! My first crop! +I'll be up at dawn to stack it--and then I'm no longer a neophyte. I am +an initiate! I'm a real rancher! A holiday is due! I celebrate!" + +He was rhapsodic and he was serious, too. She was provokingly flippant as +an antidote for Marcus Aurelius, whom she was still carrying in the +little flexible leather volume. + +"How celebrate?" she inquired. "By walking through the town with a wisp +of alfalfa in one hand and exhibiting the callouses on the other? or will +you be drawn on a float by Jag Ear--a float labeled, 'The Idler Enjoying +His Own Reform?' We'll all turn out and cheer." + +"Amusing, but not dignified and not to my taste. No! I shall celebrate by +a terrific spree--a ride to the pass!" + +He turned his face toward the range, earnest in its transfixion and +suffused with the spirit of restlessness and the call of the mighty rock +masses, gray in their great ribs and purple in their abysses. She felt +that same call as something fluid and electric running through the air +from sky to earth, and set her lips in readiness for whatever folly he +was about to suggest. + +"A ride to the pass and a view of the sunset from the very top!" he +cried. He looked down at her quickly, and all the force of the call he +had transformed into a sunny, personal appeal, which made her avert her +glance. "My day in the country--my holiday, if you will go with me! Will +you, and gaze out over that spot of green in the glare of the desert, +knowing that a little of it is mine?" + +"Your orange-trees are too young. It's so far away they will hardly +show," she ventured, surveying the distance to the pass judicially. + +"Will you?" + +"Why, to me a ride to the pass is not a thing to be planned a day +beforehand," she said deliberately, still studiously observing Galeria. +"It is a matter of momentary inspiration. Make it a set engagement and it +is but a plodding journey. I can best tell in the morning," she +concluded. "And, by the way, I see you haven't yet tried grafting plums +on the alfalfa stalks." + +"No. I have learned better. It is not consistent. You see, you mow +alfalfa and you pick plums." + +This return to drollery, in keeping with the prescribed order of their +relations, made her look up in candid amusement over the barrier which +for a moment he had been endangering. + +"Honestly, Jack, you do improve," she said, with mock encouragement. "You +seem to have mastered a number of the simple truths of age-old +agricultural experience." + +"But will you? Will you ride to the pass?" + +He had the question launched fairly into her eyes. She could not escape +it. He saw one bright flash, whether of real anger or simply vexation at +his reversion to the theme he could not tell, and her lashes dropped; +she ran the leaf edges of the austere Marcus back and forth in her +fingers, thip-thip-thip. That was the only sound for some seconds, very +long seconds. + +"As I've already tried to make clear to you, it's such a businesslike +thing to ride to the pass unless you have the inspiration," she remarked +thoughtfully to Marcus. "Perhaps I shall get the inspiration on the way +back to the house;" which was a signal that she was going. "And, by the +way, Jack, to return to the object of my coming, if you have ideas of +your own about flowers incorporate them; that is the way to develop your +floricultural talent." + +She turned away, but he followed. He was at her side and proceeding with +her, his head bent toward her, boyishly, eagerly. + +"You see, I have never been out to the pass," he remarked urgently. + +"What! You--" she started in surprise and checked herself. + +"Didn't I come by train?" he asked reprovingly. + +"No!" she answered. Her eyes were level with the road, her voice was a +little unnatural. "No! You came over the pass, Jack." + +It was the first time in the months of his citizenship of Little Rivers +that she had ever hinted anything but belief in the fiction that they had +first met when he asked her to show him a parcel of land. She seemed to +be calling a truth out of the past and grappling with it, while her lips +tightened and she drew in her chin. + +"Then I did come over the pass," he agreed; and after a pause added: +"But there was no Pete Leddy." + +"Yes, oh, yes--there was a Pete Leddy!" + +"But he will not be there this time!" + +And now his voice, in a transport that seemed to touch the cloud heights, +was neither like the voice of the easy traveller on the pass, nor the +voice of his sharp call to Leddy to disarm, nor the voice of the +storyteller. It had a new note, a note startling to her. + +"We shall be on the pass without Leddy and smiling over Leddy and +thanking him for his unwitting service in making me stop in Little +Rivers," he concluded. + +"Yes, he did that," she admitted stoically, as if it were some oppressive +fact for which she could offer no thanks. + +"I want to see our ponies with their bridles hanging loose! I want the +great silence! I want company, with imagination speaking from the sky +and reality speaking from the patch of green out on the sea of gray! +Will you?" + +Their steps ran rhythmically together. His look was eager in +anticipation, while she kept on running the leaves of the austere Marcus +through her fingers. Her lips were half open, as if about to speak, but +were without words; the thin, delicate nostrils trembled. + +"Will you? Will you, because I kept the faith of callouses? Will you go +forth and dream for a day? We'll tell fairy stories! We'll get a pole and +prod the dinosaur through the narrow part of the pass and hear him roar +his awfullest. Will you?" + +Her fingers paused in the pages as if they had found a helpful passage. +The chin tilted upward resolutely and he had a full view of her eyes, +dancing with challenging lights. She was augustly, gloriously +mischievous. + +"Will you go in costume? Will you wear your spurs and the chaps and the +silk shirt?" + +The question said that it was not a time to be serious. It sprinkled the +crest of the barrier with gleaming slivers of glass, which might give +zest to words spoken across it, but would be most sharp to the touch. + +"I will wear my spurs around my wrists, if you say, tie roses in the +fringe of my chaps, bind my hat with a big red silk bandanna, and put +streamers on P.D.'s bits!" + +"That is too enticing for refusal," she answered, playfully. "I +particularly want to hear the dinosaur roar." + +They had come to the opening of the Ewold hedge, and they paused to +consider arrangements. There was no one in sight on the street except Jim +Galway, who was approaching at some distance. + +"Shall we start in the morning and have luncheon at the foot of the +range?" suggested Jack. + +She favored an early afternoon start; he argued for his point of view, +and in their preoccupation with the passage of arms they did not notice +Pedro Nogales slipping along beside the hedge with soft steps, his hand +under his jacket. A gleam out of the bosom of Pedro's jacket, a cry from +Mary, and a knife flashed upward and drove toward Jack's neck. + +Jack had seemed oblivious of his surroundings, his gaze centered on Mary. +Yet he was able to duck backward so that the blade only slit open his +shirt as Pedro, with the misdirected force of his blow, lunged past its +object. Mary saw that face which had been laughing into hers, which had +been so close to hers in its persistent smile of persuasion, struck white +and rigid and a glint like that of the blade itself in the eyes. In a +breath Jack had become another being of incarnate, unthinking physical +power and swiftness. One hand seized Pedro's wrist, the other his upper +arm, and Mary heard the metallic click of the knife as it struck the +earth and the sickening sound of the bone of Pedro's forearm cracking. +She saw Pedro's eyes bursting from their sockets in pain and fear; she +saw Jack's still profile of unyielding will and the set muscles of his +neck and the knitting muscles of his forearm driving Pedro over against +the hedge, as if bent on breaking the Mexican's back in two, and she +waited in frozen apprehension to hear another bone crack, even expecting +Pedro's death cry. + +"The devil is out of Señor Don't Care!" It was the voice of Ignacio, who +had come around the house in time to witness the scene. + +"What fearful strength! You will kill him!" It was the voice of the Doge, +from the porch. + +"Yes, please stop!" Mary pleaded. + +Suddenly, at the sound of her cry, Jack released his hold. The strong +column of his neck became apparently too weak to hold the weight of his +head. Inert, he fell against the hedge for support, his hands hanging +limp at his side, while he stared dazedly into space. It seemed then that +Pedro might have picked up the knife and carried out his plan of murder +without defence by the victim. + +"Yes, yes, yes!" Jack repeated. + +Pedro had not moved from the hollow in the hedge which the impress of his +body had made. He was trembling, his lips had fallen away from his +teeth, and he watched Jack in stricken horror, a beaten creature waiting +on some judgment from which there was no appeal. + +"We'll tell fairy stories"--Jack's soft tones of persuasion repeated +themselves in Mary's ears in contrast to the effect of what she had just +witnessed. Her hand slipped along the crest of the hedge, as if to +steady herself. + +"I'll change my mind about going to the pass, Jack," she said. + +"Yes, Mary," he answered in a faint tone. + +He looked around to see her back as she turned away from him; then, with +an effort, he stepped free of the hedge. + +"Come, we will go to the doctor!" he said to the Mexican. + +He touched Pedro's shoulder softly and softly ran his hand down the +sleeve in which the arm hung limp. Pedro had not moved; he still leaned +against the hedge inanimate as a mannikin. + +"Come! Your legs are not broken! You can walk!" said Jim Galway, who had +come up in a hurry when he saw what was happening. + +"Pedro, you will learn not to play with the devil in Señor Don't Care!" +whispered Ignacio, while Mary had disappeared in the house and the Doge +stood watching. + +Jack had stroked Pedro's head while the bone was being set. He had +arranged for Pedro's care. And now he was in his own yard with Jag Ear +and the ponies, rubbing their muzzles alternately in silent +impartiality, his head bowed reflectively as Firio came around the +corner of the house. At first he half stared at Firio, then he surveyed +the steeds of his long journeyings in questioning uncertainty, and then +looked back at Firio, smiling wanly. + +"Firio," he said, "I feel that I am a pretty big coward. Firio, I am full +up--full to overflowing. My mind is stuffed with cobwebs. I--I must think +things out. I must have the solitudes." + +"The trail!" prescribed Doctor Firio. + +After Jack had given his ranch in charge to Galway, he rode away in +the dusk, not by the main street, but straight across the levels +toward the pass. + + + + +XVII + +THE DOGE SNAPS A RUBBER BAND + + +Jasper Ewold was a disciple of an old-fashioned custom that has fallen +into disuse since the multiplicity of typewriters made writing for one's +own pleasure too arduous; or, if you will have another reason, since our +existence and feelings have become so complex that we can no longer +express them with the simple directness of our ancestors. He kept a +diary with what he called a perfect regularity of intermittency. A week +might pass without his writing a single word, and again he might indulge +freely for a dozen nights running. He wrote as much or as little as he +pleased. He wrote when he had something to tell and when he was in the +mood to tell it. + +"It is facing yourself in your own ink," he said. "It is confessing that +you are an egoist and providing an antidote for your egoism. Firstly, you +will never be bored by your own past if you can appreciate your errors +and inconsistencies. Secondly, you will never be tempted to bore others +with your past as long as you wish to pose as a wise man." + +He must have found, as you would find if you had left youth behind and +could see yourself in your own ink, that the first tracery of any +controlling factor in your life was faint and inconsequential to you at +the time, without presage of its importance until you saw other lines, +also faint and inconsequential in their beginnings, drawing in toward it +to form a powerful current. + +On the evening that Jack took to the trail again, Jasper Ewold had a +number of thick notebooks out of the box in the library which he always +kept locked, and placed them on the living-room table beside his easy +chair, in which he settled himself. Mary was sewing while he pored over +his life in review as written by his own hand. Her knowledge of the +secrets of that chronicle from wandering student days to desert exile was +limited to glimpses of the close lines of fine-written pages across the +breadth of the circle of the lamp's reflection. He surrounded his diary +with a line of mystery which she never attempted to cross. On occasions +he would read to her certain portions which struck his recollection +happily; but these were invariably limited to his impressions of some +city or some work of art that he was seeing for the first time in the +geniality of the unadulterated joy of living in what she guessed was the +period of youth before she was born; and never did they throw any light +on his story except that of his views as a traveller and a personality. +But he did not break out into a single quotation to-night. It seemed as +if he were following the thread of some reference from year to year; for +he ran his fingers through the leaves of certain parts hastily and became +studiously intense at other parts as he gloomily pondered over them. + +Neither she nor her father had mentioned Jack since the scene by the +hedge. This was entirely in keeping with custom. It seemed a matter of +instinct with both that they never talked to each other of him. Yet she +was conscious that he had been in her father's mind all through the +evening meal, and she was equally certain that her father realized that +he was in her mind. + +It was late when the Doge finished his reading, and he finished it with +the page of the last book, where the fine handwriting stopped at the edge +of the blank white space of the future. An old desire, ever strong with +Mary, which she had never quite had the temerity to express, had become +impelling under the influence of her father's unusually long and silent +preoccupation. + +"Am I never to have a glimpse of that treasure? Am I never, never to read +your diary?" she asked. + +The Doge drew his tufted eyebrows together in utter astonishment. + +"What! What, Mary! Why, Mary, I might preach a lesson on the folly of +feminine curiosity. Do you think I would ask to see your diary?" + +"But I don't keep one." + +"Hoo-hoo-hoo!" The Doge was blowing out his lips in an ado of deprecatory +nonsense. "Don't keep one? Have you lost your memory?" + +"I had it a minute ago--yes," after an instant's playful consideration, +"I am sure that I have it now." + +"Then, everybody with a memory certainly keeps a diary. Would you want +me to read all the foolish things you had ever thought? Do you think I +would want to?" + +"No," she answered. + +"There you are, then!" declared the Doge victoriously, as he rose, +slipping a rubber band with a forbidding snap over the last book. "And +this is all stupid personal stuff--but mine own!" + +There was an unconscious sigh of weariness as he took up the thumbed +leather volumes. He was haggard. "Mine own" had given him no pleasure +that evening. All the years of his life seemed to rest heavily upon him +for a silent moment. Mary feared that she had hurt him by her request. + +"You have read so much you will scarcely do any writing to-night," +she ventured. + +"Yes, I will add a few more lines--the spirit is in me--a few more days +to the long record," he said, absently, then, after a pause, suddenly, +with a kind of suppressed force vibrating in his voice: "Well, our Sir +Chaps has gone." + +"As unceremoniously as he came," she answered. + +"It was terrible the way he broke Nogales's wrist!" remarked the +Doge narrowly. + +"Terrible!" she assented as she folded her work, her head bent. + +"Gone, and doubtless for good!" he continued, still watching her sharply. + +"Very likely!" she answered carelessly without looking up. "His vagarious +playtime for this section is over." + +"Just it! Just it!" the Doge exclaimed happily. + +"And if Leddy overtakes him now, it's his own affair!" + +"Yes, yes! He and his Wrath of God and Jag Ear are away to other worlds!" + +"And other Leddys!" + +"No doubt! No doubt!" concluded the Doge, in high good humor, all the +vexation of his diary seemingly forgotten as he left the room. + +But, as the Doge and Mary were to find, they were alone among Little +Riversites in thinking that the breaking of Pedro Nogales's wrist was +horrible. Jim Galway, who had witnessed the affair, took a radically +contrary view, which everyone else not of the Leddy partisanship readily +accepted. Despite the frequency of Jack's visits to the Ewold garden and +all the happy exchange of pleasantries with his hosts, the community +could not escape the thought of a certain latent hostility toward Jack on +the part of the Doge, the more noticeable because it was so out of +keeping with his nature. + +"Doge, sometimes I think you are almost prejudiced against Jack Wingfield +because he didn't let Leddy have his way," said Jim, with an outright +frankness that was unprecedented in speaking to Jasper Ewold. "You're +such a regular old Quaker!" + +"But that little Mexican panting in abject fear against the hedge!" +persisted the Doge. + +"A nice, peaceful little Mexican with a knife, sneaking up to plant it in +Jack's neck!" + +"But Jack is so powerful! And his look! I was so near I could see it well +as he towered over Nogales!" + +"Yes, no mistaking the look. I saw it in the _arroyo_. It made me think +of what the look of one of those old sea-fighters might have been like +when they lashed alongside and boarded the enemy." + +"And the crack of the bone!" continued the Doge. + +"Would you have a man turn cherub when he has escaped having his +jugular slashed by a margin of two or three inches? Would you have him +say, 'Please, naughty boy, give me your knife? You mustn't play with +such things!'" + +"No! That's hyperbole!" the Doge returned with a lame attempt at a laugh. + +"Mebbe it is, whatever hyperbole is," said Jim; "but if so, hyperbole is +a darned poor means of self-defence. Yes, the trouble is you are against +Jack Wingfield!" + +"Yes, I am!" said the Doge suddenly, as if inward anger had got the +better of him. + +"And the rest of us are for him!" Jim declared sturdily. + +"Naturally! naturally!" said the Doge, passing his hand over his brow. +"Yes, youth and color and bravery!" He shook his head moodily, as if +Jim's statement brought up some vital, unpleasant, but inevitable fact +to his mind. + +"It's beyond me how anybody can help liking him!" concluded Galway +stubbornly. + +"I like him--yes, I do like him! I cannot help it!" the Doge admitted +rather grudgingly as he turned away. + +"So we weren't so far apart, after all!" Galway hastened to call after +the Doge in apology for his testiness. "We like him for what he has been +to us and will always be to us. That's the only criterion of character in +Little Rivers according to your own code, isn't it, Jasper Ewold?" + +"Exactly!" answered the Doge over his shoulder. + +The community entered into a committee of the whole on Jack Wingfield. +With every citizen contributing a quota of personal experience, his story +was rehearsed from the day of his arrival to the day of his departure. +Argument fluctuated on the question of whether or not he would ever +return, with now the noes and now the ayes having it. On this point Jim +had the only first-hand evidence. + +"He said to let things grow until he showed up or I heard from +him," said Jim. + +"Not what I would call enlightening," said Bob Worther. + +"That was his way of expressing it; but to do him justice, he showed what +a good rancher he was by his attention to the details that had to be +cared for," Jim added. + +"He's like the spirit of the winds, I guess," put in Mrs. Galway. +"Something comes a-calling him or a-driving him, I don't know which. +Indeed, I'm not altogether certain that it isn't a case of Mary Ewold +this time!" + +"Yes," agreed Jim. "The fighting look went out of his face when she +spoke, and when he saw how horrified she was, why, I never saw such a +change come over a man! It was just like a piece of steel wilting." + +However, the children, who had no part in the august discussions of the +committee of the whole, were certain that their story-teller would come +back. Their ideas about Jack were based on a simple, self-convincing +faith of the same order as Firio's. Lonely as they were, they were hardly +more lonely than their elders, who were supposed to have the philosophy +of adults. + +No Jack singing out "Hello!" on the main street! No Jack looking up from +work to ask boyishly: "Am I learning? Oh, I'll be the boss rancher yet!" +No Jack springing all sorts of conceits, not of broad humor, but the kind +that sort of set a "twinkling in your insides," as Bob Worther expressed +it! No Jack inspiring a feeling deeper than twinkles on his sad days! He +had been an improvement in town life that became indispensable once it +was absent. Little Rivers was fairly homesick for him. + +"How did we ever get along without him before he came, anyway?" Bob +Worther demanded. + +Then another new-comer, as distinctive from the average settler as Jack +was, diverted talk into another channel, without, however, reconciling +the people to their loss. + + + + +XVIII + +ANOTHER STRANGER ARRIVES + + +If the history of Little Rivers were to be written in chapter headings +the first would be, "Jasper Ewold Founded the Town"; the second, "Jack +Wingfield Arrived"; and the third, "John Prather Arrived." + +While Jack came in chaps and spurs, bearing an argosy of fancy, Prather +came by rail, carrying a suitcase in a conventional and businesslike +fashion. Bill Deering, as the representative of a spring wagon that did +the local omnibus and express business, was on the platform of the +station when the 11:15 rolled in, and sang out, in a burst of joy, as the +stranger, a man in the early twenties, stepped off the Pullman: + +"What's this, Jack? Back by train--and in store clothes? Well, of +all--" and saw his mistake when the stranger's full face was turned +toward him. + +"Yes, I am sometimes called Jack," said the stranger pleasantly. "Now, +where have we met before? Perhaps in Goldfield? No matter. It is time we +got acquainted. My name is Prather, and yours?" + +As he surveyed the man before him, Bill was as fussed as the giant of the +fairy story had been by a display of yellow. He was uncertain whether he +was giving his own baptismal name or somebody's else. + +"By Jing! No, I don't know you, but you sure are the dead spit of a +fellow I do know!" said Bill. + +"Well, he has done me the favor of introducing me to you, anyway," said +Prather, who had a remarkably ingratiating smile. "I would like a place +to stop while I take a look around. Is there a hotel?" + +"Rooms over the store and grub at Mrs. Smith's--none better!" + +"That will do." + +As they rode into town more than one passer-by called out a ringing +"Hello, Jack!" or, "Back, eh, Jack? Hurrah for you!" and then uttered an +exclamation of disillusion when Prather turned his head. + +"The others see it, too," said Bill. + +"They seem to. Who is this double of mine?" + +"Jack Wingfield." + +"Jack Wingfield? It seems that our first names are the same, too. He +lives here, I take it." + +"Yes. But he's away now." + +"Well, when he comes back"--with a pause of slight irritation--"there +will be no difficulty in telling us apart." + +He put his finger to a triangular patch of mole on his cheek. His +irritation passed and a sense of appreciative amusement at the +distinction took its place. + +"Now, where shall I find Jasper Ewold?" he asked, as Bill drew up before +the Smiths. + +A few minutes later the Doge, busy among his orange-trees, hearing a +step, looked up with a signal of recognition which changed to blank +inquiry when the cheek with the mole was turned toward him. + +"Upon my word, sir, I--I thought that you were--" he began. + +"Mr. Wingfield! Yes, everybody in town seems to think so at first glance, +so I am quite used to the comparison by this time," Prather put in, +easily. "It is very interesting to meet the founder of a town, and I +have come to you to find out about conditions here." + +Prather did not appear as if he had ever done manual labor. He was too +young to have turned from ill health or failure in the city to the refuge +of the land. Indeed, his quiet gray suit of good material indicated +unostentatious prosperity. Evidently he was well-bred and evidently he +was not an agent for a new style of seeding harrow or weed killer. + +"You think of settling?" asked the Doge. + +"Yes. From all I have heard of Little Rivers, it's a community where I +should feel at home." + +"Then, sir, we will talk of it at luncheon; it is knocking-off time for +the morning. Yes, I'll talk as much as you please. Come on, Mr. Prather!" +They started along the avenue of palms, the Doge still studying the face +at his side. "Pardon me for staring at you, but the resemblance to Jack +Wingfield at first sight is most striking," he added. + +"Has he travelled much in the West?" asked Prather. + +"Yes, much--leading an aimless life." + +"Then he must be the one that I was taken for in Salt Lake City one day. +The man who called out to me saw his mistake, just as you did, when he +saw my full face;" and again Prather made a gesture of understanding +amusement to the mole. + +"When you consider what confusion there must be in the workrooms, with +the storks flapping and screeching like newsboys outside the delivery +room," mused the Doge, "and when you consider the multitudinous +population of the earth, it's surprising that the good Lord is able to +furnish such a variety of faces as he does. But they do say that every +one of us has a few doubles. In the case of famous public men they get +their pictures in the papers." + +"Yes, very few of us but have been mistaken for a friend by a stranger +passing in the street!" Prather suggested. + +"Only to have the stranger see his mistake at a second glance; and on +second glance you do not look very much like Jack Wingfield," the Doge +concluded. "Just a coincidence in physiognomy!" + +And Prather was very frank about his past. + +"I have led rather a hard life," he said. "Though I was well brought up +my father left mother and me quite penniless. I had to fend for myself at +the age of sixteen. A friend gave me an opportunity to go to Goldfield at +the outbreak of the excitement there. The rough experience of a +mining-camp was not exactly to my taste, but it meant a livelihood. My +real interest has always been in irrigation farming. I would rather grow +a good crop than mine for gold. Well, I saved a little money at +Goldfield--saved it to buy land. But land is not the only consideration. +The surroundings, the people with whom you have to live count for a great +deal when you mean to settle permanently." + +"Excellent!" declared the Doge. "A good citizen in full fellowship with +your neighbors! Exactly what we want in Little Rivers." + +Prather had a complexion of that velvety whiteness that never tans. +His eyes were calm, yet attractive, with a peculiar insinuating charm +when he talked that made it seem easy and natural to respond to his +wishes. In listening he had an ingratiating manner that was +flattering to the speaker. + +"A practical man!" the Doge said to Mary that evening. "The kind we need +here. He and I had a grand afternoon of it together. Every one of his +questions about soils and cultivation was to the point." + +"Not one argument?" she asked. + +"No, Mary; no time for argument." + +"You do like people to agree with you, after all!" she hazarded. For she +did not like Prather. + +"Pooh! Not a matter of agreement! No persiflage! No altitudinous +conversation of the kind that grows no crops. Prather wants to learn, and +he's got good, clean ideas, with a trained and accurate mind--the best +possible combination. I hope he will stay for the very reason that he is +not the kind that takes up a plot of land for life on an impulse, which +usually results in turning on the water and getting discouraged because +nature will not do the rest. But he is very favorably impressed. He said +that after Goldfield Little Rivers was like Paradise--practical Paradise. +Good phrase, practical Paradise!" + +In two or three days the new-comer knew everyone in town; but though he +addressed the men by their first names they always addressed him as "Mr. +Prather." In another respect besides his features he was like Jack: he +was much given to smiling. + +"The difference between his smile and Jack's," said Mrs. Galway, who was +at one with Mary in not liking him, "is that his is sort of a drawing-in +kind of smile and Jack's sort of radiates." + +The children developed no interest in him. It was evident that he could +not tell stories, except with an effort. In his goings and comings, ever +asking pleasant questions and passing compliments, he was usually +accompanied by the Doge, and his attitude toward the old man was the +admiring deference of disciple for master. + +"I am sorry I don't understand that," he would say when the Doge fell +into a scholastic allusion to explain a point. "I was hard at work when +lots of my friends were in college." + +"Learning may be ruination," responded the Doge, "though it wouldn't have +been in your case. It's the man that counts. See what you have made of +yourself!" + +"Ah, yes, but I feel that I have missed something. When I am settled here +I shall be able to make up for lost time, with your help, sir." + +"Every pigeonhole in my mind will be open at your call!" said the Doge, +glowing at the prospect. + +The favor that Prather found in the eyes of Jasper Ewold partly accounted +for what favor he found in Little Rivers' eyes. + +"Prather has certainly made a hit with the Doge!" quoth Bob Worther. +"As the Doge gets older I reckon he will like compliments better than +persiflage. But Jack could pay a compliment, too--only he never used +the ladle." + +It was Bob, as inspector of ditches and dams, who provided a horse for +Prather to inspect the source of the water supply. In keeping with a +characteristic thoroughness, Prather wanted to go up the river into the +canyon. He made himself a very enjoyable companion on the way, drawing +out all of Bob's best stories. When they stopped in sight of the streak +of blue sky through the breach in the mighty wall that had once +imprisoned the ancient lake, he was silent for some time, while he +surveyed this grandeur of the heights with smiling contemplation, at +intervals rubbing the palms of his hands together in a manner habitual +with him when he was particularly pleased. + +"I guess the same idea has struck you that strikes everybody at sight of +that, seh!" said Bob. + +"Yes, a dam might be practical," Prather answered. "But it would take a +lot of capital--a lot of capital!" + +On the way back they stopped before a dilapidated shanty near the +foothills. In the midst of a littered yard old man Lefferts, half dozing, +occupied a broken chair. + +"Since the Doge came old man Lefferts has had to do no work at all. A +Mexican looks after him. But it hasn't made him any happier," Bob +explained as they approached. + +"Howdy yourself?" growled Lefferts in answer to Bob's greeting. + +"He seems to be a character!" whispered Prather to Bob, as he smiled at +the prospect. "To confess the truth, I am a little saddle sore and tired. +I didn't get much riding in Goldfield. I think I'll stop and rest and get +acquainted." + +"You won't get much satisfaction but growls." + +"That will be all the more fun for me," rejoined Prather. "But don't let +me keep you." + +"No. I must be going on. I've got some things to look after before +nightfall," said Bob, while Prather, in a humor proof against any hermit +cantankerousness, rode into the yard. + +When he returned after dark he said, laughingly, that he had enjoyed +himself, though the conversation was all on one side. The next morning he +decided to take up the plot of land adjoining Jack's. + +"But I shall not be able to begin work for a few weeks," he said. "I must +go to Goldfield to settle up my affairs before I begin my new career." + +"If Jack ever comes back I wonder what he will say to his new neighbor!" +Little Rivers wondered. + + + + +XIX + +LOOKING OVER PRECIPICES + + +To Mary Ewold the pass was a dividing line between two appeals. The +Little Rivers side, with the green patch of oasis in the distance, had a +message of peaceful enjoyment of what fortune had provided for her. Under +its spell she saw herself content to live within garden walls forever in +the land that had given her life, grateful for the trickles of +intelligence that came by mail from the outside world. + +The other side aroused a mighty restlessness. Therefore, she rarely made +that short journey which spread another panorama of space before her. But +this was one of the afternoons when she welcomed a tumult of any kind as +a relief from her depression; and she went on through the V as soon as +she reached the summit. + +Seated on a flat-topped rock, oblivious of the passage of time, of the +dream cities of the Eternal Painter, she was staring far away where the +narrowing gray line between the mountain rims met the sky. She was seeing +beyond the horizon. She was seeing cities of memory and reality. A great +yearning was in her heart. All the monotonous level lap of the heights +which seemed without end was a symbol that separated her from her desire. + +She imagined herself in a Pullman, flashing by farms and villages; in a +shop selecting gowns; viewing from a high window the human stream of +Fifth Avenue; taking passage on a steamer; hearing again foreign tongues +long ago familiar to her ears; sensing the rustle of great audiences +before a curtain rose; glimpsing the Mediterranean from a car window; +feeling herself a unit in the throbbing promenade of the life of many +streets while her hunger took its fill of a busy world. + +"It is hard to do it all in imagination!" she said to herself. "Even +imagination needs an occasional nest-egg of reality by way of +encouragement." + +An hour on the far side of the pass played the emotional part for her of +a storm of tears for many another woman. She rejoiced in being utterly +alone; rejoiced in the grandeur of the very wastes around her as mounting +guard over the freedom of her thoughts. There was no living speck on the +trail, which she knew lay across the expanse of parched earth to the edge +of the blue dome; there was not even a bird in the air. Undisturbed, she +might think anything, pray for anything; she might feed the flame of +revolt till the fuel of many weeks' accumulation had burned itself out +and left her calm in the wisdom and understanding that reconciled her to +her portion and freshened to return through Galeria to the quiet routine +of her daily existence. + +Her mind paused in its travels from capital to capital and she was +conscious solely of the stark majesty of her surroundings. She listened. +There was no sound. The spacious stillness was soothing to her nerves; a +specific when all the Eternal Painter's art failed. She closed her eyes, +trying to realize that great silence as one would try to realize the +Infinite. Then faintly she heard a man's voice singing. It seemed at +first a trick of the imagination. But nearer and nearer it came, in the +fellowship of life joyfully invading the solitude; and with a +readjustment of her faculties to the expected event, she watched the +point where the trail dipped on a sharp turn of grade. + +Above it rose a cowpuncher hat, then a silk shirt with a string tie, and +after that a sage baggage burro with clipped ears, a solemn-faced pony, +and an Indian. Jack was watching his steps in the uneven path, and not +until the full length of him had appeared and he was flush on the level +with her did he look up. + +She was leaning back, her weight partly poised on the flat of her hand +on the rock, revealing the full curve of throat and the soft sweep of +the lines of her slim figure, erect, her head thrown back, her face in +shadow with the sun behind playing in her hair, in half-defiant +readiness. She saw him as the spirit of travel--its ease, mystery, +unattachedness--which had spanned the distances between her and the +horizon, in the freedom of his wandering choice. His low-pitched +exclamation of surprise was vibrant with appreciation of the picture she +made, and he stood quite still in a second's wistful silence, waiting on +her first word after the lapse of the many days since he had brought a +look of horror into her eyes. + +"Hello, Jack!" she said in the old tone of comradeship. It struck a spark +electrifying him with all his old, happy manner. + +He swept off his hat with a grand bow, blinking in the blaze of the sun +which turned his tan to a bronze and touched the smile, which was born as +an inspiration from her greeting, with radiance. + +"Hello to you, Mary, guarding the pass to Little Rivers!" he said +exultantly. "You are just the person I wanted to see. I have been in +a hurry to tell you about a certain thing ever since it came to me +this morning." + +She guessed that he was about to make up a new story. He must have had +time for many inventions in the ten days of his absence. But she welcomed +any tangent of nonsense that set the right key for the coincidence of +their meeting. She had refused to ride to the pass with him and here they +were alone together on the pass. Three or four steps, so light that they +seemed to be irresistibly winning permission from her, and he had sat +down on another flat-topped rock close by. Firio and the baggage train +moved on up the trail methodically and stopped well in the background. + +"You know how when you meet a person you are sometimes haunted by a +conviction that you have met him before!" he began. "How exasperated you +are not to be able to recall the time and place!" + +"Had you forgotten where you met the dinosaur?" she asked. "He must have +thought you very impolite after all the trouble he had taken to make you +remember him the last time you went through the pass." + +"Oh, the dinosaur and I have patched up a truce, because it seems, after +all, that I had mistaken his identity and he was a pleosaur. But"--he did +not take the pains to parry her interruption with more foolery, and +proceeded as if she had not spoken--"it has never been out of my mind +that your father gave me a glance at our first meeting which asked the +question that has kept recurring to me: Where had he and I seen each +other before?" + +"Well?" she said curiously, recalling her father's repeated allusions to +"this Wingfield," his strange depression after Jack had left the night +before the duel, his reticence and animadversions. + +"I said nothing about it, nor did he. I wonder if it has not been a kind +of contest between us as to which should be the first to say 'Tag!'" + +She smiled at this and leaned farther back, but with the curtain of her +eyelashes widening in tremulous intensity. + +"I knew it would come!" he went on, with dramatic fervor. "Such things do +come unexpectedly in a flash when there is a sudden electric connection +with some dusty pigeonhole in the mind. It was in Florence that he and I +met! In Florence, on the road to Fiesole!" + +"Florence! The road to Fiesole!" Mary repeated; and the names seemed to +rouse in her a rapturous recollection. She leaned forward now, her lips +apart, her eyes glowing. In place of wastes she was seeing brown roofs +and the sweep of the Tuscan Valley. + +"And _we_ met--_you_ and _I_!" + +"We?" Her glance came sharply back from the distances in the astonishment +of dilating pupils that drew together in inquiry as she saw that he was +in earnest. + +"Yes. I was at the extremely mature age of six and you must have been +about a year younger. Do you remember it at all?" + +"No!" She was silent, concentrated, groping. "No, no!" she repeated. +"Five is very immature compared to six!" + +"Your father had a beard then, a great blond beard that excited my +emulation. When I grew up I was going to have one like it and just such +bushy eyebrows. You came up the Fiesole road at his side, holding fast +to his thumb. I was playing at our villa gate. You went up the path with +him to see my mother--I can see just how you looked holding so fast to +that thumb! After a while you came straying out alone. Now don't you +remember? Don't you? Something quite sensational happened." + +"No!" + +"Well, I showed off what a great boy I was. I walked on the parapet of +the villa wall. I bowed to my audience aged five with the grandeur of a +tight-rope performer who has just done his best thriller as a climax to +his turn." + +"Yes--yes!" she breathed, with quick-running emphasis. Out of the mists +of fifteen years had come a signal. She bent nearer to him in the wonder +of a thing found in the darkness of memory, which always has the +fascination of a communication from another world. "You wanted me to come +up on the wall," she said, taking up the thread of the story. "You said +it was so easy, and you helped me up, and when I looked down at the road +I was overcome and fell down all in a heap on the parapet." + +"And heavens!" he gasped, living the scene over again, "wasn't I +frightened for fear you would tumble off!" + +"But I remember that you helped me down very nicely--and--and that is all +I do remember. What then?" + +She had come to a blind alley and perplexity was in her face, though she +tried to put the question nonchalantly. What then? How deep ran the +current of this past association? + +"Why, there wasn't much else. Your father came down the path and his big +thumb took you in tow. I did not see you again. A week later mother and I +had gone to Switzerland--we were always on the move." + +The candor of his glance told her that this was all. As boy and girl they +had met under an Italian sky. As man and woman they had met under an +Arizona sky. + +Now the charm of the Florence of their affections held them with a magic +touch. They were not in a savage setting, looking out over savage +distances, but on the Piazzale Michelangelo, looking out over the city of +Renaissance genius which slumbers on the refulgent bosom of its past; +they were oblivious of the Eternal Painter's canvasses and enjoying +Raphael's, Botticelli's, and Andrea del Sarto's. Possibly the Eternal +Painter, in the leniency of philosophic appreciation of their oblivion to +his art, hazarded a guess about the destiny of this pair. He could not +really have known their destiny. No, it is impossible to grant him the +power of divination; for if he had it he might not be so young of heart. + +Their talk flitted here and there in exclamations, each bringing an +entail of recollection of some familiar, enjoyed thing; and when at last +it returned to their immediate surroundings the shadow of the range was +creeping out onto the plain, cut by the brilliance of the sun through the +V. Mary rose with a quick, self-accusing cry about the lateness of the +hour. To him it was a call on his resources to delay their departure. + +"Do you see where that shelf breaks abruptly?" he asked. "It must be the +side of a canyon. Have you ever looked down?" + +"I started to once." + +"I should not like to go over the pass again without seeing if this +is really a canyon of any account. I feel myself quite an authority +on canyons." + +"It will be dark before we reach Little Rivers!" she protested. + +"Ten minutes--only a step!" and he was appealing in his boyish fashion to +have his way. + +"Nonsense! Besides, I do not care for canyons." + +"You still fear, then, to look down from walls? You--" + +And this decided her. On another occasion she had gone to the precipice +edge and faltered. She would master her dizziness for once and all; he +should not know from her any confession of a weakness which was purely of +the imagination. + +The point to which he had alluded was an immense overhanging slab of +granite stratum deep set in the mountain side. As they approached, a +thrill of lightness and uncertainty was setting her limbs a-quiver. Her +elbow was touching his, her will driving her feet forward desperately. +Suddenly she was gazing down, down, down, into black depths which +seemed calling irresistibly and melting her power of muscular volition, +while he with another step was on the very edge, leaning over and +smiling. She dropped back convulsively. He was all happy absorption in +the face of that abyss. How easy for him to topple over and go hurtling +into the chasm! + +"Don't!" she gasped, and blindly tugged at his arm to draw him back. + +As he looked around in surprise and inquiry, she withdrew her hand in a +reaction against her familiarity, yet did not lower it, holding it out +with fingers spread in expression of her horror. Serenely he regarded +her for a moment in her confusion and distress, and then, smiling, while +the still light of confidence was in his eyes, he locked his arm in hers. +Before she could protest or resist he had drawn her to his side. + +"It is just as safe as looking off the roof of a porch on to a flower +garden," he said. + +And why she knew not, but the fact had come as something definite and +settled: she was no longer dizzy or uncertain. Calmly, in the triumph of +mind over fear, in the glory of a new sensation of power, she looked down +into that gulf of shadows--looked down for a thousand feet, where the +narrowing, sheer walls merged into darkness. + +From this pit to the blue above there was only infinite silence, with no +movement but his pulse-beat which she could feel in his wrist +distinctly. He had her fast, a pawn of one of his impulses. A shiver of +revolt ran through her. He had taken this liberty because she had shown +weakness. And she was not weak. She had come to the precipice to prove +that she was not. + +"Thank you. My little tremor of horror has passed," she told him. "I can +stand without help, now." + +He released his hold and she stood quite free of him, a glance flashing +her independence. Smilingly she looked down and smilingly and +triumphantly back at him. + +"You need not keep your arm up in that fashion ready to assist me. It +is tiring," she said, with a touch of her old fire of banter over the +barrier. "I am all right, now. I don't know what gave me that giddy +turn--probably sitting still so long and looking out at the blaze of +the desert." + +He swept her with a look of admiration; and their eyes meeting, she +looked back into the abyss. + +"I wish I had such courage," he said with sudden, tense earnestness; +"courage to master my revulsion against shadows." + +"Perhaps it will come like an inspiration," she answered +uncomprehendingly. + +Then both were silent until she spoke of a stunted little pine three or +four hundred feet down, in the crotch of an outcropping. Its sinking +roots had split a rock, over which the other roots sprawled in gnarly +persistence. Some passing bird had dropped the seed which had found a bed +in a pocket of dust from the erosions of time. So it had grown and set up +housekeeping in its isolation, even as the community of Little Rivers had +in a desert basin beside a water-course. + +"The little pine has courage--the courage of the dwarf," she said. "It is +worth more than a whole forest of its majestic cousins in Maine. How +green it is--greener than they!" + +"But they rise straight to heaven in their majesty!" he returned, to make +controversy. + +"Yes, out of the ease of their rich beds!" + +"In a crowd and waiting for the axe!" + +"And this one, in its isolation, creating something where there was +nothing! Every one of its needles is counted in its cost of birth out of +the stubborn soil! And waiting all its life down there for the reward of +a look and a word of praise!" + +"But," he went on, in the delight of hearing her voice in rebuttal, "the +big pines give us the masts of ships and they build houses and furnish +the kindling for the hardwood logs of the hearth!" + +"The little pine makes no pretensions. It has done more. It has given us +something without which houses are empty: It has given us a thought!" + +"True!" he exclaimed soberly, yielding. And now all the lively signals of +the impulse of action played on his face. "For your glance and your word +of praise it shall pay you tribute!" he cried. "I am going down to bring +you one of its clusters of spines." + +"But, Jack, it is a dangerous climb--it is late! No! no!" + +"No climb at all. It is easy if I work my way around by that ledge +yonder. I see stepping-places all the way." + +How like him! While she thought only of the pine, he had been thinking +how to make a descent; how to conquer some physical difficulty. Already +he had started despite her protest. + +"I don't want to rob the little pine!" she called, testily. + +"I'll bring a needle, then!" + +"Even every needle is precious!" + +"I'll bring a dead one, then!" + +There was no combatting him, she knew, when he was headstrong; and when +he was particularly headstrong he would laugh in his soft way. He was +laughing now as he took off his spurs and tossed them aside. + +"No climbing in these cart-wheels, and I shall have to roll up my chaps!" + +She went back to the precipice edge to prove to him, to prove to herself, +that she could stand there alone, without the moral support of anyone at +her side, and found that she could. She had mastered her weakness. It was +as if a new force had been born in her. She felt its stiffening in every +fibre as she saw him pass around the ledge and start down toward the +little pine; felt it as something which could build barriers and mount +them with an invulnerable guard. + +How would he get past that steep shoulder? The worst obstacle confronted +him at the very beginning of the descent. He was hugging a rock face, +feeling his way, with nothing but a few inches of a projecting seam +between him and the darkness far below. His foot slipped, his body turned +half around, and she had a second of the horror that she had felt when +waiting for the sound of Leddy's shot in Bill Lang's store. She saw his +outspread hands clutching the seam above; watched for them to let go. But +they held; the foot groped and got its footing again, and he worked his +way out on a shelf. + +He was safe and she dropped on her knees weakly, still looking down at +him. It was the old story of their relations. Was this man ever to be +subjecting her to spasms of fear on his account? And there he was beaming +up at her reassuringly, while she felt the blood which had gone from her +face return in a hot flood. It brought with it anger in place of fear. + +"I don't want it! I don't want it!" she cried down. + +"And I want to get it for you! I want to get it for you--for you!" His +voice was a tumult of emotion in the abandon of passionate declaration. +So long had she held him back that now when the flood came it had the +power of conserved strength bursting a dam in wild havoc. "There is +nothing I would not like to do for you, Mary!" he cried. "I'd like to +pull that pine up for you, even if it bled and suffered! I'd like to go +on doing things for you forever!" + +There was not even a movement of her lips in answer. It seemed to her +now that there on the precipice edge, while he held her arm in his, +the iridescent house of glass had fallen about them in a confused, +dazzling shower of wreckage. He had found an opening. He had broken +through the barrier. + +Half unconscious of his progress, of the chasm itself, she waited in a +daze and came out of it to see him sweeping his hat upward from beside +the pine before he reached as far as he could among the branches and, +with what seemed to her the refinement of effrontery and disregard of her +wishes, broke off a tawny young branch. He waved it to her--this garland +of conquest won out of the jaws of danger, which he was ready to throw at +her feet from the lists. + +"No, no, no!" she said, half aloud. + +She saw him start back with his sure steps, his shoulders swinging with +the lithe, adaptable movement of his body; and every step was drawing him +nearer to a meeting which would be like no other between them. Soon he +would be crunching the glass of the house under that confident tread; in +the ecstasy of a new part he would be before the opening he had broken in +the barrier with the jauntiness of one who expected admission. His +pulse-beat under the touch of her fingers at the precipice edge, his +artery-beat in the _arroyo_, was hammering in her temples, hammering out +a decision which, when it came, brought her to her feet. + +Now the shadows were deep; all the glory of the sunset in the Eternal +Painter's chaotic last moments of his day's work overspread the western +sky, and from the furnace in which he dipped his brush came a blade of +rich, blazing gold through the pass and lay across the trail. It +enveloped her as, half running, mindless of her footing, slipping as she +went, she hurried toward the other side of Galeria. + +When Jack Wingfield came up over the ledge, a pine tassel in his hand, +his languor of other days transformed into high-strung, triumphant +intensity, the sparkle of a splendid hope in his eyes, only Firio was +there to welcome him. + +"Señorita Ewold said she no could wait," Firio explained. "It was very +late, she said." + +Jack stopped as if struck and his features became a lifeless mask, as +lifeless as the walls of the canyon. He looked down at the trophy of his +climb and ran his fingers over the needles slowly, again and again, in +abstraction. + +"I understand!" he said, half to himself; and then aloud: "Firio, we will +not go into town to-night. We will camp on the other side by the river." + +"_SÃ_! I shot enough quail this afternoon for dinner." + +But Jack did not have much appetite, and after dinner he did not amuse +Firio with inventions of his fancy. He lay long awake, his head on his +clasped hands, looking at the stars. + + + + +XX + +A PUZZLED AMBASSADOR + + +A faint aureole of light crept up back of the pass. + +"Dawn at last!" Jack breathed, in relief. "Firio! Firio! Up with you!" + +"Oh-yuh!" yawned Firio. "_SÃ, sÃ_!" he said, rising numbly to his feet +and rubbing his eyes with his fists, while he tried to comprehend an +astonishing reversal of custom. Usually he awakened his camp-mate; but +this morning his camp-mate had awakened him. A half shadow in the +semi-darkness, Jack was already throwing the saddle over P.D.'s back. + +"We will get away at once," he said. + +Firio knew that something strange had come over Señor Jack after he had +met Señorita Ewold on the pass, and now he was convinced that this thing +had been working in Señor Jack's mind all night. + +"Coffee before we start?" he inquired ingratiatingly. + +"Coffee at the ranch," Jack answered. + +In their expeditious preparations for departure he hummed no snatches of +song as a paean of stretching muscles and the expansion of his being with +the full tide of the conscious life of day; and this, too, was contrary +to custom. + +Before it was fairly light they were on the road, with Jack urging P.D. +forward at a trot. The silence was soft with the shimmer of dawn; all +glistening and still the roofs and trees of Little Rivers took form. The +moist sweetness of its gardens perfumed the fresh morning air in greeting +to the easy traveller, while the makers of gardens were yet asleep. + +It was the same hour that Mary had hurried forth after her wakeful night +to stop the duel in the _arroyo_. As Jack approached the Ewold home he +had a glimpse of something white, a woman's gown he thought, that +disappeared behind the vines. He concluded that Mary must have risen +early to watch the sunrise, and drew rein opposite the porch; but through +the lace-work of the vines he saw that it was empty. Yet he was positive +that he had seen her and that she must have seen him coming. She was +missing the very glorious moment which she had risen to see. A rim of +molten gold was showing in the defile and all the summits of the range +were topped with flowing fire. + +"Mary!" he called. + +There was no answer. Had he been mistaken? Had mental suggestion played +him a trick? Had his eyes personified a wish when they saw a figure on +the steps? + +"Mary!" he called again, and his voice was loud enough for her to have +heard if she were awake and near. Still there was no answer. + +The pass had now become a flaming vortex which bathed him in its +far-spreading radiance. But he had lost interest in sunrises. A last +backward, hungry glance over his shoulder as he started gave him a +glimpse through the open door of the living-room, and he saw Mary leaning +against the table looking down at her hands, which were half clasped in +her lap, as if she were waiting for him to get out of the way. + +Thus he understood that he had ended their comradeship when he had broken +through the barrier on the previous afternoon, and the only thing that +could bring it back was the birth of a feeling in her greater than +comradeship. His shoulders fell together, the reins loosened, while P.D., +masterless if not riderless, proceeded homeward. + +"Hello, Jack!" + +It was the greeting of Bob Worther, the inspector of ditches, who was the +only man abroad at that hour. Jack looked up with an effort to be genial +and found Bob closely studying his features in a stare. + +"What's the matter, Bob?" he asked. "Has my complexion turned green over +night or my nose slipped around to my ear?" + +"I was trying to make out if you do look like him!" Bob declared. + +"Like whom? What the deuce is the mystery?" + +"What--why, of course you're the most interested party and the only +Little Riversite that don't know about it, seh!" + +After all, there was some compensation for early rising. Bob expanded +with the privilege of being the first to break the news. + +"If you'd come yesterday you'd have seen him. He went by the noon train," +he said, and proceeded with the story of Prather. + +Jack had never heard of the man before and was obviously uninterested. He +did not seem to care if a dozen doubles came to town. + +"Oh, yes, there's another thing concerning you," Bob continued. "I was so +interested in telling you about Prather that I near forgot it. A +swell-looking fellow--says he's a doctor and he's got New York written +all over him--came in yesterday particularly to see you." + +Though it was a saying in Little Rivers that nobody ever found Jack at a +loss, he started perceptibly now. His fingers worked nervously on the +reins and he bit his lips in irritation. + +"He was asking a lot of questions about you," Bob added. + +By this time Jack had summoned back his smile. He did not seem to mind if +a dozen doctors came to town at the same time as a dozen doubles. + +"Did you tell him that I had a cough--kuh-er?" he asked, casually. + +"Why, no! I said you could thrash your weight in wildcats and he says, +'Well, he'll have to, yet!' and then shut up as if he'd overspoke +himself--and I judge that he ain't the kind that does that often. But +say, Jack," Bob demanded, in the alarm of local partisanship which +apprehends that it may unwittingly have served an outside interest, "did +you want us to dope it out that you were an invalid? We ain't been +getting you in wrong, I hope?" + +"Not a bit!" answered Jack with a reassuring slap on Bob's shoulder. "Was +his name Bennington?" + +"Yes, that's it." + +"Well," said Jack thoughtfully and with a return of his annoyance, "he +will find me at home when he calls." And P.D. knew that the reins were +still held in listless hands as he turned down the side street toward the +new ranch. + +Firio was feeling like an astrologer who had lost faith in his crystal +ball. An interrogation had taken the place of his confident "_SÃ, sÃ_" +of desert understanding of the mind of his patron. Jack had broken camp +with the precipitancy of one who was eager to be quit of the trail and +back at the ranch; yet he gave his young trees only a passing glance +before entering the house. He had not wanted coffee on the road, yet +coffee served with the crisp odor of bacon accompanying its aroma, after +his bath and return to ranch clothes, found no appetite. He was as a man +whose mind cannot hold fast to anything that he is doing. Firio, +restless, worried, his eyes flicking covert glances, was frequently in +and out of the living-room on one excuse or another. + +"What work to-day?" he asked, as he cleared away the breakfast dishes. +"What has Señor Jack planned for us to do?" + +"The work to-day? The work to-day?" Jack repeated absently. "First the +mail." He nodded toward a pile on the table. + +"And I shall make ready to stay a long time?" Firio insinuated softly. + +"No!" Jack answered to space. + +The pyramid of mail might have been a week's batch for the Doge himself. +At the bottom were a number of books and above them magazines which Jack +had subscribed for when he found that they were not on the Doge's list. +There was only one letter as a first-class postage symbol of the exile's +intimacy with the outside world, and out of this tumbled a check and a +blank receipt to be filled in. He tore off the wrappers of the magazines +as a means of some sort of physical occupation and rolled them into +balls, which he cast at the waste-basket; but neither the contents of the +magazines nor those of the newspapers seemed to interest him. His +aspect was that of one waiting in a lobby to keep an appointment. + +When he heard steps on the porch he sang out cheerily, "Come in!" but, +contrary to the habit of Little Rivers hospitality, he did not hasten to +meet his caller, and any keenness of anticipation which he may have felt +was well masked. + +There entered a man of middle age, with close-cropped gray beard, clad in +soft flannels, the trousers bottoms turned up in New York fashion for +negligee business suits for that spring. To the simple interior of a +western ranch house he brought the atmosphere of complex civilization as +a thing ineradicably bred into his being. It was evident, too, that he +had been used to having his arrival in any room a moment of importance +which summoned the rapt attention of everybody, whether nurses, fellow +physicians, or the members of the patient's family. But this time that +was lacking. The young man leaning against the table was not visibly +impressed. + +"Hello, doctor!" said Jack, as unconcernedly as he would have passed the +time of day with Jim Galway in the street. + +"Hello, Jack!" said the doctor. + +Jack went just half-way across the room to shake hands. Then he dropped +back to his easy position, with the table as a rest, after he had set a +chair for the visitor. + +"How do you like Little Rivers?" Jack asked. + +"I have been here only thirty-six hours," answered the doctor, avoiding a +direct answer. He was pulling off his silk summer gloves, making the +operation a trifle elaborate, one which seemed to require much +attention. "I came pretty near mistaking another man for you, but his +mole patch saved me. I didn't think you could have grown one out here. +Wonderfully like you! Have you met him?" + +He glanced up as he asked this question, which seemed the first to occur +to him as a warming-up topic of conversation before he came to the +business in hand. + +"No. I have just heard of him," Jack answered. + +The doctor smiled at his gloves, which he now folded and put in his +pocket. Don't the lecturers to young medical students say, "Divert your +patient's mind to some topic other than himself as you get your first +impression"? Now Dr. Bennington drew forward in his chair, rested the +tips of the long fingers of a soft, capable hand on the edge of the +table, and looked up to Jack in professional candor, sweeping him with +the knowing eye of the modern confessor of the secrets of all manner of +mankind. With the other hand he drew a stethoscope from his side +coat-pocket. + +"Well, Jack, you can guess what brought me all the way from New +York--just five minutes' work!" and he gave the symbol of examination a +flourish in emphasis. + +"I don't think I have forgotten the etiquette of the patient on +such occasions," Jack returned. "It is an easy function in this +Arizona climate." + +He drew his shirt up from a compact loin and lean middle, revealing the +arch of his deep chest, the flesh of which was healthy pink under neck +and face plated with Indian tan. The doctor's eyes lighted with the bliss +of a critic used to searching for flaws at sight of a masterpiece. While +he conducted the initial plottings with the rubber cup which carried +sounds to one of the most expensive senses of hearing in America, Jack +was gazing out of the window, as if his mind were far away across the +cactus-spotted levels. + +"Breathe deep!" commanded the doctor. + +Jack's nostrils quivered with the indrawing of a great gust of air and +his diaphragm swelled until his ribs were like taut bowstrings. + +"And you were the pasty-faced weakling that left my office five years +ago--and you, you husky giant, have brought me two thousand miles to see +if you were really convalescent!" + +"I hope the trip will do you good!" said Jack, sweetly. + +"But it is great news that I take back, great news!" said the doctor, as +he put the stethoscope in his pocket. + +"Yes?" returned Jack, slipping his head through his shirt. "You don't +find even a speck?" + +"Not a speck! No sign of the lesion! There is no reason why you should +not have gone home long ago." + +"No?" Jack was fastening his string tie and doing this with something of +the urban nicety with which the doctor had folded his gloves. That tie +was one of the few inheritances from complex civilization which still had +Jack's favor. + +"What have you found to do all these years?" + +Jack was surprised at the question. + +"I have just wandered about and read and thought," he explained. + +"Without developing any sense of responsibility?" demanded the doctor in +exasperation. + +"I have tried to be good to my horses, and of late I have taken to +ranching. There is a lot of responsibility in that and care, too. Take +the scale, for instance!" + +"A confounded little ranch out in this God-forsaken place, that a Swede +immigrant might run!" + +"No, the Swedes aren't particularly good at irrigation, though better +than the Dutch. You see, the Hollanders are used to having so much +water that--" + +Jack was leaning idly against the table again. The fashionable +practitioner, accustomed to having his words accepted at their cost price +in gold, broke in hotly: + +"It is past all understanding! You, the heir to twenty millions!" + +"Is it twenty now?" Jack asked softly and sadly. + +"Nearer thirty, probably! And shirking your duty! Shirking and for +what--for what?" + +Jack faced around. The doctor, meeting a calm eye that was quizzically +challenging, paused abruptly, feeling that in some way he had been caught +at a professional disadvantage in his outburst of emotion. + +"Don't you like Little Rivers?" asked Jack. + +"I should be bored to death!" the doctor admitted, honestly. + +"Well, you see this air never healed a lesion for you! You never +uttered a prayer to it for strength with every breath! And, doctor," +Jack hesitated, while his lips were half open, showing his even teeth +slightly apart in the manner of a break in a story to the children +where he expected them to be very attentive to what was coming, "you +can take a piece of tissue and analyze it, yes, a piece of brain tissue +and find all the blood-vessels, but not what a man was thinking, can +you? Until you can take a precipitate of his thoughts--the very +thoughts he is unconscious of himself--and put them under a microscope, +why, there must be a lot of guesswork about the source of all +unconventional human actions." + +Jack laughed over his invasion of psychology; and when he laughed in a +certain way the impulse to join him was strong, as Mary first found on +the pass. So the doctor laughed, partly in relief, perhaps, that this +uncertain element which he was finding in Jack had not yet proved +explosive. + +"That would make a capital excuse for a student flunking in +examinations!" he said. + +"It might be a worthy one--not that I say it ought to pass him." + +"Now, Jack," the doctor began afresh, the reassuring force of his +personality again in play. + +He took a step and raised his hands as if he would put them on Jack's +shoulders. One could imagine him driving hypochondria out of many a +patient's mind by thus making his own vigorous optimism flow down from +his fingertips, while he looked into the patient's eye. But his hands +remained in the air, though Jack had been only smiling at him. This was +not the way to handle this patient, something told his trained, sensitive +instinct in time, and he let his hands fall in semblance of a gesture of +protest, gave a shrug and came directly to the point very genuinely. + +"Well, Jack--your father!" + +"Yes." And Jack's face was still and blank, while shadows played over +it in a war among themselves. "He did not even tell me you were +coming," he added. + +"Perhaps he feared that it would give you time to develop a cough or you +would start overland to Chihuahua so I should miss you. Jack, he needs +you! All that fortune waits for you!" + +"Now that I am strong, yes! He did not come out to see me even during +the first year when I had not the health to go to him, nor did he think +to come with you." + +"He--he is a very busy man!" explained the doctor, in ready championship. +And yet he looked away from Jack, and when he looked back it was with an +appeal to conscience rather than to filial affection. "Is it right to +remain, however much you like this desert life? Have you any excuse?" + +"Yes, an overwhelming one!" exclaimed Jack in a voice that was +high-pitched and determined, while his eyes burned and no trace of humor +remained on lips that were as firm as the outline of his chin. "Yes, one +that thrills me from head to foot with the steady ardor of the soldier +who makes a siege!" + +"I--I--you are beyond me! Then you will stay? You are not coming home?" + +"Yes," Jack answered, in another mood, but one equally rigid. "I am +coming at once. That was all settled last night under the stars. I have +found the courage!" + +"The courage to go to twenty millions!" gasped the doctor. "But--good! +You will go! That is enough! Why shouldn't we take the same train back?" +he went on enthusiastically. "I shall be coming through here in less than +a week. You see, I am so near California that I simply had to steal a few +days with my sister, who can't come East on account of her health. I have +been so tied down to practice that I have not seen her for fifteen years. +That will give you time to arrange your affairs. How about it?" + +"It would be delightful, but--" Jack was hesitating. "No, I will refuse. +You see, I rode horseback when I entered this valley for the first time +and I should like to ride out in the way I came. Just sentiment!" + +"Jack!" exclaimed the doctor. + +He was casting about how to express his suspicion when something electric +checked him--a current that began in Jack's measured glance. Jack was not +mentioning that his word was being questioned, but something still and +effective that came from far away out on the untrod desert was in the +room. It fell on the nerves of the ambassador from the court of complex +civilization like a sudden hush on a city's traffic. Jack broke the +silence by asking, in a tone of lively hospitality: + +"You will join me at luncheon?" + +"I should like to," answered the doctor, "but I can catch a train on the +other trunk line that will give me a few more hours with my sister. And +what shall I wire your father? Have you any suggestion?" + +"Why, that he will be able to judge for himself in a few days how near +cured I am." + +"You will wire him the date of your arrival?" + +"Yes." + +"Jack," said the doctor at the door, "that remark of yours about the +analysis of brain tissue and of thought put a truth very happily. Come +and see me and let me know how you get on. Good-by!" + +He took his departure thoughtfully, rather than with a sense of +triumph over the success of a two-thousand-mile mission in the name of +twenty millions. + + + + +XXI + +"GOOD-BY, LITTLE RIVERS!" + + +It was the thing thrilling him with the ardor of a soldier preparing for +a siege that sent Jack to the Ewolds' later in the morning. He had come +determined to finish the speech that he had called up to Mary from the +canyon. As he crossed the cement bridge, Ignacio appeared on the path and +took his position there obdurately, instead of standing to one side with +a nod, as usual, to let the caller pass. + +"Señorita Ewold is not at home!" he announced, before Jack had spoken. + +"Not even in the garden?" + +"No, señor." + +"But she will be back soon?" + +"I do not think so." + +Ignacio's face was as blank as a wall, but knowingly, authoritatively +blank. His brown eyes glistened with cold assurance. He seemed to have +become the interpreter of a message in keeping with Mary's flight from +the pass and her withdrawal from the porch when she had seen Jack +approaching. Here was a new barrier which did not permit even banter +across the crest. She must know that he was going, for the news of his +approaching departure had already spread through the town. She had chosen +not to see him again, even for a farewell. + +For a little time he stood in thought, while Ignacio remained steadfast +on the path, watchful, perhaps, for the devil in Señor Don't Care to +appear. Suddenly Jack's features glowed with action; he took a step as if +he would sweep by Ignacio on into the garden. But the impulse instantly +passed. He stopped, his face drawn as it had been when he fell limp +against the hedge stricken by the horror of his seeming brutality to +Pedro Nogales, and turned away into the street with a mask of smiles for +the greetings and regrets of the friends whom he met. + +Worth twenty millions or twenty cents, he was still Jack to Little +Rivers; still the knight who had come over the range to vanquish Pete +Leddy; still a fellow-rancher in the full freemasonry of calloused +hands; still the joyous teller of stories. The thought of losing him set +tendrils in the ranchers' hearts twitching in sympathy with tendrils in +his own, which he found rooted very deep now that he must tear them out. + +That afternoon at the appointed hour for his departure every man, woman, +and child had assembled at the end of the main street, where it broke +into the desert trail. The principal found an excuse for dismissing +school an hour earlier than usual. That is, everyone was present except +Mary. The Doge came, if a little late, to fulfil his function as chosen +spokesman for all in bidding Jack Godspeed on his journey. + +"Señor Don't Care, you are a part of the history of Little Rivers!" he +said, airily. "You have brought us something which we lacked in our +singularly peaceful beginning. Without romance, sir, no community is +complete. I have found you a felicitous disputant whom I shall miss; for +you leave me to provide the arguments on both sides of a subject on the +same evening. Our people have found you a neighbor of infinite resources +of humor and cheer. We wish you a pleasant trail. We wish you warm +sunshine when the weather is chill and shade when the weather is hot, and +that you shall ever travel with a singing heart, while old age never +overtakes the fancy of youth." + +Every one of the familiar faces grouped around the fine, cultured old +face of the Doge expressed the thoughts to which he had given form. + +"May your arguments be as thick as fireflies, O Doge!" Jack answered, +"everyone bearing a torch to illumine the outer darkness of ignorance! +May every happy thought I have for Little Rivers spring up in a +date-tree wonderful! Then, before the year is out, you will have a +forest of date-trees stretching from foothills to foothills, across the +whole valley." + +"And one more about the giant with the little voice and the dwarf with +the big voice and the cat with the stripes down her back!" cried Belvy +Smith, spokeswoman for the children. "Are they just going on forever +having adventures and us never knowing about them?" + +"No. I have been holding back the last story," Jack said. "Both the giant +and the dwarf were getting old, as you all know, and they were pretty +badly battered up from their continual warfare. Why, the scar which the +giant got on his forehead in their last battle was so big that if the +dwarf had had it there would have been no top left to his head. After the +cat had lost that precious black tip to her tail she became more and more +thoughtful. She made up her mind to retire and reform and have a +permanent home. And you know what a gift she had for planning out things +and how clever she was about getting her own way. Now she sat in a hedge +corner thinking and thinking and looking at the stubby end of her tail, +and suddenly she cried, 'Eureka!' And what do you think she did? She went +to a paint shop and had her left ear painted yellow and her right ear +painted green. So, now you can see her any day sunning herself on the +steps of the cottage where the giant and the dwarf live in peace. +Whenever they have an inclination to quarrel she jumps between them and +wiggles the yellow ear at the giant and the green ear at the dwarf, which +fusses them both so that they promise to be good and rush off to get her +a saucer of milk." + +"A green ear and a yellow ear! What a funny looking cat she must be!" +exclaimed Belvy. + +"So she says to herself between purrs," concluded Jack. "But she is a +philosopher and knows that she would look still funnier if she had lost +her ears as Jag Ear has. Good-by, children! Good-by, everybody! Good-by, +Little Rivers!" + +Jack gave P.D. a signal and the crowd broke into a cheer, which was +punctuated by the music of Jag Ear's bells as his burrohood got in +motion. The Doge, who had brought his horse, mounted. + +"I will ride a little distance with you," he said. + +He appeared like a man who had a great deal on his mind and yet was at a +loss for words. There was the unprecedented situation of silence between +the two exponents of persiflage in Little Rivers. + +"I--" he began, and paused as if the subject were too big for him and it +were better not to begin at all. Then he drew rein. + +"Luck, Jack!" he said, simply, and there was something like pity +in his tone. + +"And Mary--you will say good-by to her and thank her!" said Jack. + +"I think you may meet her," answered the Doge. "She went away early +taking her luncheon, before she knew that you were going." + +So Ignacio had been acting on his own authority! The thrill of the news +singing in Jack's veins was too overwhelming for him to notice the +challenge and apprehension in the Doge's glance. The Doge saw the glow of +a thousand happy, eager thoughts in Jack's face. He hesitated again on +the brink of speech, before, with a toss of his leonine head as if he +were veritably leaving fate's affairs to fate, he turned to go; and Jack +mechanically touched P.D.'s rein, while he gazed toward the pass. P.D. +had not gone many steps when Jack heard the same sonorous call that had +greeted him that first night when he stopped before the door of the +Ewolds; the call of a great, infectious fellowship between men: + +"Luck, Sir Chaps! I defy you to wear your spurs up the Avenue! Give my +love to that new Campanile in Babylon, the Metropolitan tower! Get it in +the mist! Get it under the sun! Kiss your hand to golden Diana, huntress +of Manhattan's winds! Say ahoy to old Farragut! And on gray days have a +look for me at the new Sorollas in the Museum! Luck, Sir Chaps!" + +"Good crops and a generous mail, O Doge!" + +Jack rode fast, in the gladness of a hope this side of the pass and in +the face of shadows on the other side which he did not attempt to define. +To Firio he seemed to have grown taller and older. + + + + +XXII + +"LUCK, JACK, LUCK!" + + +Apprehensively he watched the end of the ribbon running under P.D.'s +hoofs for the sight of a horsewoman breaking free of the foothills. The +momentary fear which rode with him was that Mary might be returning +earlier than usual. If they met on the road--why, the road was without +imagination and, in keeping with her new attitude toward him, she might +pass him by with a nod. But at the top of the pass imagination would be +supreme. There they had first met; there they had found their first +thought in common in the ozone which had meant life to them both. + +He did not look up at the sky changes. As he climbed the winding path +worn by moccasined feet before the Persians marched to Thermopylae, his +mind was too occupied making pictures of its own in glowing anticipation +to have any interest in outside pictures. This path was narrow. Here, at +least, she must pause; and she must listen. Every turn which showed +another empty stretch ahead sent his spirits soaring. Then he saw a pony +with an empty side-saddle on the shelf. A few steps more and he saw Mary. + +She was seated with the defile at her back, her hands clasped over her +knee. In this position, as in every position which she naturally took, +she had a pliant and personal grace. The welter of light of the low sun +was ablaze in her face. Her profile had a luminous wistfulness. Her +lashes were half closed, at once retaining the vision of the panorama at +her feet as a thing of atmospheric enjoyment and shutting it out from the +intimacy of her thoughts. And more enveloping than the light was the +silence which held her in a spell as still as the rocks themselves, +waiting on time's dispensation where time was nothing. Yet the soft +movement of her bosom with her even breaths triumphed in a life supreme +and palpitant over all that dead world. + +Thus he drank her in before the crunch of a stone under his heel warned +her of his presence and set her breaths going and coming in quick gusts +as she wheeled around, half rising and then dropping back to a position +as still as before, with a trace of new dignity in her grace, while her +starkness of inquiry gradually changed to stoicism. + +"Mary, I came upon you very suddenly," he said. + +"Yes"--a bare, echoing monosyllable. + +He stepped to one side to let Firio and his little cavalcade pass. All +the while she continued to look at him through the screen of her +half-closed lashes in a way that set her repose and charm apart as +something precious and cold and baffling. Now he realized that he had +made a breach in the barrier of their old relations only to find himself +in a garden whose flowers fell to ashes at his touch. He saw the light +that enveloped her as an armor far less vulnerable than any wall, and the +splendor of her was growing in his eyes. + +Jag Ear's bells with their warm and merry notes became a faint tinkle +that was lost in the depths of the defile. The two were alone on the spot +where the Eternal Painter had introduced them so simply as Jack and +Mary, and where he, as the easy traveller, had listened to her plead for +his own life. It was his turn to plead. She was not to be won by fighting +Leddys or tearing up pine-trees by their roots. That armor was without a +joint; a lance would bend like so much tin against its plates, and yet +there must be some alchemy that would make it melt as a mist before the +sun. It was tenanted by a being all sentiency, which saw him through her +visor as a passer-by in a gallery. But one in armor does not fly from +passers-by as she had flown while he was climbing up the canyon wall with +his pine-tree branch. + +"I have learned now to look over any kind of a precipice without getting +dizzy," she announced, quietly. + +He was not the Jack who had come over the ledge in the energy of his +passion yesterday to find her gone. He had turned gentle and was smiling +with craved permission for a respite from her evident severity as he +dropped to a half-lying posture near her. Overhead, the Eternal Painter +was throwing in the smoky purple of a false thunderhead, sweeping it away +with the promise of a downpour, rolling in piles of silver clouds and +drawing them out into filmy fingers melting into a luminous blue. + +"One can never tire of this," he said, tentatively. + +"To me it is all!" she answered, in an absorption with the scene that +made him as inconsequential as the rocks around her. + +"And you never long for cities, with their swift currents and busy +eddies?" he asked. + +"Cities are life, the life of humanity, and I am human. I--" The +unfinished sentence sank into the silence of things inexpressible or +which it was purposeless to express. + +Her voice suggested the tinkle of Jag Ear's bells floating away into +space. If a precipitate were taken from her forehead, in keeping with +Jack's suggestion to Dr. Bennington, it would have been mercury, which is +so tangible to the eye and intangible to the touch. Press it and it +breaks into little globules, only to be shaken together in a coherent +whole. If there is joy or pain in the breaking, either one must be +glittering and immeasurable. + +"But Little Rivers is best," she added after a time, speaking not to him, +but devoutly to the oasis of green. + +In the crystal air Little Rivers seemed so near that one could touch the +roofs of the houses with the fingertips of an extended arm, and yet so +diminutive in the spacious bosom of the plateau that it might be set in +the palm of the hand. + +Jack was as one afraid of his own power of speech. A misplaced word might +send her away as oblivious of him as a globule of mercury rolling free +from the grasp. Here was a Mary unfathomed of all his hazards of study, +undreamed of in all his flights of fancy. + +"It is my last view," he began. "I have said all my good-bys in town. I +am going." + +Covertly, fearfully, he watched the effect of the news. At least now +she would look around at him. He would no longer have to talk to a +profile and to the golden mist of the horizon about the greatest thing +of his life. But there was no sign of surprise; not even an inclination +of her head. + +"Yes," she told the horizon; and after a little silence added: "The time +has come to play another part?" + +She asked the question of the horizon, without any trace of the old +banter over the wall. She asked it in confirmation of a commonplace. + +"I know that you have always thought of me as playing a part. But I am +not my own master. I must go. I--" + +"Back to your millions!" She finished the sentence for him. + +"Then you--you knew! You knew!" But his exclamation of astonishment did +not move her to a glance in his direction or even a tremor. + +"Yes," she went on. "Father told me about your millions last night. He +has known from the first who you were." + +"And he told no one else in Little Rivers? He never mentioned it to me or +even to you before!" + +"Why should he when you did not mention it yourself? His omission was +natural delicacy, in keeping with your own attitude. Isn't it part of the +custom of Little Rivers that pasts melt into the desert? There is no +standard except the conduct of the present!" + +And all this speech was in a monotone of quiet explanation. + +"He did not even tell you until last night! Until after our meeting on +the other side of the pass! It is strange! strange!" he repeated in the +insistence of wonder. + +He saw the lashes part a little, then quiver and close as she lifted +her gaze from the horizon rim to the vortex of the sun. Then she +smiled wearily. + +"He likes a joke," she said. "Probably he enjoyed his knowledge of your +secret and wanted to see if I would guess the truth before you were +through playing your part." + +"But the part was not a part!" he said, with the emphasis of fire +creeping along a fuse. "It was real. I do not want to leave Little +Rivers!" + +"Not in your present enthusiasm," she returned with a warning inflection +of literalness, when he would have welcomed satire, anger, or any +reprisal of words as something live and warm; something on which his mind +could lay definite hold. + +In her impersonal calm she was subjecting him to an exquisite torture. He +was a man flayed past all endurance, flayed by a love that fed on the +revelation of a mystery in her being superbly in control. The riot of all +the colors of the sky spoke from his eyes as he sprang to his feet. He +became as intense as in the supreme moment in the _arroyo_; as reckless +as when he walked across the store toward a gun-muzzle. Only hers were +this time the set, still features. His were lighted with all the strength +of him and all the faith of him. + +"A part!" he cried. "Yes, a part--a sovereign and true part which I shall +ever play! I was going that day we first met, going before the legate of +the millions came to me. Why did I stay? Because I could not go when I +saw that you wanted to turn me out of the garden!" + +His quivering words were spoken to a profile of bronze, over which +flickered a smile as she answered with a prompting and disinterested +analysis. + +"You said it was to make callouses on your hands. But that must have been +persiflage. The truth is that you imagined a challenger. You wanted to +win a victory!" she answered. + +"It was for you that I calloused my hands!" + +"Time will make them soft!" + +She was half teasing now, but teasing through the visor, not over the +wall. + +"And if I sought victory I saw that I was being beaten while I made a +profession of you, not of gardening! Yes, of you! I could confess it to +all the world and its ridicule!" + +"Jack, you are dramatic!" + +If she would only once look at him! If he could only speak into her eyes! +If her breaths did not come and go so regularly! + +"Why did I take to the trail after Pedro Nogales struck at me with his +knife? Because I saw the look on your face when you saw that I had broken +his arm. I had not meant to break his arm--yet I know that I might have +done worse but for you! I did not mean to kill Leddy--yet there was +something in me which might have killed him but for you!" + +"I am glad to have prevented murder!" she answered almost harshly. + +A shadow of horror, as if in recollection of the scene in the _arroyo_ +and beside the hedge, passed over her face. + +"Yes, I understand! I understand!" he said. "And you must hear why this +terrible impulse rose in me." + +"I know." + +"You know? You know?" he repeated. + +"About the millions," she corrected herself, hastily. "Go on, Jack, if +you wish!" Urgency crept into her tone, the urgency of wishing to have +done with a scene which she was bearing with the fortitude of +tightened nerves. + +"It was the millions that sent me out here with a message, when I did +not much care about anything, and their message was: 'We do not want to +see you again if you are to be forever a weakling. Get strong, for our +power is to the strong! Get strong, or do not come back!'" + +"Yes?" + +For the first time since he had begun his story she looked fairly at him. +It was as if the armor had melted with sympathy and pity and she, in the +pride of the poverty of Little Rivers, was armed with a Samaritan +kindliness. For a second only he saw her thus, before she looked away to +the horizon and he saw that she was again in armor. + +"And I craved strength! It was my one way to make good. I rode the +solitudes, following the seasons, getting strength. I rejoiced in the tan +of my arm and the movement of my own muscles. I learned to love the feel +of a rifle-stock against my shoulder, the touch of the trigger to my +finger's end. I would shoot at the cactus in the moonlight--oh, that is +difficult, shooting by moonlight!--and I gloried in my increasing +accuracy--I, the weakling of libraries and galleries and sunny verandas +of tourist resorts! Afraid at first of a precipice's edge, I came to +enjoy looking over into abysses and in spending a whole day climbing down +into their depths, while Firio waited in camp. And at times I would cry +out: 'Millions, I am strong! I am not afraid of you! I am not afraid of +anything!' In the days when I knew I could never be acceptable as their +master I knew I was in no danger of ever having to face them. When I had +grown strong, less than ever did I want to face them. I know not why, but +I saw shadows; I looked into another kind of depths--mental +depths--which held a message that I feared. So I procrastinated, staying +on in the air which had given me red blood. But that was cowardly, and +that day I came over the pass I was making my last ride in the kingdom of +irresponsibility. I was going home! + +"When you asked me not to face Leddy I simply had to refuse. I had just +as soon as not that Leddy would shoot at me, because I wanted to see if +he would. Yes, I was strong. I had conquered. And if Leddy hit me, why, I +did not have to go back to battle with the shadows--the obsession of +shadows which had grown in my mind as my strength grew. When I was +smiling in Leddy's muzzle, as they say I did, I was just smiling +exultantly at the millions that had called me a weakling, and saying, +like some boaster, 'Could you do this, millions?' I--I--well, Mary, I--I +have told you what I never was quite able to tell myself before." + +"Thank you, Jack!" she answered, and all the particles of sunlight that +bathed her seemed to reflect her quiet gladness as something detached, +permeating, and transcendent. + +"When Leddy challenged me I wanted to fight," he went on. "I wanted to +see how cool I, the weakling whom the millions scorned, could be in +battle. After Leddy's shot in the _arroyo_ I found that strength had +discovered something else in me--something that had lain dormant in +boyhood and had not awakened to any consciousness of itself in the five +years on the desert--something of which all my boyhood training made me +no less afraid than of the shadows, born of the blood, born of the very +strength I had won. It seemed to run counter to books and gardens and +peace itself--a lawless, devil-like creature! Yes, I gloried in the fact +that I could kill Leddy. It was an intoxication to hold a steady bead on +him. And you saw and felt that in me--yes, I tell you everything as a man +must when he comes to a woman offering himself, his all, with his angels, +his devils, and his dreams!" + +He paused trembling, as before a judge. She turned quickly, with a +sudden, winsome vivacity, the glow of a great satisfaction in her eyes +and smiling a comradeship which made her old attitude over the wall a +thing of dross and yet far more intimate. Her hand went out to meet his. + +"Jack, we have had good times together," she said. "We were never +mawkish; we were just good citizens of Little Rivers, weren't we? And, +Jack, every mortal of us is partly what he is born and the rest is what +he can do to bend inheritance to his will. But we can never quite +transform our inheritance and if we stifle it, some day it will break +loose. The first thing is to face what seems born in us, and you have +made a good beginning." + +She gave his hands a nervous, earnest clasp and withdrew hers as she +rose. So they stood facing each other, she in the panoply of good will, +he with his heart on his sleeve. The swiftly changing pictures of the +Eternal Painter in his evening orgy seemed to fill the air with the music +of a symphony in its last measures, and her very breaths and smiles to be +keeping time with its irresistible movement toward the finale. + +"I must be starting back, Jack," she said. + +"And, Mary, I must learn how to master the millions. Oh, I have not the +courage of the little dwarf pine in the canyon! Mary, Mary, I calloused +my hands for you! I want to master the millions for you! I would give you +the freedom of Little Rivers and all the cities of the world!" + +"No, Jack! This is my side of the pass. I shall be very happy here." + +"Then I will stay in Little Rivers! I will leave the millions to the +shadows! I will stay on ranch-making, fortune-making. Mary, I love you! I +love you!" + +There was no staying the flame of his feeling. He seized her hands; he +drew her to him. But her hands were cold; they were shivering. + +"Jack! No, no! It is not in the blood!" she cried in the face of some +mocking phantom, her calmness gone and her words rocking with the tumult +of emotion. + +"In the blood, Mary? What do you mean? What do you know that I don't +know? Do you know those shadows that I cannot understand better than +I?" he pleaded; and he was thinking of the Doge's look of pity and +challenge and of the meeting long ago in Florence as the hazy filaments +of a mystery. + +"No, I should not have said that. What do I know? Little--nothing that +will help! I know what is in me, as I know what is in you. I am afraid of +myself--afraid of you!" + +"Mary, I will fight all the shadows!" He drew her close to him +resistlessly in his might. + +"Jack, you will not use your strength against me! Jack!" + +He saw her eyes in a mist of pain and reproach as he released her. And +now she threw back her head; she was smiling in the philosophy of garden +nonsense as she cried: + +"Good-by, Jack! Luck against the dinosaur! Don't press him too hard +when he is turning a sharp corner. Remember he has a long reach with +his old paleozoic tail. Luck!" with a laugh through her tears; a laugh +with tremulous cheer in it and yet with the ring of a key in the lock +of a gate. + +Unsteadily he bent over and taking her hands in his pressed his +lips to them. + +"Yes, luck!" he repeated, and half staggering turned toward the defile. + +"Luck!" she called after him when he was out of sight. "Luck!" she called +to the silence of the pass. + +Three days with the trail and the Eternal Painter mocking him, when the +singing of Spanish verses that go click with the beat of horse-hoofs in +the sand sounded hollow as the refrain of vain memories, and from the +steps of a Pullman he had a final glimpse of Firio's mournful face, with +its dark eyes shining in the light of the station lamp. Firio had in his +hand a paper, a sort of will and testament given him at the last minute, +which made him master in fee simple of the ranch where he had been +servant, with the provision that the Doge of Little Rivers might store +his overflow of books there forever. + + + + +PART II + +HE FINDS HIMSELF + + + + +XXIII + +LABELLED AND SHIPPED + + +Behold Jack clad in the habiliments of conventional civilization taken +from the stock of ready-made suitings in an El Paso store! They were of +the Moscowitz and Guggenheim type, the very latest and nattiest, as +advertised in popular prints. The dealer said that no gentleman could be +well dressed without them. He wanted to complete the transformation with +a cream-colored Fedora or a brown derby. + +"I'll wait on the thirty-third degree a little longer," said Jack, +fondling the flat-brimmed cowpuncher model of affectionate predilection. +Swinging on a hook on the sleeper with the sway of the train, its company +was soothing to him all the way across the continent. + +The time was March, that season of the northern year when winter growing +stale has a gritty, sticky taste and the relief of spring seems yet far +away. After the desert air the steam heat was stifling and nauseating. +Jack's head was a barrel about to burst its hoops; his skin drying like a +mummy's; his muscles in a starchy misery from lack of exercise. He felt +boxed up, an express package labelled and shipped. When he crawled into +his berth at night it was with a sense of giving himself up to +asphyxiation at the whim of strange gods. + +If you have ever come back to town after six months in the woods, six +months far from the hysteria of tittering electric bells, the brassy +honk-honk of automobiles, the clang of surface cars and the screech of +their wheels on the rails, multiply your period of absence by ten, add a +certain amount of desert temperament, and you will vaguely understand how +the red corpuscles were raising rebellion in Jack's artery walls on the +morning of his journey's end. From the ferryboat on the dull-green bosom +of the river he first renewed his memory of the spectral and forbidding +abysses and pinnacles of New York. Here time is everything; here man has +done his mightiest in contriving masses to imitate the architectural +chaos of genesis. A mantle of chill, smoky mist formed the dome of +heaven, in which a pale, suffused, yellowish spot alone bespoke the +existence of a sun in the universe. + +In keeping with his promise to Dr. Bennington he had wired to his father, +naming his train; and in a few minutes Wingfield, Sr. and Wingfield, Jr. +would meet for the first time in five years. Jack was conscious of a +faster beating of his heart and a feeling of awesome expectancy as the +crowd debouched from the ferryboat. At the exit to the street a big +limousine was waiting. The gilt initials on the door left no doubt for +whom it had been sent. But there was no one to meet him, no one after his +long absence except a chauffeur and a footman, who glanced at Jack +sharply. After the exchange of a corroborative nod between them the +footman advanced. + +"If you please, Mr. Wingfield," he said, taking Jack's suit case. + +"What would Jim Galway think of me now!" thought Jack. He put his head +inside the car cautiously. "Another box!" he thought, this time aloud. + +"You have the check for it, sir?" asked the footman, thinking that Jack +was using the English of the mother island for trunk. + +"No. That's all my baggage." + +In the tapering, cut-glass vase between the two front window-panels of +the "box" was a rose--a symbol of the luxury of the twenty millions, +evidently put there regularly every morning by direction of their master. +Its freshness and color appealed to Jack. He took it out and pressed it +to his nostrils. + +"Just needs the morning sun and the dew to be perfect," he said to the +amazed attendants; "and I will walk if you will take the suit case to +the house." + +He kept the rose, which he twirled in his fingers as he sauntered across +town, now pausing at curb corners to glance back in thoughtful survey, +now looking aloft at the peaks of Broadway which lay beyond the foothills +of the river-front avenues. + +"All to me what the desert is to other folks!" he mused; "desert, without +any cacti or mesquite! All the trails cross one another in a maze. A +boxed-up desert--boxes and boxes piled on top of one another! Everybody +in harness and attached by an invisible, unbreakable, inelastic leash to +a box, whither he bears his honey or goes to nurse his broken wings!--so +it seems to me and very headachy!" + +At Madison Square he was at the base of the range itself; and halting on +the corner of Twenty-third Street and the Avenue he was a statue as aloof +as the statue of Farragut from his surroundings. Salt sea spray ever +whispers in the atmosphere around the old sailor. How St. Gaudens +created it and keeps it there in the heart of New York is his secret. +Possibly the sculptor put some of his soul into it as young Michael +Angelo did into his young David. + +It is a great thing to put some of your soul into a thing, whether it is +driving a nail or moulding a piece of clay into life. There are men who +pause before the old Admiral and see the cutwater of men-of-war's bows +and hear the singing of the signal halyards as they rise with the command +to close in. Perhaps the Eternal Painter had put a little of his soul +into the heart of Jack; for some busy marchers of the Avenue trail as +they glanced at him saw the free desert and heard hoof-beats in the sand. +Others seeing a tanned Westerner kissing his hand to Diana of Madison +Square Garden probably thought him mad. Next, performing another +sentimental errand for the Doge of Little Rivers, his gaze rose along the +column of the Metropolitan tower. Its heights were half shrouded in mist, +through which glowed the gold of the lantern. + +"Oh, bully! bully!" he thought. "The only sun in sight a manufactured +one, shining on top of a manufactured mountain! It is a big business +building a mountain; only, when God Almighty scattered so many ready-made +ones about, why take the trouble?" he concluded. "Or so it seems to me," +he added, sadly, in due appreciation of the utterly reactionary mood of a +man who has been boxed up for a week. + +Now he turned toward a quarter which he had, thus far, kept out of the +compass of observation. He looked up the jagged range of Broadway where, +over a terra-cotta pile, floated a crimson flag with "John Wingfield" in +big, white letters. + +"My mountain! My box! My millions!" he breathed half audibly. + +How the people whom he passed, their faces speaking city keenness of +ambition, must envy his position! How little reason they had to envy him, +he thought, as he walked around the great building and saw his name +glaring at him in gilt letters over the plate-glass windows and on all +the delivery wagons, open-mouthed for the packages being wheeled out +under the long glass awning. + +"A whole block now! Yes, the doctor was right. It must be thirty instead +of twenty millions!" he concluded, as his vision swept the straight-line, +window-checkered mass of the twelve stories. "And I do wish we had a +tower! If one could go up on top of a tower and look out over the range +now and then and breathe deep, it would help." + +When he entered the main door he paused in a maze, gazing at the acreage +of counters manned by clerks and the aisles swarming with shoppers under +the glare of the big, electric globes, and listening to the babble of +shrill talk, the calls of the elevator boys, the coughing of the +pneumatic tubes and the clang of the elevator doors. It was all like some +devilishly complicated dream from which he would never awake. He must +have a little time in order to orient himself before he could think +rationally. The roar of the train still obsessed him; the air in the +store seemed more stifling than that of the sleeper. + +So he decided that, rather than be shot up into The Presence by the +elevator, he would gradually scale the heights. Ascending stairway after +stairway, he ranged back and forth over the floors, a stranger in his +own wonderland. When he reached the eleventh floor, with only one more to +the offices, the whole atmosphere seemed suddenly to turn rare with +expectancy; a rustle to run through all the goods on the counters; the +very Paris gowns among which he was standing to be called to martial +attention. + +"The boss!" he heard one of the model girls say. + +Turning to follow her nod toward the stairway, Jack saw, two-thirds of +the way up the broad flight, a man past middle age, in dark gray suit and +neutral tie, rubbing his palms together as he surveyed a stratum of his +principality. The sight of him to Jack was like the touch of a myriad +electric needles that pricked sharply, without exhilaration. + +"The boss is likely to run up that way any time of the day," said the +model girl to a customer; "and what he don't see don't count!" + +"Not much older; not much changed!" thought Jack; and his realization of +the disinterestedness of his observation tipped the needles with acid. + +In the sharpness of the master's button-counting survey there was swift +finality; and his impressions completed, analyzed, docketed for +reference, he ran on up the flight with light step, still rubbing the +palms of his hands in the unctuously well-contained and appreciative +sense of his power. To Jack he was a fascinating, grand, distant figure, +this of his own father, yet mortally near. + +If the model girl had had the same keenness of observation for what is +borne in the face as for what is worn on the back, she could not have +failed to note the strong family resemblance between the young man +standing near her and the man who had paused on the stairway. This +glimpse of his father's mastery of every detail of that organization +which he had built, this glimpse of cool, self-centered authority, only +reminded Jack of his own ignorance and flightiness in view of all that +would be expected of him. He knew less than one of the cash girls about +how to run the store. A duel with Leddy was a simple matter beside this +battle he had to wage. + +He mounted the last flight of stairs into an area of glass-paneled doors, +behind which the creative business of the great concern was conducted. +Out of one marked "Private," closing it softly and stepping softly, came +a round-shouldered, stooping man of middle age, with the apprehensive and +palliating manner of a long-service private secretary who has many things +to remember and many persons to appease with explanations. It was evident +that Peter Mortimer had just come from The Presence. At sight of Jack he +drew back in a surprise that broke into a beaming delight which played +over his tired and wrinkled features in ecstasy. + +"Jack! Jack! You did it! You did it!" he cried. + +"Peter!" Jack seized the secretary's hands and swung them back and forth. + +"You've got a grip of iron! And tanned--my, how you're tanned! You did +it, Jack, you did it! It hardly seems credible, when I think of the last +time I saw you." + +It was then that the secretary had seen a Jack with his eyes moist; a +Jack pasty-faced, hollow-cheeked; and, in what was a revolutionary +outburst for a unit in the offices, Peter Mortimer had put his arm around +the boy in a cry for the success of the Odyssey for health which the +heir was about to begin. And Mortimer's words were sweet, while the words +of the farewell from the other side of the glass-paneled door marked +"Private" were acrid with the disappointed hopes of the speaker. + +"You have always been a weakling, Jack, and I have had little to say +about your rearing. Go out to the desert and stay--stay till you are +strong!" declared the voice of strength, as if glad to be freed of the +sight of weakness in its own image. + +"Father did not come to meet me?" Jack observed questioningly now +to Mortimer. + +"He was very busy--he did not feel certain about the nature of your +telegram--he--" and Mortimer's impulses withdrew into the shell of the +professional private secretary. + +"I wired that he should see for himself if I were well. So he shall!" +said Jack, turning toward the door. + +"Yes--that will be all right--yes, there is no one with him!" + +Mortimer, in the very instinct of long practice, was about to go in to +announce the visitor, but paused. As Jack entered, whatever else may have +been in his eyes, there was no moisture. + + + + +XXIV + +IN THE CITADEL OF THE MILLIONS + + +John Wingfield, Sr. sat at a mahogany table without a single drawer, in +the centre of a large room with bare, green-tinted walls. His oculist had +said that green was the best color for the eyes. Beside the green +blotting-pad in front of him was a pile of papers. These would either be +disposed of in the course of the day or, if any waited on the morrow's +decision, would be taken away by Peter Mortimer overnight. When he rose +to go home it was always with a clear desk; a habit, a belief of his +singularly well-ordered mind in the mastery of the teeming detail that +throbbed under the thin soles of his soft kid shoes. On the other side of +the pad was the telephone, and beyond it the supreme implements of his +will, a row of pearl-topped push-buttons. + +The story of John Wingfield, Sr.'s rise and career, as the lieutenants of +the offices and the battalions of the shopping floors knew it, was not +the story, perhaps, as Dr. Bennington or Peter Mortimer knew it; but, +then, doctors and private secretaries are supposed to hold their secrets. +There was little out of the commonplace in the world's accepted version. +You may hear its like from the moneyed host at his dinner table in New +York or as he shows you over the acres of his country estate, enthusing +with a personal narrative of conquest which is to him unique. John +Wingfield, Sr. makes history for us in the type of woman whom he +married and the type of son she bore him. + +He was the son of a New England country clergyman, to whom working his +way through college in order to practise a profession made no appeal. +Birth and boyhood in poverty had taught him, from want of money, the +power of money. He sought the centre of the market-place. At sixteen he +was a clerk, marked by his industry not less than by his engaging +manners, on six dollars a week in the little store that was the site of +his present triumph. Of course he became a partner and then owner. It was +his frequent remark, when he turned reminiscent, that if he could only +get as good clerks as he was in his day he would soon have a monopoly of +supplying New York and its environs with all it ate and wore and needed +to furnish its houses; which raises the point that possibly such an +equality of high standards in efficiency might make all clerks employers. + +The steady flame of his egoism was fanned with his Successes. Without +real intimates or friends, he had an effective magnetism in making others +do his bidding. It had hardly occurred to him that his discovery of the +principle of never doing anything yourself that you can win others to do +for you and never failing, when you have a minute to spare, to do a thing +yourself when you can do it better than any assistant, was already a +practice with leaders in trade and industry before the Pharaohs. + +Life had been to him a ladder which he ascended without any glances to +right or left or at the rung that he had left behind. The adaptable +processes of his mind kept pace with his rise. He made himself at home +in each higher stratum of atmosphere. His marriage, delayed until he was +forty and already a man of power, was still another upward step. Alice +Jamison brought him capital and position. The world was puzzled why she +should have accepted him; but this stroke of success he now considered as +the vital error of a career which, otherwise, had been flawlessly +planned. Yet he could flatter his egoism with the thought that it was +less a fault of judgment than of the uncertainty of feminine temperament, +which could not be measured by logic. + +New York saw little of Mrs. Wingfield after Jack's birth. Her friends +knew her as a creature all life and light before her marriage; they +realized that the life and light had passed out of her soon after the boy +came; and thenceforth they saw and heard little of her. She had given +herself up to the insistent possessorship and company of her son. Those +who met her when travelling reported how frail she was and how +constrained. + +Jack was fourteen when his mother died. He was brought home and sent to +school in America; and two-years later Dr. Bennington announced that the +slender youngster, who had been so completely estranged from the affairs +of the store, must matriculate in the ozone of high altitudes instead of +in college, if his life were to be saved. Whether Jack were riding over +the _mesas_ of Arizona or playing in a villa garden in Florence, John +Wingfield, Sr.'s outlook on life was the same. It was the obsession of +self in his affairs. After the eclipse of his egoism the deluge. The very +thought that anyone should succeed him was a shock reminding him of +growing age in the midst of the full possession of his faculties, while +he felt no diminution of his ambition. + +"I am getting better," came the occasional message from that stranger +son. And the father kept on playing the tune of accruing millions on the +push-buttons. His decision to send Dr. Bennington to Arizona came +suddenly, just after he had turned sixty-three. He had had an attack of +grip at the same time that his attention had been acutely called to the +demoralization of another great business institution whose head had died +without issue, leaving his affairs in the hands of trustees. + +Two days of confinement in his room with a high pulse had brought +reflection and the development of atavism. What if the institution built +as a monument to himself should also pass! What if the name of Wingfield, +his name, should no longer float twelve stories high over his building! +He foresaw the promise of companionship of a restless and ghastly +apparition in the future. + +But he recovered rapidly from his illness and his mental processes were +as keen and prehensile as ever. Checking off one against the other, with +customary shrewdness, he had a number of doctors go over him, and all +agreed that he was good for twenty years yet. Twenty years! Why, Jack +would be middle-aged by that time! Twenty years was the difference +between forty-three and sixty-three. Since he was forty-three he had +quintupled his fortune. He would at least double it again. He was not +old; he was young; he was an exceptional man who had taken good care of +himself. The threescore and ten heresy could not apply to him. + +Bennington's telegram irritated him with its lack of precision. Fifteen +hundred dollars and expenses to send an expert to Arizona and in +return this unbusinesslike report: "You will see Jack for yourself. He +is coming." + +In the full enjoyment of health, observing every nice rule for +longevity, his slumber sweet, his appetite good, John Wingfield, Sr. +had less interest in John Wingfield, Jr. than he had when his bones +were aching with the grip. Jack's telegram from Chicago announcing the +train by which he would arrive aroused an old resentment, which dated +far back to Jack's childhood and to a frail woman who had been proof +against her husband's will. + +Did this home-coming mean a son who could learn the business; a strong, +shrewd, cool-headed son? A son who could be such an adjutant as only one +who is of your own flesh and blood can be in the full pursuit of the same +family interest as yourself? If Jack were well, would not Bennington have +said so? Would he not have emphasized it? This was human nature as John +Wingfield, Sr. knew it; human nature which never missed a chance to +ingratiate itself by announcing success in the service of a man of power. + +The spirit of his farewell message to Jack, which said that strength +might return but bade weakness to remain away, and the injured pride of +seeing a presentment of wounded egoism in the features of a sickly boy, +which had kept him from going to Arizona, were again dominant. Yet that +morning he had a pressing sense of distraction. Even Mortimer noticed it +as something unusual and amazing. He kept reverting to Jack's history +between flashes of apprehension and he was angry with himself over his +inability to concentrate his mind. Concentration was his god. He could +turn from lace-buyer to floor-walker with the quickness of the swing of +an electric switch. Concentrate and he was oblivious to everything but +the subject in hand. He was in one of the moments of apprehension, half +staring at the buttons on the desk rather than at the papers, when he +heard the door open without warning and looked up to see a lean, sturdy +height filling the doorway and the light from the window full on a +bronzed and serene face. + +More than ever was Jack like David come over the hills in his incarnation +of sleeping energy. Instead of a sling he carried the rose. Into the +abode of the nicely governed rules of longevity came the atmosphere of +some invasive spirit that would make the stake of life the foam on the +crest of a charge in a splendid moment; the spirit of Señor Don't Care +pausing inquiringly, almost apologetically, as some soldier in dusty +khaki might if he had marched into a study unawares. + +Jack was waiting, waiting and smiling, for his father to speak. In a +swift survey, his features transfixed at first with astonishment, then +glowing with pride, the father half rose from his chair, as if in an +impulse to embrace the prodigal. But he paused. He felt that something +under his control was getting out of his control. He felt that he had +been tricked. The boy must have been well for a long time. Yes! But he +was well! That was the vital point. He was well, and magnificent in +his vigor. + +The father made another movement; and still Jack was waiting, inquiring +yet not advancing. And John Wingfield, Sr. wished that he had gone to +the station; he wished that he had paid a visit to Arizona. This thought +working in his mind supplied Jack's attitude with an aspect which made +the father hesitate and then drop back into his chair, confused and +uncertain for the first time in his own office. + +"Well, Jack, you--you surely do look cured!" he said awkwardly. "You see, +I--I was a little surprised to see you at the office. I sent the +limousine for you, thinking you would want to go straight to the house +and wash off the dust of travel. Didn't you connect?" + +"Yes, thank you, father--and when you didn't meet me--" + +"I--I was very busy. I meant to, but something interrupted--I--" The +father stopped, confounded by his own hesitation. + +"Of course," said Jack. He spoke deferentially, understandingly. "I know +how busy you always are." + +Yet the tone was such to John Wingfield, Sr.'s ears that he eyed Jack +cautiously, sharply, in the expectancy that almost any kind of +undisciplined force might break loose from this muscular giant whom he +was trying to reconcile with the Jack whom he had last seen. + +"I thought I'd stretch my legs, so I came over to the store to see how it +had grown," said Jack. "I don't interrupt--for a moment?" + +He sat down on the chair opposite his father's and laid his faded +cowpuncher hat and the rose on the desk. They looked odd in the company +of the pushbuttons and the pile of papers in that neutral-toned room +which was chilling in its monotony of color. And though Jack was almost +boyishly penitent, in the manner of one who comes before parental +authority after he has been in mischief, still John Wingfield, Sr. +could not escape the dead weight of an impression that he was speaking to +a stranger and not to his own flesh and blood. He wished now that he had +shown affection on Jack's entrance. He had a desire to grip the brown +hand that was on the edge of the desk fingering the rose stem; but the +lateness of the demonstration, its futility in making up for his previous +neglect, and some subtle influence radiating from Jack's person, +restrained him. It was apparent that Jack might sit on in silence +indefinitely; in a desert silence. + +"Well, Jack, I hear you had a ranch," said the father, with a faint +effort at jocularity. + +"Yes, and a great crop of alfalfa," answered Jack, happily. + +"And it seems that all the time you were away you have never used your +allowance, so it has just been piling up for you." + +"I didn't need it. I had quite sufficient from the income of my +mother's estate." + +"Yes--your mother--I had forgotten!" + +"Naturally, I preferred to use that, when I was of so little service to +you unless I got strong, as you said," Jack said, very quietly. + +Now came another silence, the silence of luminous, unsounded depths +concealing that in the mind which has never been spoken or even taken +form. Jack's garden of words had dried up, as his ranch would dry up for +want of water. He rose to go, groping for something that should express +proper contrition for wasted years, but it refused to come. He picked up +the rose and the hat, while the father regarded him with stony wonder +which said: "Are you mine, or are you not? What is the nature of this +new strength? On what will it turn?" + +For Jack's features had set with a strange firmness and his eyes, looking +into his father's, had a steady light. It seemed as if he might stalk out +of the office forever, and nothing could stop him. But suddenly he +flashed his smile; he had looked about searching for a talisman and found +it in the rose, which set his garden of words abloom again. + +"This room is so bare it must be lonely for you," he said. "Wouldn't it +be a good idea to cheer it up a bit? To have this rose in a vase on your +table where you could see it, instead of riding about in an empty +automobile box?" + +"Why, there is a whole cold storage booth full of them down on the first +floor!" said the father. + +"Yes, I saw them in their icy prison under the electric light bulbs. The +beads of water on them were like tears of longing to get out for the joy +of their swan song under a woman's smiles or beside a sick bed," said +Jack, in the glow of real enthusiasm. + +"Good line for the ad writer!" his father exclaimed, instinctively. "You +always did have fanciful ideas, Jack." + +"Yes, I suppose I have!" he said, with some surprise and very +thoughtfully. "I suppose that I was born with them and never weeded +them out." + +"No doubt!" and the father frowned. + +Surveying the broad shoulders before him, he was thinking how nothing but +aimlessness and fantasies and everything out of harmony with the career +to come had been encouraged in the son. But he saw soberness coming into +Jack's eyes and with it the pressure of a certain resoluteness of +purpose. And now Jack spoke again, a trifle sadly, as if guessing his +father's thoughts. + +"It will be a case of weeding for me in the future, won't it?" he asked +wanly, as he rose. "I am full of foolish ideas that are just bound to run +away with me." + +"Jack! Jack!" John Wingfield, Sr. put his hands out to the shoulders +of his son and gripped them strongly, and for a second let his own +weight half rest on that sturdy column which he sensed under the grip. +His pale face, the paleness of the type that never tans, flushed. +"Jack, come!" he said. + +He permitted himself something like real dramatic feeling as he signalled +his son to follow him out of the office and led the way to a corner of +one of the balconies where, under the light from the glass roof of the +great central court, he could see down the tiers of floors to the jewelry +counter which sparkled at the bottom of the well. + +"Look! look!" he exclaimed, rubbing his palms together with a peculiar +crisp sound. "All selling my goods! All built from the little store where +I began as a clerk!" + +"It's--it's immense!" gasped Jack; and he felt a dizziness and confusion +in gazing at this kind of an abyss. + +"And it's only beginning! It's to go on growing and growing! You see why +I wanted you to be strong, Jack; why it would not do to be weak if you +had all this responsibility." + +This was a form of apology for his farewell to Jack, but the message was +the same: He had not wanted a son who should be of his life and heart and +ever his in faults and illnesses. This was the recognizable one of the +shadows between them now recalled. He had wanted a fresh physical machine +into which he could blow the breath of his own masterful being and instil +the cunning of his experience. He saw in this straight, clean-limbed +youth at his side the hope of Jack's babyhood fulfilled, in the +projection of his own ego as a living thing after he himself was gone. + +"And it is to go on growing and growing, in my name and your name--John +Wingfield!" + +Jack was swallowing spasmodically; he moistened his lips; he grasped the +balcony railing so tight that his knuckles were white knobs on the bronze +back of his hand. The father in his enthusiasm hardly noticed this. + +"What couldn't I have done," he added, "if I had had all this to begin +with! All that you will have to begin with!" + +Jack managed a smile, rather thin and wavering. + +"Yes, I am going to try my best." + +"All I ask! You have me for a teacher and I know one or two little +things!" said the father, fairly grinning in the transmission of his +joke. "Now, you must be short on clothes," he added; "so you can get +something ready-made downstairs while you have some making at +Thompson's." + +"Don't you buy your clothes, your best clothes, I mean, in your own +store?" Jack asked. It was his first question in getting acquainted with +his future property. + +"No. We cater to a little bigger class of trade--one of the many twists +of the business," was the answer. "And now we'll meet at dinner, shall +we, and have a good long talk," he concluded, closing the interview and +turning to the door, his mind snapping back to the matter he was about to +take up when he had been interrupted with more eagerness than ever, now +that his egoism thrilled with a still greater purpose. + +"I--I left my hat on your desk," Jack explained, as he followed his +father into the office. + +"Well, you don't want to be carrying packages about," said John +Wingfield, Sr. "That is hardly the fashion in New York, though John +Wingfield's son can make it so if he wants to. I'll have that +flat-brimmed western one sent up to the house and you can fit out with +another when you go downstairs for clothes. That is, I suppose you will +want to keep this as a memento, eh?" and he held out the cowpuncher, +sweeping it with a sardonic glance. + +"No," Jack answered decisively, out of the impulse that came with the +sight of the veteran companion that had shielded him from the sun on +the trail. It was good to have any kind of an impulse after his +giddiness on the balcony at sight of all the phantasmagoria of detail +that he must master. + +If he were to be equal to this future there must be an end of temptation. +He must shake himself free of the last clinging bit of chrysalis of the +old life. His amazed father saw the child of the desert, where convention +is made by your fancy and the supply of water in your canteen, go to the +window and raise the sash. Leaning out, he let the hat drop into +Broadway, with his eyes just over the line of the ledge while he watched +it fall, dipping and gliding, to the feet of a messenger boy, who picked +it up, waved it gleefully aloft before putting it over his cap, and with +mock strides of grandeur went his way. + +"That gave him a lot of pleasure--and a remarkably quick system for +delivering goods, wasn't it?" said Jack, cheerfully. + +"Yes, I should say so!" assented his father, returning to his seat. +"Dinner at seven!" he called before the door closed; and as his finger +sought one of the push-buttons it rested for a moment on the metal edge +of the socket, his head bowed, while an indefinable emotion, mixed of +prophecy and recollection, must have fluttered through the routine +channels of his vigorous mind. + + + + +XXV + +"BUT WITH YOU, 'YES, SIR'" + + +As Jack came out of the office, Mortimer appeared from an adjoining room +in furtive, mouselike curiosity. + +"Not much damage done!" said Jack, in happy relief from the ordeal. "I am +without a hat, but I have the rose." He held it up before Mortimer's +worn, kindly face that had been so genuine in welcome. "Yes, I must have +kept it to decorate you, Peter!" + +Ineffectually, in timorous confusion, the old secretary protested while +Jack fastened it in his buttonhole. + +"And you are going to help me, aren't you, Peter?" Jack went on, +seriously. "You are going to hold up a finger of warning when I get off +the course. I am to be practical, matter-of-fact; there's to be an end to +all fantastic ideas." + +An end to all fantastic ideas! But it was hardly according to the gospel +of the matter-of-fact to take Burleigh, the fitter, out to luncheon. Jack +might excuse himself on the ground that he had not yet begun his +apprenticeship and had several hours of freedom before his first lesson +at dinner. This ecstasy of a recess, perhaps, made him lay aside the +derby, which the clerk said was very becoming, and choose a softer +head-covering with a bit of feather in the band, which the clerk, with +positive enthusiasm, said was still more becoming. At all events, it was +easy on his temples, while the derby was stiff and binding and conducive +to a certain depression of spirits. + +Burleigh, the fitter, was almost as old as Mortimer. He rose to the +exceptional situation, his eyes lighting as he surveyed the form to be +clothed with a professional gratification unsurpassed by that of Dr. +Bennington in plotting Jack's chest with a stethoscope. + +"Yes, sir, we will have that dinner-jacket ready to-night, sir, depend +upon it--and couldn't I show you something in cheviots?" + +Jack broke another precedent. A Wingfield, he decided to patronize +the Wingfield store, because he saw how supremely happy every order +made Burleigh. + +"You can do it as well as Thompson's?" he asked. + +"With you, yes, sir--though Thompson is a great expert on round +shoulders. But with you, yes, sir!" + +When the business of measuring was over, while Burleigh peered triumphant +over the pile of cloths from which the masterpieces were to be fashioned, +Jack said that he had a ripping appetite and he did not see why he and +Burleigh should not appease their hunger in company. Burleigh gasped; +then he grinned in abandoned delight and slipped off his shiny coat and +little tailor's apron that bristled with pins. + +They went to a restaurant of reputation, which Jack said was in keeping +with the occasion when a man changed his habits from Arizona simplicity +to urban multiplicity of courses. And what did Burleigh like? Burleigh +admitted that if he were a plutocrat he would have caviar at least once a +day; and caviar appeared in a little glass cup set in the midst of +cracked ice, flanked by crisp toast. After caviar came other things to +Burleigh's taste. He was having such an awesomely grand feast that he +was tongue-tied; but Jack could never eat in silence until he had +forgotten how to tell stories. So he told Burleigh stories of the trail +and of life in Little Rivers in a way that reflected the desert sunshine +in Burleigh's eyes. Burleigh thought that he would like to live in Little +Rivers. Almost anyone might after hearing Jack's description, in the joy +of its call to himself. + +"Now, if you would trust me," said Burleigh, when they left the +restaurant, "I should like to send out for some cloths not in stock for a +couple of suits. And couldn't I make you up three or four fancy +waistcoats, with a little color in them--the right color to go with the +cloth? You can carry a little color--decidedly, yes." + +"Yes, I rather like color," said Jack, succumbing to temptation, though +he felt that the heir to great responsibilities ought to dress in the +most neutral of tones. + +"And I should like to select the ties to go with the suits and a few +shirts, just to carry out my scheme--a kind of professional triumph for +me, you see. May I?" + +"Go ahead!" said Jack. + +"And you can depend on your evening suit to be up in time. But I am going +to rush a little broader braid on those ready-made trousers--you can +carry that, too," Burleigh concluded. + +When they parted Jack turned into Fifth Avenue. Before he had gone a +block the bulky eminence of a Fifth Avenue stage awakened his +imagination. How could anybody think of confinement in a taxicab when he +might ride in the elephant's howdah of that top platform, enjoying mortal +superiority over surrounding humanity? Jack hung the howdah with silken +streamers and set a mahout's turban on the head of the man on the seat in +front of him, while the glistening semi-oval tops of the limousines +floating in the mist of the rising grade from Madison Square to +Forty-second Street, swarmed and halted in a kind of blind, cramped _pas +de quatre_ from cross street to cross street, amid the breaking surge of +pedestrians. + +"Such a throbbing of machine motion," he thought, "that I don't see +how anybody can have an emotion of his own without bumping into +somebody else's." + +It was a scene of another age and world to him, puzzling, overpowering, +dismal, mocking him with a sense of loneliness that he had never felt on +the desert. Could he ever catch up with this procession which had all the +time been moving on in the five years of his absence? Could he learn to +talk and think in the regulated manner of the traffic rules of +convention? The few chums of his brief home school-days were long away +from the fellowship of academies; they had settled in their grooves, with +established intimacies. If he found his own flock he could claim +admission to the fold only with the golden key of his millions, rather +than by the password of kindred understanding. + +The tripping, finely-clad women, human flower of all the maelstrom of +urban toil, in their detachment seemed only to bring up a visualized +picture of Mary. What would he not like to do for her! He wished that he +could pick up the Waldorf and set it on the other side of the street as +a proof of the overmastering desire that possessed him whenever she was +in his mind. + +And the Doge! He was the wisest man in the world. With a nod of +well-considered and easy generosity Jack presented him with the new +Public Library. And then all the people on the sidewalks vanished and +the buildings melted away into sunswept levels, and the Avenue was a +trail down which Mary came on her pony in the resplendent sufficiency of +his dreams. + +"Great heavens!" he warned himself. "And I am to take my first lesson in +running the business this evening! What perfect lunacy comes from +mistaking the top of a Fifth Avenue stage for a howdah!" + + + + +XXVI + +THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY + + +How thankful he was that the old brick corner mansion in Madison Avenue, +with age alone to recommend its architecture of the seventies--let it +stand for what it was--had not been replaced by one of stone freshly +polished each year! The butler who opened the door was new and stiffer +than the one of the old days; but he saw that the broad hall, with the +stairs running across the rear in their second flight, was little more +changed than the exterior. + +Five years since he had left that hall! He was in the thrall of +anticipation incident to seeing old associations with the eyes of +manhood. The butler made to take his hat, but Jack, oblivious of the +attention, went on to the doorway of the drawing-room, his look centering +on a portrait that faced the door. In this place of honor he saw a +Gainsborough. He uttered a note of pained surprise. + +"There used to be another portrait here. Where is it?" he demanded. + +The butler, who had heard that the son of the house was an invalid, had +not recovered from his astonishment at the appearance of health of the +returned prodigal. + +"Upstairs, sir," he answered. "When Mr. Wingfield got this prize last +year, sir--" + +Though the butler had spoken hardly a dozen words, he became conscious +of something atmospheric that made him stop in the confusion of one +who finds that he has been garrulous with an explanation that does +not explain. + +"Please take this upstairs and bring back the other," said Jack. + +"Yes, sir. You will be going to your room, sir, and while--" The butler +had a feeling of a troublesome future between two masters. + +"Now, please!" said Jack, settling into a chair to wait. + +The Gainsborough countess, with her sweeping plumes, her rich, fleshy, +soft tones, her charming affectation, which gave you, after the art +interest, no more human interest in her than in a draped model, was +carried upstairs and back came the picture that it had displaced. The +frame still bore at the bottom the title "Portrait of a Lady," under +which it had been exhibited at the Salon many years ago. It was by a +young artist, young then, named Sargent. He had the courage of his +method, this youngster, no less than Hals, who also worked his wonders +with little paint when this suited his genius best. The gauze of the gown +where it blended with the background at the edge of the line of arm was +so thin, seemingly made by a single brush-stroke, that it almost showed +the canvas. + +A purpose in that gauze: The thinness of transparency of character! The +eyes of the portrait alone seemed deep. They were lambent and dark, +looking straight ahead inquiringly, yet in the knowledge that no answer +to the Great Riddle could change the course of her steps in the blind +alley of a life whose tenement walls were lighted with her radiance. You +could see through the gown, through the flesh of that frail figure, so +lacking in sensuousness yet so glowing with a quiet fire, to the soul +itself. She seemed of such a delicate, chaste fragility that she could be +shattered by a single harsh touch. There would be no outcry except the +tinkle of the fragments. The feelings of anyone who witnessed the +breaking and heard the tinkle would be a criterion of his place in the +wide margin between nerveless barbarism and sensitive gentility. + +"I give! I give! I give!" was her message. + +For a long time, he had no measure of it, Jack sat studying the portrait, +set clear in many scenes of memory in review. It had been a face as +changeful as the travels, ever full of quick lights and quick shadows. He +had had flashes of it as it was in the portrait in its very triumph of +resignation. He had known it laughing with stories of fancy which she +told him; sympathetic in tutorial illumination as she gave him lessons +and brought out the meaning of a line of poetry or a painting; beset by +the restlessness which meant another period of travel; intense as fire +itself, gripping his hands in hers in a defiance of possession; in moods +when both its sadness and its playfulness said, "I don't care!" and +again, fleeing from his presence to hide her tears. + +It was with the new sight of man's maturity and soberness that he now saw +his mother, feeling the intangible and indestructible feminine majesty of +her; feeling her fragility which had brought forth her living soul in its +beauty and impressionableness as a link with the cause of his Odyssey; +believing that she was rejoicing in his strength and understanding +gloriously that it had only brought him nearer to her. + +After he had been to his room to dress he returned to the same chair and +settled into the same reverie that was sounding depths of his being that +he had never suspected. He was mutely asking her help, asking the support +of her frail, feminine courage for his masculine courage in the battle +before him; and little tremors of nervous determination were running +through him, when he heard his father's footstep and became conscious of +his father's presence in the doorway. + +There was a moment, not of hesitation but of completing a thought, before +he looked up and rose to his feet. In that moment, John Wingfield, Sr. +had his own shock over the change in the room. The muscles of his face +twitched in irritation, as if his wife's very frailty were baffling +invulnerability. Straightening his features into a mask, his eyes still +spoke his emotion in a kind of stare of resentment at the picture. + +Then he saw his son's shoulders rising above his own and looked into +his son's eyes to see them smiling. Long isolated by his power from +clashes of will under the roof of his store or his house, the father +had a sense of the rippling flash of steel blades. A word might start a +havoc of whirling, burning sentences, confusing and stifling as a +desert sandstorm; or it might bring a single killing flash out of +gathering clouds. + +Thus the two were facing each other in a silence oppressive to both, +which neither knew how to break, when relief came in the butler's +announcement of dinner. Indeed, by such small, objective interruptions do +dynamic inner impulses hang that this little thing may have suppressed +the lightnings. + +The father was the first to speak. He hoped that a first day in New York +had brought Jack a good appetite; certainly, he could see that the store +had given him a wonderful fit for a rush order. + + + + +XXVII + +BY RIGHT OF ANCESTRY + + +There were to be no stories of Little Rivers at dinner; no questions +asked about desert life. This chapter of Jack's career was a past rung of +the ladder to John Wingfield, Sr. who was ever looking up to the rungs +above. The magnetism and charm with which he won men to his service now +turned to the immediate problem of his son, whom he was to refashion +according to his ideas. + +"Are you ready to settle down?" he asked, half fearful lest that scene in +the drawing-room might have wrought a change of purpose. + +In answer he was seeing another Jack; a Jack relaxed, amiable, +even amenable. + +"If you have the patience," said Jack. "You know, father, I haven't a +cash-register mind. I'm starting out on a new trail and I am likely to go +lame at times. But I mean to be game." + +He looked very frankly and earnestly into his father's eyes. + +"Wild oats sown! My boy, after all!" thought the father. "Respected his +mother! Well, didn't I respect mine? Of course--and let him! It is good +principles. It is right. He has health; that is better than schooling." + +In place of the shock of the son's will against his, he was feeling it as +a force which might yet act in unison with his. He expanded with the +pride of the fortune-builder. He told how a city within a city is created +and run; of tentacles of investment and enterprise stretching beyond the +store in illimitable ambition; how the ball of success, once it was set +rolling, gathered bulk of its own momentum and ever needed closer +watching to keep it clear of obstacles. + +"And I am to stand on top like a gymnast on a sphere or be rolled under," +thought Jack. "And I'll have cloth of gold breeches and a balancing pole +tipped with jewels; but--but--" + +"A good listener, and that is a lot!" thought the father, happily. + +Jack had interrupted neither with questions nor vagaries. He was gravely +attentive, marveling over this story of a man's labor and triumph. + +"And the way to learn the business is not from talks by me," said his +father, finally. "You cannot begin at the top." + +"No! no!" said Jack, aghast. "The top would be quite too insecure, too +dizzy to start with." + +"Right!" the father exclaimed, decidedly. "You must learn each department +of itself, and then how it works in with the others. It will be drudgery, +but it is best--right at the bottom!" + +"Yes, father, where there is no danger of a fall." + +"You will be put on an apprentice salary of ten dollars a week." + +"And I'll try to earn it." + +"Of course, you understand that the ten is a charge against the store. +That's business. But as for a private allowance, you are John Wingfield's +son and--" + +"I think I have enough of my own for the present," Jack put in. + +"As you wish. But if you need more, say the word. And you shall name the +department where you are to begin. Did you get any idea of which you'd +choose from looking the store over to-day?" + +"That's very considerate of you!" Jack answered. He was relieved and +pleased and made his choice quickly, though he mentioned it half timidly +as if he feared that it might be ridiculous, so uncertain was he about +the rules of apprenticeship. + +"You see I have been used to the open air and I'd like a little time in +which to acclimatize myself in New York. Now, all those big wagons that +bring the goods in and the little wagons that take them out--there is an +out-of-door aspect to the delivery service. Is that an important branch +to learn?" + +"Very--getting the goods to the customer--very!" + +"Then I'll start with that and sort of a roving commission to look over +the other departments." + +"Good! We will consider it settled. And, Jack, every man's labor that you +can save and retain efficiency--that is the trick! Organization and +ideas, that's what makes the employer and so makes success. Why, Jack, if +you could cut down the working costs in the delivery department or +improve the service at the present cost, why--" John Wingfield, Sr. +rubbed the palms of his hands together delightedly. + +Everything was going finely--so far. He added that proviso of _so far_ +instinctively. + +"Besides, Jack," he went on, changing to another subject that was equally +vital to his ego, "this name of Wingfield is something to work for. I was +the son of a poor New England clergyman, but there is family back of it; +good blood, good blood! I was not the first John Wingfield and you shall +not be the last!" + +He rose from the table, bidding the servant to bring the coffee to the +drawing-room. With the same light, quick step that he ascended the +flights in the store, he led the way downstairs, his face alive with the +dramatic anticipation that it had worn when he took Jack out of the +office to look down from the balcony of the court. + +"Ah, we have something besides the store, Jack!" he was saying, in the +very exultation of the pride of possession, as he went to the opposite +side of the mantel from the mother's portrait and turned on the reflector +over a picture. + +Jack saw a buccaneer under the brush of the gold and the shadows of +Spain; a robust, ready figure on fighting edge, who seemed to say, "After +you, sir; and, then, pardon me, but it's your finish, sir!" + +"It's a Velasquez!" Jack exclaimed. + +"And you knew that at a glance!" said his father. + +"Why, yes!" + +"Not many Velasquezes in America," said the father, thinking, +incidentally, that his son would not have to pay the dealers a heavy toll +for an art education, while he revelled in a surprise that he was +evidently holding back. + +"Or many better Velasquezes than this, anywhere," added Jack. "What +mastery! What a gift from heaven that was vouchsafed to a human being to +paint like that!" + +He was in a spell, held no less by the painter's art than by the subject. + +"Absolutely a certified Velasquez, bought from the estate of Count +Galting," continued his father. "I paid a cool two hundred and fifty +thousand for it. And that isn't all, Jack, that isn't all that you are +going to drudge for as an apprentice in the delivery department. I know +what I am talking about. I wasn't fooled by any of the genealogists who +manufacture ancestors. I had it all looked up by four experts, checking +one off against another." + +"Yes," answered Jack, absently. He had hardly heard his father's words. +In fervent scrutiny he was leaning forward, his weight on the ball of the +foot, the attitude of the man in the picture. + +"And who do you think he is--who?" pursued John Wingfield, Sr. + +"A man who fought face to face with the enemy; a man whom men followed! +Velasquez caught all that!" answered Jack. + +"That old fellow was a great man in his day--a great Englishman--and his +name was John Wingfield! He was your ancestor and mine!" + +After a quick breath of awakening comprehension Jack took a step nearer +the portrait, all his faculties in the throe of beaming inquiry of Señor +Don't Care and desert freedom, in the self-same, alert readiness of pose +as the figure he was facing. + +"They say I resemble him!" The father repeated that phrase which he had +used in benignant satisfaction to many a guest, but now seeing with +greedy eyes a likeness between his son and the ancestor deeper than mere +resemblance of feature, he added: "But you--you, Jack, you're the dead +spit of him!" + +"Yes," said Jack, as if he either were not surprised or were too +engrossed to be interested. To the buccaneer's "After you, sir; and, +then, your finish, sir!" he seemed to be saying, in the fully-lived +spirit of imagination: "A good epitaph, sir! I'll see that it is written +on your tombstone!" + +The father, singularly affected by the mutual and enjoyed challenge that +he was witnessing, half expected to see a sword leap out of the scabbard +of the canvas and another from Jack's side. + +"If he had lived in our day," said the father, "he would have built +himself a great place; he would have been the head of a great +institution, just as I am." + +"Two centuries is a long way to fetch a comparison," answered Jack, +hazily, out of a corner of his brain still reserved for conversation, +while all the rest of it was centered elsewhere. "He might have been a +cow-puncher, a revolutionist, or an aviator. Certainly, he would never +have been a camp-follower." + +"At all events, a man of power. It's in the blood!" + +"It's in the blood!" Jack repeated, with a sort of staring, lingering +emphasis. He was hearing Mary's protest on the pass; her final, +mysterious reason for sending him away; her "It's not in the blood!" +There could be no connection between this and the ancestor; yet, in the +stirred depths of his nature, probing the inheritance in his veins, her +hurt cry had come echoing to his ears. + +"Why, I would have paid double the price rather than not have got that +picture!" the father went on. "There is a good deal of talk about family +trees in this town and a strong tendency in some quarters for second +generations of wealth to feel a little superiority over the first +generation. Here I come along with an ancestor eight generations back, +painted by Velasquez. I tell you it was something of a sensation when I +exhibited him in the store!" + +"You--you--" and Jack glanced at his father perplexedly; "you exhibited +him in the store!" he said. + +"Why, yes, as a great Velasquez I had just bought. I didn't advertise him +as my ancestor, of course. Still, the fact got around; yes, the fact got +around, Jack." + +While Jack studied the picture, his father studied Jack, whose face and +whose manner of blissful challenge to all comers in the unconcern of easy +fatality and ready blade seemed to grow more and more like that of the +first John Wingfield. At length, Jack passed over to the other side of +the mantel and turned on the reflector over the portrait of his mother; +and, in turn, standing silently before her all his militancy was gone and +in its place came the dreamy softness with which he would watch the +Eternal Painter cloud-rolling on the horizon. And he was like her not in +features, not in the color of hair or eyes, but in a peculiar +sensitiveness, distinguished no less by a fatalism of its own kind than +was the cheery aggressiveness of the buccaneer. + +"Yes, father," he said, "that old ruffian forebear of ours could swear +and could kill. But he had the virtue of truth. He could not act or live +a lie. And I guess something else--how supremely gentle he could be +before a woman like her. Velasquez brought out a joyous devil and Sargent +brought out a soul!" + +John Wingfield, Sr., who stood by the grate, was drumming nervously on +the mantel. The drumming ceased. The fingers rested rigid and white on +the dark wood. Alive to another manifestation of the lurking force in +his son, he hastened to change the subject. + +"I had almost forgotten that you always had a taste for art, Jack." + +"Yes, from her;" which was hardly changing the subject. + +"As for the first John Wingfield, you may be sure that I wanted to know +everything there was to know about the old fellow," said the father. "So +I set a lot of bookworms looking up the archives of the English and +Spanish governments and digging around in the libraries after material. +Then I had it all put together in proper shape by a literary sharp." + +"You have that!" cried Jack. "You have the framework from which you can +build the whole story of him--the story of how he fought and how +Velasquez came to paint him? Oh, I want to read it!" With an unexplored +land between gilt-tooled covers under his arm he went upstairs early, in +the transport of wanderlust that had sent him away over the sand from +Little Rivers. _SÃ, sÃ_, Firio, outward bound, camp under the stars! If +Señor Don't Care's desert journeys were over--and he had no thought but +that they were--there was no ban on travelling in fancy over sea trails +in the ancestor's company. + +Jack was with the buccaneer when he boarded the enemy at the head of his +men; with him before the Board of Admiralty when, a young captain of +twenty-two, he refused to lie to save his skin; with him when, in answer +to the scolding of Elizabeth, then an old woman, he said: "It is glorious +for one who fought so hard for Your Majesty to have the recognition even +of Your Majesty's chiding in answer to the protest of the Spanish +ambassador," which won Elizabeth's reversal of the Admiralty's decision; +with him when, in a later change of fortune, he went to the court of +Spain for once on a mission which required a sheathed blade; with him +when the dark eye of Velasquez, who painted men and women of his time +while his colleagues were painting Madonnas, glowed with a discoverer's +joy at sight of this fair-haired type of the enemy, whom he led away to +his studio. + +More than once was there mention of the fact that this terrible fighter +was gentle with women and fonder of the company of children than of +statesmen or courtiers. He had married the daughter of a great merchant, +a delicate type of beauty; the last to fascinate a buccaneer, according +to the gossips of the time. Rumor had it that he had taken her for the +wherewithal to pay the enormous debts contracted in his latest exploit. +To disprove this he went to sea in a temper with a frigate and came back +laden with the treasure of half a dozen galleons, to find that his wife +had died at the birth of a son. He promised himself to settle down for +good; but the fog of London choked lungs used to soft airs; he heard the +call of the sun and was away again to seek adventure in the broiling +reaches of the Caribbean. A man of restless, wild spirit, breathing +inconsistencies incomprehensible to the conventions of Whitehall! And his +son had turned a Cromwellian, who, in poverty, sought refuge in America +when Charles II. came to the throne; and from him, in the vicissitudes of +five generations, the poor clergyman was descended. + +Thus ran the tale in its completeness. The end of the ancestor's career +had been in keeping with its character and course. He had been spared +the slow decay of faculties in armchair reminiscence. He had gone down in +his ship without striking his colors, fighting the Spaniards one to +three. When Jack closed the cover on the last page tenderly and in +enraptured understanding, it was past midnight. + +The spaciousness of the sea under clouds of battle smoke had melted into +the spaciousness of the desert under the Eternal Painter's canopy. Then +four walls of a bedroom in Madison Avenue materialized, shutting out the +horizon; a carpet in place of sand formed the floor; and in place of a +blanket roll was a canopied bed upon which a servant had laid out a suit +of pajamas. In the impulse of a desire to look into the face of the first +John Wingfield in the light of all he now knew, Jack went downstairs, and +in the silence of the house drank in the portrait again. + +"You splendid old devil, you!" he breathed, understandingly. "How should +you like to start out delivering goods with me in the morning?" + + + + +XXVIII + +JACK GETS A RAISE + + +The next morning Jack went down town with his father in the limousine. +About an hour later, after he had been introduced to the head of the +delivery division, he was on his way up town beside a driver of one of +the wagons on the Harlem route. He was in the uniform of the Wingfield +light cavalry, having obtained a cap with embroidered initials on the +front. The driver was like to burst from inward mirth, and Jack was +regarding the prospect with veritable juvenile zest. + +At dinner that evening John Wingfield, Jr. narrated his experiences of +the day to John Wingfield, Sr. with the simplicity and verisimilitude +that always make for both realism and true comedy. + +"But, Jack, you took me too literally! It is hardly in keeping with your +position! You--" + +"Why, I thought that the only way to know the whole business was to +play every part. Didn't you ever deliver packages in person in your +early days?" + +"I can't say that I did!" the father admitted wryly. + +"Then it seems to me that you missed one of the most entertaining and +instructive features," Jack continued. "You cannot imagine the majestic +feminine disdain with which you may be informed that a five-cent bar of +soap should be delivered at the back door instead of the front door. The +most indignant example was a red-haired woman who was doing her own work +in a flat. She fairly blazed. She wanted to know if I didn't know what +dumb-waiters were for." + +"And what did you say?" the father asked wearily; for the ninth John +Wingfield had a limited sense of humor. + +"Oh, I try, however irritating the circumstances, to be most courtly, for +the honor of the store," said Jack. "I told her that I was very sorry and +I would speak to you in person about the mistake." + +"You mean that you admitted who you were?" + +"Oh, no! The red-haired woman laughed and took the package in at the +front door," Jack responded. Anybody in Little Rivers would have +understood just how he looked and smiled and why it was that the +red-haired woman laughed. + +"Jack--now, really, Jack, this is not quite dignified!" expostulated the +father. "What do you think your ancestor would say to it?" + +"I suspect that he would have made an even more ingratiating bow to the +lady than I could," said Jack, thoughtfully. "They had the grand manner +better developed in his day than in ours." + +In the ensuing weeks John Wingfield, Sr. dwelt in a kind of infernal +wonder about his son. He was cheered when some friend of his world who +had met Jack in the garb of his caste, as fitted by Burleigh, would say: +"Fine, strapping son you have there, Wingfield!" He was abashed and +dumfounded when Jack announced that he had taken Mamie Devore, who sold +culinary utensils in the basement, out to luncheon with her "steady +company," Joe Mathewson, driver of one of the warehouse trucks. + +"They were a little awed at first," Jack explained, "but they soon +became natural. I don't know anything pleasanter than making people feel +perfectly natural, do you? You see, Joe and Mamie are very real, father, +and most businesslike; an ambitious, upstanding pair. They're going to +have two thousand dollars saved before they marry. + +"'I don't believe that a woman ought to work out after she's married,' +was the way Joe put it. And Mamie, with her eyes fairly devouring him, +snapped back: 'No, she'd have enough to do looking after you, you big +old bluff!' + +"Mamie is a wiry little thing and Joe is a heavyweight, with a hand +almost as big as a baseball mit. That's partly why their practical +romance is so fascinating. Why, it's wonderful the stories that are +playing themselves out in that big store, father! Well, you see Joe is on +a stint--two thousand before he gets Mamie. He had been making money on +the side nights in boxing bouts. But Mamie stopped the fighting. She said +she was not going to have a husband with the tip of his nose driven up +between his eyes like a bull-dog's. And what do you imagine they are +going to do with the two thousand? Buy a farm! Isn't that corking!" + +John Wingfield, Sr. shrugged his shoulders, but did not express his +feelings with any remark. It seemed to him that Jack must have been born +without a sense of proportion. + +With the breaking of spring, when gardens were beginning to sprout, Jack +broadened his study to the trails of Westchester, Long Island, and New +Jersey, coursed by the big automobile vans of the suburban delivery. To +the people of the store, whose streets he traversed at will in +unremitting wonder over its varied activities, he had brought something +of the same sensation that he had to an Arizona town. He came to know the +employees by name, even as he had his neighbors in Little Rivers. He +nodded to the clerks as he passed down an aisle. They watched for his +coming and brightened with his approach and met his smile with their +smiles. In their idle moments he would stop and talk of the desert. + +Although he was learning to like the store as a community of human beings +its business was as the works of a watch, when all he knew was how to +tell the time by the face. But he tried hard to learn; tried until his +head was dizzy with a whirl of dissociated facts, which he knew ought to +be associated, and under the call of his utter restlessness would +disappear altogether for two or three days. + +"Relieving the pressure! It's a safety-valve so I shan't blow up," he +explained to his father, sadly. + +"Take your time," said John Wingfield, Sr., having in mind a recent talk +with Dr. Bennington. + +Jack listened faithfully to his father's clear-cut lessons. He asked +questions which only made his father sigh; for they had little to do with +the economy of working costs. All his suggestions were extravagant; they +would contribute to the joy of the employees, but not to profit. And +other questions made his father frown in devising answers which were in +the nature of explanations. Born of his rambling and humanly observant +relations with every department, they led into the very heart of things +in that mighty organization. There were times when it was hard for him +to control his indignation. There were trails leading to the room with +the glass-paneled door marked "Private" which he half feared to pursue. + +Thus, between father and son remained that indefinable chasm of thought +and habit which filial duty or politeness could not bridge. No stories of +the desert were ever told at home, though it was so easy to tell them to +Burleigh or Mathewson, those contrasts in a pale fitter of clothes and a +herculean rustler of dry-goods boxes. But echoes of the tales came to the +father through his assistants. He had the feeling of some stranger spirit +in his own likeness moving there in the streets of his city under the +talisman of a consanguinity that was nominal. One day he put an inquiry +to the general manager concretely, though in a way to avoid the +appearance of asking another's opinion about his own son. + +"He has your gift of winning men to him. There is no denying his +popularity with the force," said the general manager, who was a diplomat. + +The same question was put to Peter Mortimer. + +"We all love him. I think a lot of people in the store would march out to +the desert after him," said Mortimer, with real rejoicing in his candor +and courage. Indeed, of late he had been developing cheer as well as +courage, imbibing both, perhaps, from the roses in the vase on his +employer's desk. Jack had ordered a fresh bunch put there every day; and +when employees were sick packages of grapes and bunches of flowers came +to them, in Little Rivers fashion, with J.W. on the card, as if they had +come from the head of the firm himself. + +"Maybe Jack will soften the old man a little," ran a whisper from +basement to roof. For the battalions called him "Jack," rather than "Mr. +Wingfield," just as Little Rivers had. + +"The boy's good nature isn't making him too familiar with the employees?" +was a second question which the father had asked both the general manager +and Mortimer. + +"No. That is the surprising thing--the gift of being friendly without +being familiar," answered the manager. + +"He's got a kind of self-respect that induces respect in others," +said Peter. + +John Wingfield, Sr. was the proprietor of the store, but the human world +of the store began to feel a kind of proprietorship in Jack, while its +guardian interest in helping him in his mistakes was common enough to be +a conspiracy. + +And the callouses were gone from his hands. There was no longer a +dividing line between tan and white on his forehead. No outward symbol of +the desert clung to his person except the moments of the far vision of +distances in his eyes. Superficially, on the Avenue he would have been +taken for one of his caste. + +But tossing a cowpuncher hat out of a window into Broadway was easier +than tossing a thing out of mind. He sat up nights to write to Mary. +Letter after letter he poured out as a diary of his experiences in his +new world, letters breathing a pupil's hope of learning and all that +pupil's sorry vagaries. No answer ever came, not even to the most +appealing ones about his most adventurous conflicts with the dinosaur. +He felt the chagrin of the army of unpublished novelists who lay their +hearts bare on the stone slab of the dissectors in a publisher's +office. He might as well have thrown all he wrote into the +waste-basket so far as any result was concerned; yet he kept on +writing as if it were his glorious duty to report to her as his +superior. But he found a more responsive correspondent in Jim Galway; +and this was the letter he received: + +"DEAR JACK: + +"The whole valley is not yet sprouting with dates as you said it would +from your thinking of us. Maybe we didn't use the right seed. Your ranch +is still called Jack's ranch, and Firio is doing his best and about the +best I ever knew in an Indian. But as you always said, Indians are mostly +human, like the rest of us, barring a sort of born twist in their +intellect for which they aren't responsible. You see, Jack, a lot of your +sayings still live with us, though you are gone. + +"Well, Firio keeps your P.D. exercised and won't let anybody but himself +ride him. He says you will need him. For you can't budge the stubborn +little cuss. He declares you're coming back. When we tell him you're +worth twenty millions and he's plumb full of primitive foolishness and +general ignorance of the outside world, he says, '_SÃ_, he will come +back!' like some heathen oracle that's strong on repetition and weak on +vocabulary. + +"Of course you know about the new addition to our citizenship, John +Prather, that double of yours that you didn't happen to meet. And I +might mention that by this time, after we've seen so much of him, we +agree with the Doge that he doesn't look a bit like you. Well, he's +making a fine ranch across the road from you, but hiring all his work +done, which ain't exactly according to Little Rivers custom, as you +will remember. The Doge sets a lot by him, though I can't see how +there's much in common between them. This fellow's not full of all that +kind of scholastic persiflage that you are, Jack. He's so all-fired +practical his joints would crack if he wasn't so oily; and he's up to +old man Lefferts' pretty often. + +"He goes to Phoenix a good deal. When I was there the other day I heard +he was circulating around among the politicians in his quiet way, and I +saw him and Pete Leddy hobnobbing together. I didn't like that. But when +I told the Doge of it he said he guessed there wasn't much real +hobnobbing. The Doge is certainly strong for Prather. Another thing I +heard was that, after all, old man Lefferts' two partners aren't dead, +and Prather's been hunting them up. + +"Come to think of it, I didn't tell you that Pete Leddy and some of the +gang have been back in town. Of course we have every confidence in the +Doge, he's been so fair to this community. Still, some of us can't help +having our private suspicions, considering what a lot we have at stake. +And four or five of us was talking the other night, when suddenly we all +agreed how you'd shine in any trouble, and if there was going to be +any--not that there is--we wished you were here. + +"Well, Jack, the pass hasn't changed and the sunsets are just as grand as +ever and the air just as free. The pass won't have changed and the +sunsets will be doing business at the old stand when the antiquaries are +digging up the remote civilization of Little Rivers and putting it in a +high scale because they ran across a pot of Mrs. Galway's jam in the +ruins--the same hifalutin compliment being your own when you were +nursing your wound, as you will remember. + +"Here's wishing you luck from the whole town, way out here in nowhere. + +"As ever yours, + +"James R. Galway. + +"P.S. Belvy Smith wants to know if you won't write just one story. I told +her you were too busy for such nonsense now. But she refuses to believe +it. She says being busy doesn't matter to you. She says the stories just +pop out. So I transmit her request. J.R.G." + +"P.D. waiting!" breathed Jack. "No changing Firio! He is like the pass. I +wonder how Wrath of God and Jag Ear are!" + +He wrote a story for Belvy. He wrote to Firio in resolute assertion that +he would never require the services of P.D. again, when he knew that +Firio, despite the protests, would still keep P.D. fit for the trail. He +wrote to Jim Galway how immersed he was in his new career, but that he +might come for a while--for a little while, with emphasis--if ever Jim +wired that he was needed. + +"That was a good holiday--a regular week-end debauch away from the shop!" +he thought, when the letters were finished. + +Soon after this came an event which, for the first time, gave John +Wingfield, Sr. a revelation of the side of his son that had won Little +Rivers and the interest of the rank and file of the store. Among Jack's +many suggestions, in his aim to carry out his father's talk about the +creative business sense the first night they were together, had been one +for a suburban clubbing delivery system. It had been dismissed as +fantastic, but Jack had asked that it be given a trial and his father had +consented. Its basis was a certain confidence in human nature. Jack and +his father had dined together the evening after the master of the +push-buttons had gone through the final reports of the experiment. + +"Well, Jack, I am going to raise your salary to a hundred a week," the +father announced. + +"On the ground that if you pay me more I might make myself worth more?" +Jack asked respectfully. + +"No, as a matter of business. Whenever any man makes two dollars for the +store, he gets one dollar and I keep the other. That is the basis of my +success--others earning money for me. Your club scheme is a go. As the +accountant works it out, it has brought a profit of two hundred a week." + +"Then I have done something worth while, really?" Jack asked, eagerly, +but half sceptical of such good fortune. + +"Yes. You have created a value. You have used your powers of observation +and your brain. That's the thing that makes a few men employers while the +multitude remains employees." + +"Father! Then I am not quite hopeless?" + +"Hopeless! My son hopeless! No, no! I didn't expect you to learn the +business in a week, or a month, or even a year. Time! time!" + +Nor did John Wingfield, Sr. wish his son to develop too rapidly. Now +that he was so sure of beating threescore and ten, while retaining the +full possession of his faculties, if he followed the rules of longevity, +he would not have welcomed a son who could spring into the saddle at +once. He wanted to ride alone. He who had never shared his power with +anyone! He who had never admitted anyone into even a few shares of +company partnership in his concern! Time! time! The boy would never fall +heir to undivided responsibility before he was forty. John Wingfield, +Sr. was pleased with himself; pleased over a good sign; and he could not +deny that he was pleased at the sudden change in Jack. For he saw Jack's +eyes sparkling into his own; sparkling with comradeship and spontaneous +gratification. Was the boy to be his in thought and purpose, after all? +Yes, of course; yes, inevitably, with the approach of maturity. Gradually +the flightiness of his upbringing would wear off down to the steel, the +hard-tempered, paternal steel. + +"You can scarcely realize what a fight it has been for me until you know +the life I led out in Arizona, getting strong for you and the store," +Jack began. + +"Strong for me! For the store! Yes, Jack!" There was an emphasis on the +subjective personal pronoun--for _him_; for the store! + +The father's face beamed a serene delight. This Jack accepted as the +expression of sympathy and understanding which he had craved. It was to +him an inspiration of fellowship that set the well of his inner being in +overflow and the force of his personality, which the father had felt +uncannily before the mother's picture, became something persuasive in its +radiance rather than something held in leash as a threatening and +volcanic element. Now he could talk as freely and happily of the desert +to his father as to Burleigh and Mathewson. He told of the long rides; +of Firio and Wrath of God. He made the tinkle of Jag Ear's bells heard in +the silence of the dining-room as it was heard in the silences of the +trail. He mentioned how he was afraid to come back after he was strong. + +"Afraid?" queried his father. + +"Yes. But I was coming--coming when, at the top of the pass, I saw Little +Rivers for the first time." + +He sketched his meeting with Mary Ewold; the story of the town and the +story of Jasper Ewold as he knew it, now glancing at his father, now +seeming to see nothing except visualization of the pictures of his story. +The father, looking at the table-cloth, at times playing with his +coffee-spoon, made no comment. + +"And that first night I saw that Jasper Ewold had met me somewhere +before. But--" he went on after going back to the incident of the villa +in his childhood--"that hardly explained. How could he remember the face +of a grown man from the face of a boy? Jasper Ewold! Do you recall ever +having met him? He must have known my mother. Perhaps he knew you, though +why he should not have told me I don't know." + +"Yes, yes--Jasper Ewold," said the father. "I knew him in his younger +days. His was an old family up in Burbridge, the New England town where I +came from. Too much college, too much travel, as I remember, +characterized Jasper Ewold. No settled point of view; and I judge from +what you say that he must have run through his patrimony. One of the ups +and downs of the world, Jack. And he never mentioned that he had met me?" + +"No." + +"Probably a part of that desert notion of freemasonry in keeping pasts a +secret. But why did you stay on after you had recovered from your wound?" +he asked penetratingly, though he was looking again at the bottom of his +coffee-cup. + +"For a reason that comes to a man but once in his life!" Jack answered. + +Had the father looked up--it was a habit of his in listening to any +report to lower his eyes, his face a mask--he might have seen Jack's +face in the supremacy of emotion, as it was when he had called up to +Mary from the canyon and when he had pleaded with her on the pass. But +John Wingfield, Sr. could not mistake the message of a voice vibrating +with all the force of a being let free living over the scene. With the +shadows settling over his eyes, Jack came to her answer and to the +finality of her cry: + +"It's not in the blood!" + +The only sound was a slight tinkle of a spoon against the coffee-cup. +Looking at his father he saw a nervous flutter in his cheeks, his lips +hard set, his brow drawn down; and the rigidity of the profile was such +that Jack was struck by the shiver of a thought that it must have been +like his own as others said it was when he had gripped Pedro Nogales's +arm. But this passed quickly, leaving, however, in its trail an +expression of shock and displeasure. + +"So it was the girl, that kept you--you were in love!" John Wingfield, +Sr. exclaimed, tensely. + +"Yes, I was--I am! You have it, father, the unchangeable all of it! I +face a wall of mystery. 'It's not in the blood!' she said, as if it were +some bar sinister. What could she have meant?" + +In the fever of baffled intensity crying for light and help, he was +sharing the secret that had beset him relentlessly and giving his father +the supreme confidence of his heart. Leaning across the table he grasped +his father's hand, which lay still and unresponsive and singularly cold +for a second. Then John Wingfield, Sr. raised his other hand and patted +the back of Jack's hesitantly, as if uncertain how to deal with this +latest situation that had developed out of his son's old life. Finally he +looked up good-temperedly, deprecatingly. + +"Well, well, Jack, I almost forgot that you are young. It's quite a bad +case!" he said. + +"But what did she mean? Can you guess? I have thought of it so much that +it has meant a thousand wild things!" Jack persisted desperately. + +"Come! come!" the father rallied him. "Time, time!" + +He gripped the hand that was gripping his and swung it free of the table +with a kindly shake. All the effective charm of his personality which he +never wasted, the charm that could develop out of the mask to gain an end +when the period of listening was over, was in play. + +"She excited the opposition of the strength in you," he said. "You ask +what did she mean? It is hard to tell what a woman means, but I judge +that she meant that it was not in her blood to marry a fellow who went +about fighting duels and breaking arms. She would like a more peaceful +sort; and, yes, anything that came into her mind leaped out and you were +mystified by her strange exclamation!" + +"Perhaps. I suppose that may be it. It was just myself, just my devil!" +Jack assented limply. + +"Time! time! All this will pass." + +Jack could not answer that commonplace with one of his own, that it would +not pass; he could only return the pressure when his father, rising and +coming around the table, slipped his arm about the son in a demonstration +of affection which was like opening the gate to a new epoch in their +relations. + +"And you would have killed Leddy! You could have broken that Mexican in +two! I should like to have seen that! So would the ancestor!" said the +father, giving Jack a hug. + +"Yes, but, father, that was the horror of it!" + +"Not the power to do it--no! I mean, Jack, that in this world it is well +to be strong." + +"And you think that I am no longer a weakling?" Jack asked strangely; +"that I carried out your instructions when you sent me away?" + +"Oh, Jack, you remember my farewell remark? It was made in irritation and +suffering. That hurt me. It hurt my pride and all that my work stands +for. It hurt me as much as it hurt you. But if it was a whip, why, then, +it served a purpose, as I wanted it to." + +"Yes, it was a whip!" said Jack, mechanically. + +"Then all ends well--all quits! And, Jack," he swung Jack, who was +unresisting but unresponsive, around facing him, "if you ever have any +doubts or any questions to ask bring them to me, won't you?" + +"Yes." + +"And, Jack, a hundred a week to-morrow! You're all right, Jack!" And he +gave Jack a slap on the back as they left the dining-room. + + + + +XXIX + +A MEETING ON THE AVENUE TRAIL + + +Light sang in the veins and thoughts of a city. Light cleansed the +streets of vapors. Light, the light of the sunshine of late May, made a +far different New York from the New York under a blanket of March mist of +the day of Jack's arrival. The lantern of the Metropolitan tower was all +blazing gold; Diana's scarf trailed behind her in the shimmering abandon +of her _honi soit qui mal y pense_ chases on Olympus; Admiral Farragut +grew urbane, sailing on a smooth sea with victory won; General Sherman in +his over-brightness, guided by his guardian lady, still gallantly pursued +the tone of time in the direction of the old City Hall and Trinity; and +the marble façade of the new library seemed no less at home than under an +Agean sky. An ecstasy, blinding eyes to blemishes, set critical faculties +to rejoicing over perfections. They graciously overlooked the blotch of +red brick hiding the body of St. Patrick's on the way up town in +gratitude for twin spires against the sky. + +Enveloping radiance gilded the sharp lines of skyscrapers and swept away +the shadows in the chasms between them. It pointed the bows of busy tugs +with sprays of diamonds falling on the molten surface of rivers and bays. +It called up paeans of childish trebles from tenement alleys; slipped +into the sickrooms of private houses, delaying the advent of crape on +the door; and played across the rows of beds in the public wards of +hospitals in the primal democracy of the gift of ozone to the earth. + +The milky glass roof of the central court of the Wingfield store acted as +a screen to the omnipotent visitor, but he set unfiltered patches of +delight in the aisles and on the counters near the walls. Mamie Devore +and Burleigh and Peter Mortimer and many other clerks and employees asked +if this were like a desert day and Jack said that it was. He longed to be +free of all roofs and feel the geniality of the hearth-fire of the +planetary system penetrating through his coat, his skin, his flesh, into +his very being. Why not close the store and make a holiday for everybody? +he asked himself; only to be amazed, on second thought, at such a +preposterous suggestion from a hundred-dollar-a-week author of created +profits in the business. He was almost on the point of acting on another +impulse, which was that he and his father break away into the country in +a touring car, not knowing where they were going to stop until hunger +overtook an inn. This, too, he dismissed as a milder form of the same +demoralizing order of heresy, bound to be disturbing to the new filial +relations springing from the night when he had told his desert story over +the coffee, which, contrary to the conventional idea of an exchange of +confidences clearing the mind of a burden, had only provoked more +restlessness. + +At least, he would fare forth for a while on the broad asphalt trail that +begins under the arch of the little park and runs to the entrance of the +great park. Even as the desert has its spell of overawing stillness in an +uninhabited land, so this trail had its spell of congested human +movement in the heart of habitations. A broad, luminous blade lay across +the west side of the street and left the other in shade; and all the +world that loved sunshine and had no errands on the east side kept to the +west side. There was a communism of inspiration abroad. It was a +conqueror's triumph just to be alive and feel the pulse-beat of the +throng. The very over-developed sensitiveness of city nerves became +something to be thankful for in providing the capacity for keener +enjoyment as compensation for the capacity for keener pain. + +Womankind was in spring plumage. The mere consciousness of the value of +light to their costumes, no less than the elixir in their nostrils, gave +vivacity to their features. As usual, Jack was seeing them only to see +Mary. The creation of no _couturier_ could bear rivalry with the garb in +which his imagination clothed her. He found himself suddenly engrossed in +a particular exhibit of fashion's parade a little distance ahead and +going in the same direction as himself, a young woman in a simplicity of +gown to which her carriage gave the final touch of art. Her steps had a +long-limbed freedom and lightness, with which his own steps ran in a +rhythm to the music of some past association. The thrall of a likeness, +which more and more possessed him, made him hasten to draw near for a +more satisfying glimpse. + +The young woman turned her head to glance into a shop-window and then +there could be no mistaking that cheek and chin and the peculiar relation +of the long lashes to the brow. It was the profile whose imprint had +become indelible on his mind when he had come round an elbow of rock on +Galeria. The Jack of wild, tumultuous pleading who had parted from Mary +Ewold on the pass became a Jack elate with the glad, swimming joy of May +sunshine at seeing and speaking to her again. + +"Mary! Mary!" he cried. "My, but you've become a grand swell!" he +breathed delectably, with a fuller vision of her. + +"Jack!" + +There was a nervous twitching of her lips. He saw her eyes at first in a +blaze of surprise and wonder; then change to the baffling sparkle, hiding +their depths, of the slivers of glass on the old barrier. His smile and +hers in unspoken understanding said that two comrades of another trail +had met on the Avenue trail. There had not been any Leddy; there had not +been any scene on the pass. They were back to the conditions of the +protocol he had established when they started out from the porch of the +Ewold bungalow in the airiest possible mood to look at a parcel of land. + +"And you also have become a grand swell!" she said. "Did you expect that +I should be in a gray riding-habit? Certainly I didn't expect to see you +in chaps and spurs." + +It was brittle business; but with a common resource in play they managed +it well. And there they were walking together, noted by passers-by for +their youth and beaming oblivion to everything but themselves. + +"How long have you been here?" Jack asked. + +"Two weeks," she answered. + +Two weeks in the same town and this his first glimpse of her! What a maze +New York was! What a desert waste of two weeks! + +"Yes. Our decision to come was rather abrupt," she explained. "A sudden +call to travel came to father; came to him like an inspiration that he +could not resist. And how happily he has entered into the spirit of the +city again! It has made him young." + +"And it has been quite like martyrdom for you!" Jack put in, teasingly. + +"Terrible! Sackcloth and ashes!" + +"I see you are wearing the sackcloth." + +She laughed outright, with a downward glance at her gown, at once in +guilt and appreciation. + +"Another whim of father's." + +"The Doge a scapegoat for fashion!" + +"Not a scapegoat--a partisan! He insisted on going to one of the best +places. Could I resist? I wanted to see how I felt, how I appeared." + +"The veritable curiosity of a Japanese woman getting her first +foreign gown!" + +"Thank you! That is another excuse." + +"And it certainly looks very well," Jack declared. + +"Do you think so?" Mary flushed slightly. She could not help being +pleased. "After six years, could I drop back into the old chrysalis +naturally, without awkwardness? Did I still know how to wear a fine +gown?"--and the gift for it, as anyone could see, was born in her as +surely as certain gifts were born in Jack. "But," she added, severely, "I +have only two--just two! And the cost of them! It will take the whole +orange crop!" + +Just two, when she ought to have twenty! When he would have liked to put +all the Paris models in the store in a wagon and, himself driving, +deliver them at her door! + +"Having succumbed to temptation, I enjoy it out of sheer respect to +the orange crop," Mary said; "and yes, because I like beautiful +gowns; wickedly, truly like them! And I like the Avenue, just as I +like the desert." + +And all that she liked he could give her! And all that he could give she +had stubbornly refused! + +The liveliness of her expression, the many shades of meaning that she +could set capering with a glance, were now as the personal reflection of +the day and the scene. Their gait was a sauntering one. They went as far +as the Park and started back, as if all the time of the desert were +theirs. They stopped to look into the windows of shops of every kind, +from antiques to millinery. When he saw a hat which he declared, after +deliberate, critical appraisement, would surely become her, she asked +boldly if it were better than the one she wore. + +"I mean an extra hat; that one more hat would have the good fortune of +becoming you!" + +"Almost a real contribution to the literature of compliments!" she +answered, unruffled. + +He thought, too, that she ought to have a certain necklace in a +jeweler's window. + +"To wear over my riding-habit or when I am digging in the flower beds?" +she inquired. + +When they passed a display of luxuries for masculine adornment, she found +a further retort in suggesting that he ought to have a certain giddy +fancy waistcoat. He complimented her on her taste, bought the waistcoat +and, going to the rear of the shop, returned wearing it with a +momentarily appreciated show of jaunty swagger. + +"Why be on the Avenue and not buy?" he queried, enthusing with a new +idea. + +Jim Galway should have a cowpuncher hat as a present. The style of band +was a subject of discussion calling on their discriminative views of +Jim's personal tastes. This led to thoughts of others in Little Rivers +who would appreciate gifts, and to the purchase of toys for the children, +a positive revel. When they were through it was well past noon and they +were in the region of the restaurants. The sun in majestic altitude swept +the breadth of the Avenue. + +"Shall we lunch--yes, and in the Best Swell Place?" he asked, as if it +were a matter-of-course part of the programme, while inwardly he was +stirred with the fear of her refusal. He felt that any minute she might +leave him, with no alternative but another farewell. She hesitated a +moment seriously, then accepted blithely and naturally. + +"Yes, the Best Swell Place--let's! Who isn't entitled to the Best Swell +Place occasionally?" + +After an argument in comparison of famous names, they were convinced that +they had really chosen the Best Swell Place by the fact of a vacant table +at a window looking out over a box hedge. Jack told the waiter that the +assemblage was not an autocracy, but a parliament which, with a full +quorum present, would enjoy in discursive appreciation selections from +the broad range of a bill of fare. + +A luncheon for two narrows a walk on the Avenue, where you are part of a +crowd, into restricted intimacy. He was feeling the intoxication of her +inscrutability, catching gleams of the wealth that lay beyond it, across +the limited breadth of a table-cloth. He forgot about the unspoken +conditions in a sally which was like putting his hand on top of the +barrier for an impetuous leap across. + +"I wrote you stacks of letters," he said, "and you never sent me one +little line; not even 'Yours received and contents noted!'" + +In a flash all intimacy vanished. She might have been at the other end of +the dining-room in somebody else's party nodding to him as to an +acquaintance. Her answer was delayed about as long as it takes to lift an +arrow from a quiver and notch it in a bowstring. + +"A novel may be very interesting, but that does not mean that I write to +the author!" + +He imagined her going through the meal in polite silence or in measured +commonplaces, turning the happy parliament into a frigid Gothic ceremony. +Why had he not kept in mind that sufficient to the hour is the pleasure +of it? Famished for her companionship, a foolhardy impulse of temptation +had risked its loss. The waiter set something before them and softly +withdrew. Jack signaled the unspoken humility of being a disciplined +soldier at attention on his side of the barrier and Mary signaled a +trifle superior but good-natured acceptance of his apology and promise of +better conduct. + +They were back to the truce of nonsense, apostrophizing the cooking of +the Best Swell Place, setting exclamations to their glimpses of people +passing in the street. For they had never wanted for words when talking +across the barrier; there was paucity of conversation only when he +threatened an invasion. + +While a New Yorker meeting a former New Yorker on the desert might have +little to tell not already chronicled in the press, a Little Riversite +meeting a former Little Riversite in New York had a family budget of +news. How high were Jack's hedges? How were the Doge's date-trees? How +was this and that person coming on? Listening to all the details, Jack +felt homesickness creeping over him, and he clung fondly to every one of +the swiftly-passing moments. By no reference and by no inference had she +suggested that there was ever any likelihood of his meeting or hearing +from her again. A thread of old relations had been spun only to be +snapped. She was, indeed, as a visitation developed out of the sunshine +of the Avenue, into which she would dissolve. + +"I was to meet father at a bookstore at three," she said, finally, +as she rose. + +"Inevitably he would be there or in a gallery," said Jack. + +"He has done the galleries. This is the day for buying books--still +more books! I suppose he is spending the orange crop again. If you keep +on spending the same orange crop, just where do you arrive in the maze +of finance?" + +"I should not like to say without consulting the head book-keeper or, at +least, Peter Mortimer!" + +They were coming out of the door of the Best Swell Place, now. A word and +she would be going in one direction and he in another. How easily she +might speak that word, with an electric and final glance of good-will! + +"But I must say howdy do to the Doge!" he urged. "I should like to +see him buying books. What a prodigal debauch of learning! I cannot +miss that!" + +"It is not far," she said, prolonging Paradise for him. + +A few blocks below Forty-second Street they turned into a cross street +which was the same that led to the Wingfield house; and halfway to +Madison Avenue they entered a bookstore. The light from low windows +spreading across the counters blended with the light from high windows at +the back, and here, on a platform at the head of the stairs, before a big +table sat the Doge, in the majesty of a great patron of literature, with +a clerk standing by in deftly-urging attentiveness. Mary and Jack paused +at the foot of the stairs watching him. Gently he was fingering an old +octavo; fingering it as one would who was between the hyperionic desire +of possession and a fear that a bank account owed its solvency to keeping +the amounts of deposits somewhere in proportion to the amount of +withdrawals. + +"No, sir! No more, you tempter!" he declared. "No more, you unctuous +ambassador from the court of Gutenberg! Why, this one would take enough +alfalfa at the present price a ton to bury your store under a haycock as +high as the Roman Pantheon!" + +The Doge rose and picked up his broad-brimmed hat, prepared to fly from +danger. He would not expose himself a moment longer to the wiles of +that clerk. + +"I'll wait for my daughter down there in the safe and economical environs +of the popular novels fresh from the press!" he said. + +Turning to descend the stairs he saw the waiting pair. He stopped stock +still and threw up his hand in a gesture of astonishment. His glance +hovered back and forth between Jack's face and Mary's, and then met +Jack's look with something of the same challenge and confidence of his +farewell on the road out of Little Rivers, and in an outburst of genial +raillery he began the conversation where he had left off with the final +call of his personal good wishes and his salutations to certain landmarks +of New York. + +"Well, well, Sir Chaps! I saw Sorolla in his new style; very different +from the academics of the young Sorolla. He has found his mission and let +himself go. No wonder people flocked to his exhibitions on misty days! +The trouble with our artists is that they are afraid to let themselves +go, afraid to be popular. They think technique is the thing, when it is +only the tool. Why, confound it all! all the great masters were popular +in their day--Venetian, Florentine, Flemish! Confound it, yes! And not +one Velasquez"--evidently he was talking partly to get his bearings after +his shock at seeing Jack--"no, not one Velasquez in the Metropolitan! I +go home without seeing a Velasquez. They have the Catherine Lorillard +Wolfe collection, thousands of square yards of it, and yes, cheer up! +Thank heaven, they have some great Americans, Inness and Martin and Homer +and our exile Whistler, who annexed Japan, and our Sargent, born in +Florence. And I did see the Metropolitan tower. I take off my hat, my +broad-brimmed hat, wishing that it were as big as a carter's umbrella, to +that tower. I hate to think it an accident of chaos like the Grand +Canyon. I rather like to think of it as majestic promise." + +The Doge had talked so fast that he was almost out of breath. He was +ready to yield the floor to Jack. + +"I kissed my hand to Diana for you!" said Jack. "And what do you think? +The lady in answer shook out her scarf and something white and small +fluttered down. I picked it up. It was a note." + +"Did you open that note?" asked the Doge in haughty suspicion. + +"Naturally." + +"Wasn't it marked personal for me?"--this in fine simulation of +indignation. + +"Without address!" + +"I am chagrined and surprised at Diana," said the Doge ruefully. "It's +the effect of city association. As a matter of course, she ought to have +given it to Mercury, or at least to one of the Centaurs, considering all +the horseshows that have been held under her skipping toes! Well, what +did she say? Being a woman of action she was brief. What did she say?" + +"It was in the nature of a general personal complaint. Her costume is in +need of repair; it is flaking disgracefully. She said that if you had not +forsaken your love of the plastic for love of the graphic arts you would +long ago have stolen a little gold off the Eternal Painter's palette, +just to clothe her decently for the sake of her own self-respect--the +town having set her so high that its sense of propriety was quite safe." + +"I stand convicted of neglect," said the Doge, coming down to the floor +of the store. "I will shoot her a bundle of gold leaf from the top of the +pass on a ray of evening sunshine." + +There, he gave Jack a pat on the shoulder; a hasty, playful, almost +affectionate demonstration, and broke off with a shout of: + +"Persiflage, sir, persiflage!" + +"It is manna to me!" declared Jack, in the fulness and sweetness of the +sensation of the atmosphere of Little Rivers reproduced in New York. + +"And not a Velasquez in the Metropolitan!" mused the Doge, bustling along +the aisle hurriedly. "Well, Mary, we have errands to do. There is no time +to spare." + +They were at the door, Jack in wistful insistence, hungry for their +companionship, and the Doge and Mary in common hesitancy for a phrase +before parting from him. He was ahead of the phrase. + +"But there is a Velasquez, one of the greatest of Velasquezes, just a few +steps from here! It would take only a minute to see it." + +"A Velasquez a few steps from here!" cried the Doge. "Where? Be exact, +before I let my hopes rise too high." + +"The subject is an ancestor of mine. My father has it." + +Jack had looked in the direction of the Wingfield house on the Madison +Avenue corner as he spoke, and the Doge had followed his glance. The +eagerness passed from the Doge's face, but not its intensity. That was +transmuted into something staring and hard. + +"A very great Velasquez!" Jack repeated. + +"My _amour propre_!" the Doge said, in whispered abstraction, using the +French which so exactly expresses the rightness of an inner feeling that +will not let one do a thing however much he may wish to. Then a wave of +confusion passed over his face, evidently at the echo of his thoughts in +the form of words come unwittingly from his lips. He tried to retrieve +his exclamation in an effort at the forensic: "The _amour propre_ of any +American is hurt by the thought that he must go to a private gallery to +see a Velasquez in the greatest city of the land!" + +But it was a lame explanation. Clearly, some old antipathy had been +aroused in Jasper Ewold; and it made him hesitate to enter the big red +brick house on the corner. + +"And we have a wonderful Sargent, too, a Sargent of my mother!" Jack +proceeded. + +"Yes, yes!" said the Doge, and eagerness returned; a strange, moving +eagerness that seemed to come from the same depths as the exclamation +that had arrested his acceptance of the invitation at the outset. It held +the monosyllables like drops of water trembling before they fell. + +"I should like you to see them both," said Jack. + +"Yes," said the Doge, the word an echo rather than consent. + +"There is no one at home at this hour; you will have all the time you can +spare for the pictures." + +In the ascendency of his ardor to retain the joy of their company and in +the perplexity of mystery injected afresh into his relations with Mary, +Jack was hardly conscious that his urging was only another way of saying +that his father was absent. And Mary had not thrown her influence either +for or against going. She was watching her father, curiously and +penetratingly, as if trying to understand the source of the emotion that +he was seeking to control. + +"Why, in that case," exclaimed the Doge, "why, you see," he went on to +explain, "we desert folk, though we are used to galleries, are a little +diffident about meeting people who live in big mansions. I mean, people +who have not had the desert training that you have had, Sir Chaps. If it +is only a matter of looking at a picture without any social +responsibilities, and that picture a Velasquez, why, we must take the +time, mustn't we, Mary?" + +"Yes," Mary assented. + +With Mary on one side of him and Jack on the other, the Doge was walking +heavily and slowly. + +"At what period of Velasquez's career?" he asked, vacantly. + +"When he was young and the subject was middle-aged, a Northerner, with +fair hair and lean muscles under a skin bronzed by the tropics, and the +unquenchable fire of youth in his eyes." + +"That ought to be a good Velasquez," said the Doge. + +At the bottom step of the flight up to the entrance to the house he +hesitated. He appeared to be very old and very tired. His face had gone +quite pale. The lids hung heavily over his eyes. Jack dropped back in +alarm to assist him; but his color quickly returned and the old challenge +was in his glance as it met Jack's. + +"Now for your Velasquez!" he exclaimed, with calm vigor. + +Once in the hall, Jack stood to one side of the door of the drawing-room +to let the Doge enter first. As the old man crossed the threshold his +hands were clasped behind him; his shoulders had fallen together, not in +weariness now, but in a kind of dazed, studious expectancy; and he faced +the "Portrait of a Lady." + +"This is the Sargent," he said slowly, his lips barely opening in +mechanical and absent comment. "A good Sargent!" + +He was as still as the picture in his bowed and earnest gaze into her +eyes, except for an occasional nervous movement of the fingers. All the +surroundings seemed to melt into a neutral background for the two; there +was nothing else in the room but the scholar in his age and the "Portrait +of a Lady" in her youth. Jack saw the Doge's face, its many lines +expressive as through a mist of time, its hills and valleys in the sun +and the shadow of emotions as variable as the mother's in life, speaking +personal resentment and wrong, admiration and tenderness, grievous +inquiry and philosophy, while the only answer was the radiant, "I give! I +give!" Finally, the Doge tightened the clasp of his hands, with a quiver +of his frame, as he turned toward Jack. + +"Yes, a really great Sargent--a Sargent of supreme inspiration!" he said. +"Now for your Velasquez!" + +Before the portrait of the first John Wingfield, Jasper Ewold's head and +shoulders recovered their sturdiness of outline and his features lighted +with the veritable touch of the brush of genius itself. He was the +connoisseur who understands, whose joy of possession is in the very +tingling depths of born instinct, rich with training and ripened by time. +It was superior to any bought title of ownership. In the presence of a +supreme standard, every shade of discriminative criticism and appraisal +became threads woven into a fabric of rapture. + +"Mary," he said, his voice having the mellowness of age in its deep +appreciation, "Mary, wherever you saw this--skied or put in a corner +among a thousand other pictures, in a warehouse, a Quaker meetinghouse, +anywhere, whatever its surroundings--should you feel its compelling +power? Should you pause, incapable of analysis, in a spell of tribute?" + +"Yes, I don't think I am quite so insensible as not to realize the +greatness of this portrait, or that of the Sargent, either," she +answered. + +"Good! I am glad, Mary, very glad. You do me credit!" + +Now he turned from the artist to the subject. He divined the kind of man +the first John Wingfield was; divined it almost as written in the +chronicle which Jack kept in his room in hallowed fraternity. Only he +bore hard on the unremitting, callous, impulsive aggressiveness of a +fierce past age, with its survival of the fittest swordsmen and +buccaneers, which had no heroes for him except the painters, poets, and +thinkers it gave to posterity. + +"Fire-eating old devil! And the best thing he ever did, the best luck he +ever had, was attracting the attention of a young artist. It's +immortality just to be painted by Velasquez; the only immortality many a +famous man of the time will ever know!" + +He looked away from the picture to Jack's face keenly and back at the +picture and back at Jack and back at the picture once more. + +"Yes, yes!" he mused, corroboratively; and Jack realized that at the same +time Mary had been making the same comparison. + +"Very like!" she said, with that impersonal exactness which to him was +always the most exasperating of her phases. + +Then the Doge returned to the Sargent. He was standing nearer the +picture, but in the same position as before, while Jack and Mary waited +silently on his pleasure; and all three were as motionless as the +furniture, had it not been for the nervous twitching of the Doge's +fingers. He seemed unconscious of the passing of time; a man in a maze of +absorption with his thoughts. Jack was strangely affected. His brain was +marking time at the double-quick of fruitless energy. He felt the +atmosphere of the room surcharged with the hostility of the unknown. He +was gathering a multitude of impressions which only contributed more +chaos to chaos. His sensibilities abnormally alive to every sound, he +heard the outside door opened with a latch-key; he heard steps in the +hall, and saw his father's figure in the doorway of the drawing-room. + +John Wingfield, Sr. appeared with a smile that was gone in a flash. +His face went stark and gray as stone under a frown from the Doge to +Jack; and with an exclamation of the half-articulate "Oh!" of +confusion, he withdrew. + +Jack looked around to see the Doge half turned in the direction of the +door, gripping the back of a chair to steady himself, while Mary was +regarding this sudden change in him in answer to the stricken change in +the intruder with some of Jack's own paralysis of wonder. The Doge was +the first to speak. He fairly rocked the chair as he jerked his hand free +of its support, while he shook with a palsy which was not that of fear, +for there was raging color in his cheeks. The physical power of his great +figure was revealed. For the first time Jack was able to think of him as +capable of towering militancy. His anger gradually yielded to the +pressure of will and the situation. At length he said faintly, with a +kind of abyssmal courtesy: + +"Thank you, Sir Chaps! Now I shall not go back to the desert without +having seen a Velasquez. Thank you! And we must be going." + +Jack had an impulse, worthy of the tempestuous buccaneer of the picture, +to call to his father to come down; and then to bar the front door until +his burning questions were heard. The still light in Mary's eyes would +have checked him, if not his own proper second thought and the fear of +precipitating an ungovernable crisis. There had been shadows, real +shadows, he was thinking wildly; they were not born of desert imaginings; +and out of the quandary of his anguish came only the desire not to part +from the Doge and Mary in this fashion! No, not until in some way +equilibrium of mind was restored. + +Though he knew that they did not expect or want his company, he went +out into the street with them. He would go as far as their hotel, he +remarked, in the bravery of simulated ease. The three were walking in +the same relative positions that they had before, with the Doge's bulk +hiding Mary from Jack's sight. The Doge set a rapid pace, as if under +the impetus of a desire to escape from the neighborhood of the +Wingfield house. + +"Well, Sir Chaps," he said, after a while, "it will be a long time before +the provincials come to New York again. Why, in this New York you can +spend a patrimony in two weeks"--this with an affected amusement at his +own extravagance--"and I've pretty nearly done it. So we fly from +temptation. Yes, Mary, we will take the morning train." + +"The morning train!" Mary exclaimed; and her surprise left no doubt that +her father's decision was new to her. Was it due to an exchange of +glances between a stark face and a face crimson with indignation which +Jack had already connected with the working out of his own destiny? + +"Yes, that is better than spending our orange crop again!" she hastened +to add, with reassuring humor. "I'm fairly homesick for our oasis." + +"We've had our fill of the big city," said the Doge, feelingly, "and we +are away to our little city of peace where we turned our pasts under with +the first furrows in the virgin soil." + +Then silence. The truce of nonsense was dead. Persiflage was dead. Jack +was as a mute stranger keeping at their side unasked, while the only +glimpse he had of Mary was the edge of her hat and her fingertips on her +father's sleeve. Silence, which he felt was as hard for them as for him, +lasted until they were at the entrance to the quiet little hotel on a +cross-town street where the Ewolds were staying; and having the first +glimpse of Mary's eyes since they had started, he found nothing +fathomable in them except unmistakable relief that the walk was over. + +"Thank you for showing me the Velasquez," said the Doge. + +"Thank you, Jack," Mary added. + +Both spoke in a manner that signaled to him the end of all things, but an +end which he could not accept. + +"I--I--oh, there are a thousand questions I--" he broke out, desperately. + +The muscles of his face tightened. Unconsciously he had leaned forward +toward the Doge in his intensity, and his attitude had become that of the +Wingfield of the portrait. A lower note of command ran through the +misery of his tone. + +Jasper Ewold stared at him in a second of scrutiny, at once burningly +analytic and reflective. Then he flushed as he had at sight of the figure +in the drawing-room doorway. His look plainly said: "How much longer do +you mean to harass me?" as if Jack's features were now no less the image +of a hard and bitter memory than those of John Wingfield, Sr. Jack drew +back hurt and dumb, in face of this anger turned on himself. At length, +the Doge mustered his rallying smile, which was that of a man who carries +into his declining years a burden of disappointments which he fears may, +in his bad moments, get the better of his personal system of philosophy. + +"Come, Mary!" he said, drawing his arm through hers. He became, in an +evident effort, a grand, old-fashioned gentleman, making a bow of +farewell. "Come, Mary, it's an early train and we have our packing +yet to do." + +This time it was, indeed, dismissal; such a dismissal with polite urgency +as a venerable cabinet minister might give an importunate caller who is +slow to go. He and Mary started into the hotel. But he halted in the +doorway to say over his shoulder, with something of his old-time cheer, +which had the same element of pity as his leave-taking on the trail +outside of Little Rivers: + +"Luck, Sir Chaps!" + +"Luck!" Mary called in the same strained tone that she had called to Jack +when he went over the pass on his way to New York, the tone that was like +the click of a key in the lock of a gate. + + + + +XXX + +WITH THE PHANTOMS + + +As Jack left the hotel entrance he was walking in the treadmill mechanics +of a prisoner pacing a cell, without note of his surroundings, except of +dim, moving figures with which he must avoid collision. The phantoms of +his boyhood, bulky and stiflingly near, had a monstrous reality, yet the +ghostly intangibility that mocked his sword-thrusts of tortured inquiry. +At length his distraction centered on the fact that he and his father +were to dine alone that evening. + +They dined alone regularly every Wednesday, when Jack made a report of +his progress and received a lesson in business. It was at the last +council of this kind that John Wingfield, Sr. had bidden his son to +bring all questions and doubts to him. Now Jack hailed the weekly +function as having all the promise of relief of a surgeon's knife. Fully +and candidly he would unburden himself of every question beating in his +brain and every doubt assailing his spirit. + +By the time that he was mounting the steps of the house his growing +impatience could no longer bear even the delay of waiting on dinner. When +he entered the hall he was the driven creature of an impelling desire +that must be satisfied immediately. + +"Will you ask my father if he will see me at once?" he said to the +butler. + +"Mr. Wingfield left word that he had to go into the country for the +night," answered the butler. "I am sorry, sir," he added confusedly, in +view of the blank disappointment with which the information was received. + +In dreary state Jack dined by himself in the big dining-room, leaving the +food almost untouched. At intervals he was roused to a sense of his +presence at table by the servant's question if he should bring another +course. Without waiting for the last one, he went downstairs to the +drawing-room, and standing near the "Portrait of a Lady," again poured +out his questions, receiving the old answer of "I give! I give!" which +meant, he knew, that she had given all of herself to him. Saying after +saying of hers raced through his mind without throwing light on the +mystery, which had the uncanniness of a conspiracy against him. + +And after his mother, Mary had influenced him more than any other person. +She had brought life to the seeds which his mother had planted in his +nature. That new life could not die, but without her it could not +flourish. Her cry of "It's not in the blood!" again came echoing to his +ears. What had she meant? The question sent him to the Ewolds' hotel; it +sent this note up to her room: + +"MARY: + +"In behalf of old desert comradeship, if I were in trouble wouldn't you +help me all you could? If I were in darkness and you could give me light, +would you refuse? Won't you see me for a few moments, if I promise to +keep to my side of the barrier which you have raised between us? I will +wait here in the lobby a long time, hoping that you will. + +"JACK." + +"All the light I have to give. I also am in darkness," came the answer in +a nervous, impulsive hand across a sheet of paper; and soon Mary herself +appeared from the elevator, not in the fashion of the Avenue, but in +simple gray coat and skirt, such as she wore at home. She greeted him in +a startled, half-fearful manner, as if her presence were due to the +impulsion of duty rather than choice. + +"Shall we walk?" she asked, turning toward the door in the welcome of +movement as a steadying influence in her evident emotion. + +There they were in the old rhythm of step of Little Rivers companionship +on a cross-town street. He saw that the costly hat that he had selected +for her in the display of a shop-window after all was not the equal of +the plain model with a fetching turn to the brim and a single militant +feather, which she wore that evening. The light feather boa around her +neck on account of the cool night air seemed particularly becoming. He +was near, very near, her, so near that their elbows touched; but the +nearness was like that of a picture out of a frame which has come to life +and may step back into cold canvas at any moment. Oh, it was hard, in the +might of his love for her, not to forget everything else and cry out +another declaration, as he had from the canyon! But her face was very +still. She was waiting for him to begin, while her fingers were playing +nervously with the tip of her boa. + +"I must be frank, very frank," he said. + +"Yes, Jack, or why speak at all?" + +"From the night of my arrival in Little Rivers, when the Doge at once +recognized who I was without telling me, I saw that, under his politeness +and his kindness, he was hostile to my presence in Little Rivers." + +"Yes, I think that in a way he was," she answered. + +"I was conscious that something out of the past was between him and me, +and that it included you in a subtle influence that nothing could change. +And this afternoon, while you were at the house and my father came to the +drawing-room door, I could not help noticing how the Doge was overcome. +You noticed it, too?" + +"Yes, I never saw my father in such anger before. It seemed to me that +he could have struck down that man in the doorway!" There was a +perceptible shudder, but she did not look up, her glance remaining level +with the flags. + +"And on the pass you said, 'It's not in the blood!'" he continued. "Yes, +almost in terror you said it, as if it spelled an impassable gulf between +us. Why? why? Mary, haven't I a right to know?" + +As he broke off passionately with this appeal, which was as the focus of +all the fears that had tormented him, they were immediately under the +light of a street lamp. She turned her head toward him resolutely, in the +mustering of her forces for an ordeal. Her face was pale, but there was +an effort at the old smile of comradeship. + +"Yes, as I said, the little light that I have is yours, Jack," she began. +"But there is not much. It is, perhaps, more what I feel than what I +know that has influenced me. All that my father has ever said about you +and your father and your relations to us was the night after I returned +from the pass ahead of you, when you had descended into the canyon to +frighten me with the risk you were taking." + +"I did not mean to frighten you!" he interjected. "I only followed +an impulse." + +"Yes, one of your impulses, Jack," she remarked, comprehendingly. "Father +and I have been so much together--indeed, we have never been apart--that +there is more than filial sympathy of feeling between us. There is +something akin to telepathy. We often divine each other's thoughts. I +think that he understood what had taken place between us on the pass; +that you had brought on some sort of a crisis in our relations. It was +then that he told me who you were, as you know. Then he talked of you and +your father--you still wish to hear?" + +"Yes!" + +"And you will listen in silence?" + +"Yes!" + +"I will grant your defence of your father, but you will not argue? I am +giving what you ask, in justice to myself; I am giving my reasons, my +feelings." + +"No, I will not argue." + +Their tones were so low that a passer-by would have hardly been conscious +that they were talking; but had the passer-by caught the pitch he might +have hazarded many guesses, every one serious. + +"Then, I will try to make clear all that father said. You were the image +of your father--a smile and a square chin. The smile could charm and the +chin could kill. He liked you for some things that seemed to spring from +another source, as he called it; but these would vanish and in the end +you would be like your father, as he knew when he saw you break Pedro +Nogales's arm. And you gloried in your strength; as you told me on the +pass and as I saw for myself in the duel. And to you, father said, +victory was the supreme guerdon of life. It ran triumphant and +inextinguishable in your veins." + +"I--" he said, chokingly; but remembered his promise not to argue. + +"Any opposition, any refusal excited your will to overcome it in the +sheer joy of the exercise of your strength. This had been your father's +story in everything, even in his marriage." + +She paused. + +"There is nothing more? No further light on his old relations with my +father and mother?" he asked. + +"Only a single exclamation, 'It's not in the blood for you to believe in +Jack Wingfield, Mary!' And after that he turned silent and moody. I +pressed him for reasons. He answered that he had told me enough. I had to +live my own life; the rest I must decide for myself. I knew that I was +hurting him sorely. I was striking home into that past about which he +would never speak, though I know it still causes him many days of +suffering." + +"But on the desert there is no past!" Jack exclaimed. + +"Yes, there is, Jack. There is your own heart. On the desert your past is +not shared with others. But to-night, after I received your note, I did +try, for the second time in my life, to share father's. I told him your +request; I spoke of the scene in your drawing-room; I asked him what it +meant. He answered that you must learn from one nearer you than he was, +and that he never wanted to think of that scene again." + +It was she who had chosen the direction at the street corners. They were +returning now toward the hotel. The fingers which had been playing with +the boa had crumpled the end of it into a ball, which they were gripping +so tightly that the knuckles were little white spots set in a blood-red +background. She was suffering, but determined to leave nothing unsaid. + +"Jack, when I said 'It's not in the blood' I was more than repeating my +father's words. They expressed a truth for me. I meant not only rebellion +against what was in you, but against the thing that was in me. Why, Jack, +I do not even remember my own mother! I have only heard father speak of +her sadly when I was much younger. Of late years he has not mentioned +her. He and the desert and the garden are all I have and all I know; and +probably, yes--probably I'm a strange sort of being. But what I am, I am; +and to that I will be true. Father went to the desert to save my life; +and broken-hearted, old, he is greater to me than the sum of any worldly +success. And, Jack, you forget--riding over the pass so grandly with your +impulses, as if to want a thing is to get it--you--but we have had good +times together; and, as I said, you belong on one side of the pass and I +on the other. This and much else, which one cannot see or define, is +between us. From the day you came, some forbidding influence seemed at +work in my father's life and mine; and when you had gone another man, +with your features and your smile, came to Little Rivers; one that I +understand even less than you!" + +Jack recalled the references to the new rancher by Bob Worther on the day +of his departure for the East and, later, in Jim Galway's letter. But he +did not speak. Something more compelling than his promise was keeping him +silent: her own apprehension, with its story of phantoms of her own. + +"And yesterday I saw your father's face," she went on, "as it appeared in +the doorway for a second before he saw my father and was struck with +fear, and how like yours it was--but more like John Prather's. And the +high-sounding preachments about the poverty that might go with fine gowns +became real to me. They were not banal at all. They were simple truth, +free of rhetoric and pretence. I knew that my cry of 'It's not in the +blood' was as true in me as any impulse of yours ever could be in you!" + +To the end, under the dominance of her will, she had not faltered; and +with the end she looked up with a faint smile of stoicism and an +invincible flame in her eyes. Anything that he might be able to say would +be as flashing a blade in and out of a blaze. She had become superior to +the resources of barrier or armor, confident of a self whose richness he +realized anew. He saw and felt the tempered fineness of her as something +that would mind neither siege nor prayer. + +"I am not afraid," she said, "and I know that you are not. It is all +right!" Then she added, with a desperate coolness, but still clasping the +boa rigidly: "The hotel is only a block away, and to-morrow you will be +back in the store and I shall soon be on my side of the pass." + +This was her right word for a situation when his temples were throbbing, +harking back, with time's reversal of conditions, to a situation after +the duel in the _arroyo_ was over and he had used the right word when her +temples were throbbing and her hands splashed. If retribution were her +object, she had repaid in nerve-twitch of torture for nerve-twitch of +torture. The picture that had been alive and out of its frame was back on +cold canvas. Even the girl he had known across the barrier, even the girl +in armor, seemed more kindly. But one can talk, even to a picture in a +frame; at least, Jack could, with wistful persistence. + +"You don't mind if I tell you again--if I speak my one continuous thought +aloud again?" he asked. "Mary, I love you! I love you in such a way that +I"--with a faint bravery of humor as he saw danger signals--"I would +build mud-houses all day for you to knock to pieces!" + +"Foolish business, Jack!" she answered. + +"Or drag a plow." + +"Very hard work!" + +"Or set out to tunnel a mountain single-handed, with hammer and chisel." + +"I think you would find it dreadfully monotonous at the end of the +first week." + +He had spoken his extravagances without winning a glance from her. She +had answered with a precision that was more trying than silence. + +"_I_ shouldn't find it so if you were in the neighborhood to welcome +me when I knocked off for the day," he declared. "You see, I can't +help it. I can't help what is in me, just as surely as the breath of +life is in me." + +"Jack!" she flashed back, with arresting sharpness, but without looking +around, while her step quickened perceptibly, "suppose I say that I am +sorry and I, too, cannot help it; that I, too, have temperament, as well +as you;" her tone was almost harsh; "that even you cannot have everything +you command; that for you to want a thing does not mean that I want it; +that I cannot help the fact that I do not--" + +With a quick interruption he stayed the end of the sentence, as if it +were a descending blade. + +"Don't say that!" he implored. "It is too much like taking a vow that +might make you fearfully stubborn in order to live up to it. Perhaps the +thing will come some day. It's wonderful how such a thing does come. You +see, I speak from experience," he went on, in wan insistence, with the +entrance to the hotel in sight. "Why, it is there before you realize it, +like the morning sunshine in a room while you are yet asleep. And you +open your eyes and there is the joyous wonder, settling itself all +through you and making itself at home forever. You know for the first +time that you are alive. You know for the first time that you were born +into this world merely because one other person was born into it." + +"Very well said," she conceded, in hasty approval, without vouchsafing +him a glance. "I begin to think you get more inspiration for compliments +on this side of the pass than on the other,"--and they were at the hotel +door. Precipitately she hastened through it, as if with her last display +of strength after the exhaustion of that walk. + + + + +XXXI + +PRATHER WOULD NOT WAIT + + +When he returned to the house, Jack found a letter that had come in the +late mail from Jim Galway: + +"First off, that story you sent for Belvy," Jim wrote. "We've heard it +read and reread, and the more it's worn with reading the fresher it gets +in our minds. As I size up the effect on the population, we folks in the +forties and fifties got more fun out of it than anybody except the folks +in the seventies and the five-to-twelve-year-olds. Some of the thirteen +and fourteen-year-olds were inclined to think at first that it wasn't +quite grown up enough for them, until they saw what fashionable +literature it was becoming. Then their dignified maturity limbered up a +little. Jack, it certainly did us a world of good. It seemed as if you +were back home again." + +"Back home again!" Jack repeated, joyously; and then shook his head at +himself in solemn warning. + +"And those of us that don't take our meat without salt sort of needed +cheering up," Jim went on. "Only a few days after I wrote you, the Doge +and Mary suddenly started for New York. Maybe he has looked you up." (The +"maybe" followed an "of course," which had been scratched through.) "And +maybe if he has you know more about what is going on here than we do. We +practically don't know anything; but I've sure got a feeling of that +uncertainty in the atmosphere that I used to have before a cyclone when I +lived in Kansas. This Prather, that so many thought at first looked like +you, has also gone to New York. + +"He left only two days ago. Maybe you will run across him. I don't know, +but it seems to me he's gone to get the powder for some kind of a blow-up +here. Jack, you know what would happen if we lost our water rights and +you know what I wrote you in my last letter. Leddy and Ropey Smith are +hanging around all the time, and since the Doge went a whole lot of +fellows that don't belong to the honey-bee class have been turning up and +putting up their tents out on the outskirts, like they expected something +to happen. If things get worse and I've got something to go on and we +need you, I'm going to telegraph just as I said I would; because, Jack, +though you're worth a lot of millions, someway we feel you're one of us. + +"Very truly yours for Little Rivers, + +"JAMES R. GALWAY. + +"P.S.--Belvy said to put in P.S. because P.S.'s are always the most +important part of a letter. She wants to know if you won't write +another story." + +"I will!" said Jack. "I will, immediately!" + +He made it a long story. He took a deal of pains with it in the very +relief of something to do when sleep was impossible and he must count the +moments in wretched impatience until his interview with the one person +who could answer his questions. + +As he went down town in the morning the very freshness of the air +inspired him with the hope that he should come out of his father's office +with every phantom reduced to a figment of imagination springing from the +abnormality of his life-story; with a message that should allay Mary's +fears and soften her harshness toward him; with the certainty that the +next time he and his father sat together at dinner it would be in a +permanent understanding, craved of affection. Mary might come to New +York; the Doge might spend his declining years in leisurely patronage of +bookshops and galleries; and he would learn how to run the business, +though his head split, as became a simple, normal son. + +These eddying thoughts on the surface of his mind, however, could not +free him of a consciousness of a deep, unsounded current that seemed to +be the irresistible, moving power of Mary's future, the store's, his +fathers, Jasper Ewold's and his own. With it he was going into a gorge, +over a cataract, or out into pleasant valleys, he knew not which. He knew +nothing except that there was no stopping the flood of the current which +had its source in streams already flowing before he was born. When the +last question had been asked his future would be clear. Relief was ahead, +and after relief would come the end of introspection and the beginning of +his real career. + +But another question was waiting for him in the store. It was walking the +streets of his father's city in the freedom of a spectator who comes to +observe and not to buy. Crossing the first floor as he came to the +court, Jack saw, with sudden distinctness among the many faces coming and +going, a profile which, in its first association, developed on his vision +as that of his own when he shaved in front of the ear in the morning. He +had only a glimpse before it was turned away and its owner, a young man +in a quiet gray suit, started up the stairs. + +Jack studied the young man's back half amusedly to see if this, too, were +like his own, and laughed at himself because he was sure that he would +not know his own back if it were preceding him in a promenade up the +Avenue. In peculiar suspense he was hoping that the young man would pause +and look around, as his father always did and shoppers often did, in a +survey of the busy, moving picture of the whole floor. But the young man +went on to the top of the flight. There he proceeded along the railing of +the court. His profile was again in view under a strong light, and Jack +realized that his first recognition of a resemblance was the recognition +of an indisputable fact. + +"Have I a double out West and another in New York?" he thought. "It gives +a man a kind of secondhand feeling!" + +Then he recalled Jim's letter saying that John Prather had gone to New +York. Was this John Prather? He had no doubt that it was when the object +of his scrutiny, with full face in view, stopped and leaned over the +balcony just above the diamond counter. There was a mole patch on the +cheek such as Jack remembered that the accounts of John Prather had +mentioned. + +"I am as much fussed as the giant was at the sight of yellow!" +Jack mused. + +But for the mole patch the features were his own, as he knew them, +though no one not given to more frequent personal councils with mirrors +than Señor Don't Care of desert trails knows quite the lights and shadows +of his own countenance, which give it its character even more than does +its form. John Prather was regarding the jewelry display, where the +diamonds were scintillating under the light from the milk glass roof, +with a smile of amused contemplation. His expression was unpleasant to +Jack. It had a quality of satire and of covetousness as its owner leaned +farther over the rail and rubbed the palms of his hands together as +gleefully as if the diamonds were about to fly into his pockets by +enchantment. + +All the time Jack had stood motionless in fixed and amazed observation. +He wondered that his stare had not drawn the other's attention. But John +Prather seemed too preoccupied with the dazzle of wealth to be +susceptible to any telepathic influence. + +"Great heavens! I am gaping at him as if he were climbing hand over hand +up the face of a sky-scraper!" Jack thought. It was time something +happened. Why should he get so wrought up over the fact that another man +looked like him? "I'll get acquainted!" he declared, shaking himself free +of his antipathy. "We are both from Little Rivers and that's a ready +excuse for introducing myself." + +As he started across the floor toward the stairs, Prather straightened +from his leaning posture. For an instant his glance seemed to rest on +Jack. Indeed, eye met eye for a flash; and then Prather moved away. His +decision to go might easily have been the electric result of Jack's own +decision to join him. Jack ran up the stairs. At the head of the flight +he saw, at half the distance across the floor, Prather's back entering an +elevator on the down trip. He hurried forward, his desire to meet and +speak with the man whose influence Jim Galway and Mary feared now +overwhelming. + +"Hello!" Jack sang out; and this to Prather's face after he had turned +around in the elevator. + +In the second while the elevator man was swinging to the door, Jack +and Prather were fairly looking at each other. Prather had seen that +Jack wanted to speak to him, even if he had not heard the call. His +answer was a smile of mixed recognition and satire. He made a +gesture of appreciative understanding of the distinction in their +likeness by touching the mole on his cheek with his finger, which +was Jack's last glimpse of him before he was shot down into the +lower regions of the store. + +"He did it neatly!" Jack gasped, with a sense of defeat and chagrin. "And +it is plain that he does not care to get acquainted. Perhaps he takes it +for granted that I am not friendly and foresaw that I would ask him a lot +of questions about Little Rivers that he would not care to answer." At +all events, the only way to accept the situation was lightly, his reason +insisted. "Having heard about the likeness, possibly he came to the store +to have a look at me, and after seeing me felt that he had been libeled!" + +But his feelings refused to follow his reason in an amused view. + +"I do not like John Prather!" he concluded, as he took the next elevator +to the top floor. "Yes, I liked Pete Leddy better at our first meeting. I +had rather a man would swear at me than smile in that fashion. It is +much more simple." + +The incident had had such a besetting and disagreeable effect that Jack +would have found it difficult to rid his mind of it if he had not had a +more centering and pressing object in prospect in the citadel of the +push-buttons behind the glass marked "Private." + +John Wingfield, Sr. looked up from his desk in covert watchfulness to +detect his son's mood, and he was conscious of a quality of manner that +recalled the returning exile's entry into the same room upon his arrival +from the West. + +"Well, Jack," the father said, with marked cheeriness, "I hear you have +been taking a holiday. It's all right, and you will find motoring beats +pony riding." + +"In some ways," Jack answered; and then he came a step nearer, his hand +resting on the edge of the desk, as he looked into his father's eyes with +glowing candor. + +John Wingfield, Sr.'s eyes shifted to the pushbuttons and later to a +paper on the desk, with which his fingers played gently. He realized +instantly that something unusual was on Jack's mind. + +"Father," Jack went on, "I want a long talk quite alone with you. When it +is over I feel that we shall both know each other better; we can work +together in a fuller understanding." + +"Yes, Jack," answered the father, cautiously feeling his way with a +swift upward glance, which fell again to the paper. "Well, what is it +now? Come on!" + +"There are a lot of questions I want to ask--family questions." + +"Family questions?" The fingers paused in playing with the paper for an +instant and went on playing again. The soft hands were as white as the +paper. "Family questions, eh? Well, there isn't much to our family except +you and I and that old ancestor--and a long talk, you say?" + +"Yes. I thought that probably this would be a good time; you could give +me an hour now. It might not take that long." + +Jack's voice was even and engaging and respectful. But it seemed to fill +the room with many echoing whispers. + +"I have a very busy day before me," the father said, still without +looking up. He was talking to a little pad at one corner of the green +blotter which had a list of his appointments. "Your questions are not so +imperative that they cannot wait?" + +"Then shall it be at dinner?" Jack asked. + +"At dinner? No. I have an engagement for dinner." + +"Shall you be home early? Shall I wait up for you?" Jack persisted. + +"Yes, that's it! Say at nine. I'll make a point of it--in the library at +nine!" John Wingfield, Sr.'s hand slipped away from the papers and +patted the back of Jack's hand. "And come on with your questions. I will +answer every one that I can." He was looking up at Jack now, smilingly +and attractively in his frankness. "Every one that I can, from the first +John Wingfield right down to the present!" + +But the hand that lay on Jack's was cold and its movement nervous and +spasmodic. + +"Thank you, father. I knew you would. I haven't forgotten your wish that +I should bring all my doubts and questions to you," said Jack, happily. +And in an impulse which had the devoutness of a rising hope he took that +cold, soft hand in both of his and gave it a shake; and the feel of the +son's grip, firm and warm, remained with John Wingfield, Sr. while he +stared at the door through which Jack had passed out. When he had pulled +himself together he asked Mortimer to connect him with Dr. Bennington. + +"Doctor, I want a little talk with you to-night before nine," he said. +"Could you dine with me--not at the house--say at the club? +Yes--excellent--and make it at seven. Yes. Good-by!" + + + + +XXXII + +A CRISIS IN THE WINGFIELD LIBRARY + + +A library atmosphere was missing from the Wingfield library, with its +heavy panelling and rows of red and blue morocco backs. Rather the +suggestion was of a bastion of privacy, where a man of action might make +his plans or take counsel at leisure amid rich and mellow surroundings. +Here, John Wingfield, Sr. had gained points through post-prandial +geniality which he could never have won in the presence of the battery of +push-buttons; here, his most successful conceptions had come to him; +here, he had known the greatest moments of his life. He was right in +saying that he loved his library; but he hardly loved it for its books. + +When he returned to the house shortly before nine from his session with +Dr. Bennington, it was with the knowledge that another great moment was +in prospect. He took a few turns up and down the room before he rang for +the butler to tell Jack that he had come in. Then he placed a chair near +the desk, where its occupant would sit facing him. After he sat down he +moved the desk lamp, which was the only light in the room, so that its +rays fell on the back of the chair and left his own face in shadow--a +precaution which he had taken on many other occasions in adroitness of +stage management. He drew from the humidor drawer of his desk a box of +the long cigars with blunt ends which need no encircling gilt band in +praise of their quality. + +As Jack entered, the father welcomed him with a warm, paternal smile. And +be it remembered that John Wingfield, Sr. could smile most pleasantly, +and he knew the value of his smile. Jack answered the smile with one of +his own, a little wan, a little subdued, yet enlivening under the glow of +his father's evident happiness at seeing him. The father, who had +transgressed the rules of longevity by taking a second cigar after +dinner, now pushed the box across the desk to his son. Jack said that he +would "roll one"; he did not care to smoke much. He produced a small +package of flake tobacco and a packet of rice paper and with a deftness +that was like sleight of hand made a cigarette without spilling a single +flake. He had not always chosen the "makings" in place of private stock +Havanas, but it seemed to suit his mood to-night. + +"That is one of the things you learned in the West," the father observed +affably, to break the ice. + +"I can do them with one hand," Jack answered. "But you are likely to +have an overflow--which is all right when you have the whole desert for +the litter. Besides, in a library it would have the effect of gallery +play, I fear." + +He was seated in a way that revealed all the supple lines of his figure. +However relaxed his attitude before his father, it was always suggestive +of latent strength, appealing at once to paternal pride and paternal +uncertainty as to what course the strength would take. His face under the +light of the lamp was boyish and singularly without trace of guile. + +The father struck a match and held it to light his son's cigarette; +another habit of his which he had found flattering to men who were +brought into the library for conference. Jack took a puff slowly and, +after a time, another puff, and then dropped the cigarette on the ash +receiver as much as to say that he had smoked enough. Something told John +Wingfield, Sr. that this was to be a long interview and in no way +hurried, as he saw the smile dying on the son's lips and misery coming +into the son's eyes. + +"These last two days have been pretty poignant for me," Jack began, in a +simple, outright fashion; "and only half an hour ago I got this. It was +hard to resist taking the first train West." He drew a telegram from his +pocket and handed it to his father. + +"We want you and though we don't suppose you can come, we simply had to +let you know. + +"JAMES R. GALWAY." + +"It is Greek to me," said the father. "From your Little Rivers +friends, I judge." + +"Yes. I suppose that we may as well begin with it, as it drove everything +else out of my mind for the moment." + +John Wingfield, Sr. swung around in his chair, with his face in the +shadow. His attitude was that of a companionable listener who is prepared +for any kind of news. + +"As you will, Jack," he said. "Everything that pertains to you is my +interest. Go ahead in your own way." + +"It concerns John Prather. I don't know that I have ever told you about +him in my talks of Little Rivers." + +"John Prather?" The father reflectively sounded the name, the while he +studied the spiral of smoke rising from his cigar. "No, I don't think you +have mentioned him." + +It was Jack's purpose to take his father entirely into his confidence; to +reveal his own mind so that there should be nothing of its perplexities +which his father did not understand. He might not choose a logical +sequence of thought or event, but in the end nothing should be left +untold. Indeed, he had not studied how to begin his inquiries. That he +had left to take care of itself. His chief solicitude was to keep his +mind open and free of bitterness whatever transpired, and it was evident +that he was under a great strain. + +He told of the coming of John Prather to Little Rivers while he was +absent; of the mention of the likeness by his fellow-ranchers; and of the +fears entertained by Jim Galway and Mary. When he came to the scene in +the store that afternoon it was given in a transparent fulness of detail; +while all his changing emotions, from his first glimpse of Prather's +profile to the effort to speak with him and the ultimatum of Prather's +satirical gesture, were reflected in his features. He was the +story-teller, putting his gift to an unpleasant task in illumination of +sober fact and not the uses of imagination; and his audience was his +father's cheek and ear in the shadow. + +"Extraordinary!" John Wingfield, Sr. exclaimed when Jack had finished, +glancing around with a shrug. "Naturally, you were irritated. I like to +think that only two men have the Wingfield features--the features of the +ancestor--yes, only two: you and I!" + +"It was more than irritation; it was something profound and disturbing, +almost revolting!" Jack exclaimed, under the disagreeable spell of his +vivid recollection of the incident. "The resemblance to you was so +striking, father, especially in the profile!" Jack was leaning forward, +the better to see his father's profile, dim in the half light. "Yes, +recognizable instantly--the nose and the lines about the mouth! You have +never met anyone who has seen this man? You have never heard of him?" he +asked, almost morbidly. + +John Wingfield, Sr. broke into a laugh, which was deprecatory and +metallic. He looked fairly into Jack's eyes with a kind of inquiring +amazement at the boy's overwrought intensity. + +"Why, no, Jack," he said, reassuringly. "If I had I shouldn't have +forgotten it, you may be sure. And, well, Jack, there is no use of being +sensitive about it, though I understand your indignation--especially +after he flaunted the fact of the resemblance in such a manner and +refused to meet you. From what I have heard about that fight with +Leddy--Dr. Bennington told me--I can appreciate why he did not care to +meet you." He laughed, more genially this time, in the survey of his +son's broad shoulders. "I fear there is something of the old ancestor's +devil in you when you get going!" he added. + +So his father had seen this, too--what Mary had seen--this thing born in +him with the coming of his strength! + +"Yes, I suppose there is," he admitted, ruefully. "Yes, I have reason to +know that there is." + +His face went moody. Any malice toward John Prather passed. He was +penitent for a feeling against a stranger that seemed akin to the dormant +instinct that had made him glory in holding a bead on Pete Leddy. + +"And I am glad of it!" said John Wingfield, Sr., with a flash of stronger +emotion than he had yet shown in the interview. + +"I am not. It makes me almost afraid of myself," Jack answered. + +"Oh, I don't mean firing six-shooters--hardly! I mean backbone," he +hastened to add, almost ingratiatingly. "It is a thing to control, Jack, +not to worry about." + +"Yes, to control!" said Jack, dismally. + +He was hearing Ignacio's cry of "The devil is out of Señor Don't Care!" +and seeing for the thousandth time Mary's horrified face as he pressed +Pedro Nogales against the hedge. Now poise was all on the side of the +father, who glanced away from Jack at the glint of the library cases in +the semi-darkness in satisfaction. But only a moment did the son's absent +mood last. He leaned forward quivering, free from his spell of +reflection, and his words came pelting like hail. He was at grip with the +phantoms and nothing should loosen his hold till the truth was out. + +"Father, I could not fail to see the look on your face and the look on +Jasper Ewold's when you found him in the drawing-room!" + +At the sudden reversal of his son's attitude, John Wingfield, Sr. had +drawn back into the shadow, as, if in defensive instinct before the force +that was beating in Jack's voice. + +"Yes, I was startled; yes, very startled! But, go on! Speak everything +that you have in mind; for it is evident that you have much to say. Go +on!" he repeated more calmly, and turned his face farther into the +shadow, while he inclined his head toward Jack as if to hear better. One +leg had drawn up under him and was pressing against the chair. + +Jack waited a moment to gather his thoughts. When he spoke his +passion was gone. + +"We have always been as strangers, father," he began. "I have no +recollection of you in childhood until that day you came as a stranger to +the house at Versailles. I was seven, then. My mother was away, as you +will recall. I remember that you did not kiss me or show any affection. +You did not even say who you were. You looked me over, and I was very +frail. I saw that I did not please you; and I did not like you. In my +childish perversity I would speak only French to you, which you did not +understand. When my mother came home, do you remember her look? I do. She +went white as chalk and trembled. I was frightened with the thought that +she was going to die. It was a little while before she spoke and when she +did speak she was like stone. She asked you what you wanted, as if you +were an intruder. You said: 'I have been looking at the boy!' Your +expression told me again that you were not pleased with me. Without +another word you departed. I can still hear your steps on the walk as you +went away; they were so very firm." + +"Yes, Jack, I can never forget." The tone was that of a man racked. "What +else?" he asked. "Go on, Jack!" + +"You know the life my mother and I led, study and play together. And +that was the only time you saw me until I was fourteen. I was mortally in +awe of you then and in awe of you the day I went West with your message +to get strong. But I got strong; yes, strong, father!" + +"Yes, Jack," said the father. "Yes, Jack, leave nothing unsaid--nothing!" + +Now Jack swept back to the villa garden in Florence, the day of the +Doge's call; and from there to the Doge's glance of recognition that +first night in Little Rivers; then to the scene in front of the +bookstore, when the Doge hesitated about going to see the Velasquez. He +pictured the Doge's absorption over the mother's portrait; he repeated +Mary's story on the previous evening. + +All the while the profile, so dimly outlined in the outer darkness beyond +the lamp's circle of light, to which he had been speaking, had not +stirred. The father's cigar had gone out. It lay idly in his fingers, +which rested on the arm of the chair, above a tiny pile of ashes on the +rug. But there was no other sign of emotion, except his half affirmative +interjections, with a confessional's encouragement to empty the mind of +its every affliction. + +"Why were my mother and myself always in exile? What was this barrier +between you and her? Why was it that I never saw you? Why this bitterness +of Jasper Ewold against you? Why should that bitterness be turned against +me? I want to know, father, so that we can start afresh and right. I no +longer want to be in the dark, with its mystery, but in the light, where +I can grapple with the truth!" + +There was no rancor, no crashing of sentences; only high tension in the +finality of an inquiry in which hope and fear rose together. + +"Yes, Jack!" exclaimed John Wingfield, Sr., after a silence in which he +seemed to be passing all that Jack had said in review. "I am glad you +have told me this; that you have come to the one to whom you should come +in trouble. You have made it possible for me to speak of something that I +never found a way to speak about, myself. For, Jack, you truly have been +a stranger to me and I to you, thanks to the chain of influences which +you have mentioned." + +Very slowly John Wingfield, Sr. had turned in his chair. Distress was +rising in his tone as he leaned toward Jack. His face under the rim of +light of the lamp had a new charm, which was not that of the indulgent or +flattering or winning smile, or the masterful set of his chin on an +object. He seemed pallid and old, struggling against a phantom himself; +almost pitiful, this man of strength, while his eyes looked into Jack's +with limpid candor. + +"Jack, I will tell you all I can," he said. "I want to. It is duty. It is +relief. But first, will you tell me what your mother told you? What her +reasons were? I have a right to know that, haven't I, in my effort to +make my side clear?" He spoke in direct, intimate appeal. + +Jack's lips were trembling and his whole nature was throbbing in a +new-found sympathy. For the first time he saw his father as a man of +sensitive feeling, capable of deep suffering. And he was to have the +truth, all the truth, in kindness and affection. + +"After you had left the house at Versailles," said Jack, "she took me in +her arms and said that you were my father. 'Did you like him?' she asked; +and I said no, realizing nothing but the childish impression of the +interview. At that she was wildly, almost hysterically, triumphant. I was +glad to have made her so happy. 'You are mine alone! You have only me!' +she declared over and over again. 'And you must never ask me any +questions, for that is best.' She never mentioned you afterward; and in +all my life, until I was fourteen, I was never away from her." + +Again the palm of John Wingfield, Sr.'s hand ran back and forth over his +knee and the foot that was against the chair leg beat a nervous tattoo; +while he drew a longer breath than usual, which might have been either of +surprise or relief. His face fell back behind the rim of the lamp's rays, +but he did not turn it away as he had when Jack was talking. + +"You know only the Jasper Ewold who has been mellowed by time," he began. +"His scholarship was a bond of companionship for you in the isolation of +a small community. I know him as boy and young man. He was very +precocious. At the age of eight, as I remember, he could read his Caesar. +You will appreciate what that meant in a New England town--that he was +somewhat spoiled by admiration. And, naturally, his character and mine +were very different, thanks to the difference in our situations; for the +Ewolds had a good deal of money in those days. I was the type of boy who +was ready to work at any kind of odd job in order to get dimes and +quarters for my little bank. + +"Well, it is quite absurd to go back to that as the beginning of Jasper +Ewold's feelings toward me; but one day young Wingfield felt that young +Ewold was patronizing him. We had a turn at fisticuffs which resulted in +my favor. Jasper was a proud boy, and he never quite forgave me. In fact, +he was not used to being crossed. Learning was easy for him; he was +good-looking; he had an attractive manner, and it seemed only his right +that all doors should open when he knocked. Soon after our battle he went +away to school. Not until we were well past thirty did our paths cross +again. He was something of a painter, but he really had had no set +purpose in life except the pleasures of his intellectual diversions. I +will not say that he was wild, but at least he had lived in the abundant +freedom of his opportunities. He fell in love at the same time that I did +with Alice Jamison. You have seen your mother's picture, but that gives +you little idea of her beauty in girlhood." + +"I have always thought her beautiful!" Jack exclaimed spontaneously. + +"Yes. I am glad. She always was beautiful to me; but I like best to think +of her before she turned against me. I like to think of her as she was in +the days of our courtship. Fortune favored me instead of Jasper Ewold. I +can well understand the blow it was to him, that she should take the +storekeeper, the man without learning, the man without family, as people +supposed then, when he thought that she belonged entirely to his world. +But his enmity thereafter I can only explain by his wounded pride; by a +mortal defeat for one used to having his way, for one who had never known +discipline. Your mother and I were very happy for a time. I thought that +she loved me and had chosen me because I was a man of purpose, while +Jasper Ewold was not." + +John Wingfield, Sr. spoke deliberately, measuring his thought before he +put it into words, as if he were trying to set himself apart as one +figure in a drama while he aimed to do exact justice to the others. + +"It was soon after you were born that your mother's attitude changed. She +was, as you know, supersensitive, and whatever her grievances were she +kept them to herself. My immersion in my affairs was such that I could +not be as attentive to her as I ought to have been. Sometimes I thought +that the advertisement with our name in big letters in every morning +paper might be offensive to her; again, that she missed in me the +education I had had to forfeit in youth, and that my affection could +hardly take its place. I know that Jasper Ewold saw her occasionally, and +in his impulse I know that he said things about me that were untrue. But +that I pass over. In his place I, too, might have been bitter. + +"The best explanation I can find of your mother's change toward me is one +that belongs in the domain of psychology and pathology. She suffered a +great deal at your birth and she never regained her former strength. When +she rose from her bed it was with a shadow over her mind. I saw that she +was unhappy and nervous in my presence. Indeed, I had at times to face +the awful sensation of feeling that I was actually repugnant to her. She +was especially irritable if I kissed or fondled you. She dropped all her +friends; she never made calls; she refused to see callers. I consulted +specialists and all the satisfaction I had was that she was of a +peculiarly high-strung nature and that in certain phases of melancholia, +where there is no complete mental and physical breakdown, the patient +turns on the one whom she would hold nearest and dearest if she were +normal. The child that had taken her strength became the virtual passion +of her worship, which she would share with no one. + +"When she proposed to go to Europe for a rest, taking you with her, I +welcomed the idea. I rejoiced in the hope that the doctors held out that +she would come back well, and I ventured to believe in a happy future, +with you as our common object of love and care. But she never returned, +as you know; and she only wrote me once, a wild sort of letter about what +a beautiful boy you were and that she had you and I had the store and I +was never to send her any more remittances. + +"I made a number of trips to Europe. I could not go frequently, because +in those days, Jack, I was a heavy borrower of money in the expansion of +my business, and only one who has built up a great business can +understand how, in the earlier and more uncertain period of our banking +credits, the absence of personal attention in any sudden crisis might +throw you on the rocks. Naturally, when I went I wrote to Alice that I +was coming; but I always found that she had gone and left no address for +forwarding mail from the Crédit Lyonnais. Once when I went without +writing she eluded me, and the second time I found that she had a cottage +at Versailles. That, as you know, was the only occasion when I ever saw +you or her until I came to bring you home after her sudden death." + +"Yes," Jack whispered starkly. "That day I had left her as well as +usual and came home to find her lying still and white on a couch, her +book fallen out of her hand onto the floor and--" the words choked in +his throat. + +"And the stranger, your father, who came for you seemed very hard and +forbidding to you!" + +"Yes," Jack managed to say. + +"But, Jack, when my steps sounded so firm the day I left you at +Versailles it was the firmness of force of will fighting to accept the +inevitable. For I had seen your face. It was like mine, and yet I had to +give you up! I had to give you up knowing that I might not see you again; +knowing that this tragic, incomprehensible fatality had set you against +me; knowing that any further efforts to see you meant only pain for Alice +and for me. Whatever happiness she knew came from you, and that she +should have. And remember, Jack, that out of all this tragedy I, too, had +my point of view. I had my moments of reproach against fate; my moments +of bitterness and anger; my moments when I set all my mind with, volcanic +energy into my affairs in order to forget my misfortune. I had to build +for the sake of building. Perhaps that hardened me. + +"When you came home I saw that you were mine in blood but not mine in +heart. All your training had been foreign, all of estrangement from the +business and the ways of the home-country; which you could not help, I +could not help, nothing now could help. But, after all, I had been +building for you; that was my new solace. I wanted you to be equal to +what was coming to you, and that change meant discipline. To be frank +with you, as you have been with me, you were sickly, hectic, dreamy; and +when word came that you must go to the desert if your life were to be +saved--well, Jack, I had to put affection aside and consider this blow +for what it was, and think not of kind words but of what was best for you +and your future. I knew that my duty to you and your duty to yourself was +to see you become strong, and for your sake you must not return until you +were strong. + +"Now, as for the scene in the drawing-room the other day: I could not +forget what Jasper Ewold had said of me. That was one thing. Another was +that I had detected his influence over you; an influence against the +purpose and steadiness that I was trying to inculcate in you; and +suddenly coming upon him in my own house, in view of his enmity and the +way in which he had spoken about me, I was naturally startled and +indignant and withdrew to avoid a scene. That is all, Jack. I have +answered your questions to the best of my knowledge. If others occur to +you I will try my best to answer them, too;" and the father seemed ready +to submit every recess of his mind to the son's inquisition. + +"You have answered everything," said Jack; "everything--fairly, +considerately, generously." + +There was a flash of triumph in the father's eyes. Slowly he rose and +stood with his finger-ends caressing the blotting-pad. Jack rose at +the same time, his movement automatic, instinctively in sympathy with +his father's. His head was bowed under stress of the emotion, +incapable of translation into language, which transfixed him. It had +all been made clear, this thing that no one could help. His feeling +toward his mother could never change; but penetrating to the depths in +which it had been held sacred was a new feeling. The pain that had +brought him into the world had brought misery to the authors of his +being. There was no phantom except the breath of life in his nostrils +which they had given him. + +Watchfully, respecting the son's silence, the father's lips tightened, +his chin went out slightly and his brows drew together in a way that +indicated that he did not consider the battle over. At length, Jack's +head came up and his face had the strength of a youthful replica of the +ancestor's, radiant in gratitude, and in his eyes for the first time, in +looking into his father's, were trust and affection. There was no word, +no other demonstration except the steady, liquid look that spoke the +birth of a great, understanding comradeship. The father fed his hunger +for possession, which had been irresistibly growing in him for the last +two months, on that look. He saw his son's strength as something that had +at last become malleable; and this was the moment when the metal was at +white heat, ready for knowing turns with the pincers and knowing blows of +the hammer. + +The message from Jim Galway was still on the table where the father had +laid it after reading. Now he pressed his fingers on it so hard that the +nails became a row of red spots. + +"And the telegram, Jack?" he asked. + +Jack stared at the yellow slip of paper as the symbol of problems that +reappeared with burning acuteness in his mind. It smiled at him in the +satire of John Prather triumphing in Little Rivers. It visualized +pictures of lean ranchers who had brought him flowers in the days of his +convalescence; of children gathered around him on the steps of his +bungalow; of all the friendly faces brimming good-will into his own on +the day of his departure; of a patch of green in desert loneliness, with +a summons to arms to defend its arteries of life. + +"They want me to help--I half promised!" he said. + +"Yes. And just how can you help?" asked his father, gently. + +"Why, that is not quite clear yet. But a stranger, they made me one of +themselves. They say that they need me. And, father, that thrilled me. It +thrilled the idler to find that there was some place where he could be of +service; that there was some one definite thing that others thought he +could do well!" + +The father proceeded cautiously, reasonably, with his questions, as one +who seeks for light for its own sake. Jack's answers were luminously +frank. For there was always to be truth between them in their new +fellowship, unfettered by hopes or vagaries. + +"You could help with your knowledge of law? With political influence? +Help these men seasoned by experience in land disputes in that region?" + +"No!" + +"And would Jasper Ewold, whom I understand is the head and founder of the +community, want you to come? Has he asked you?" the father continued, +drawing in the web of logic. + +"On the contrary, he would not want me." + +"And Miss Ewold? Would she want you?" + +There Jack hesitated. When he spoke, however, it was to admit the fact +that was stabbing him. + +"No, she would not. She has dismissed me. But--but I half promised," he +added, his features setting firmly as they had after Leddy had fired at +him. "It seems like duty, unavoidable." + +The metal was cooling, losing its malleability, and the father proceeded +to thrust it back into the furnace. + +"Then, I take it that your value to Little Rivers is your cool hand +with a gun," he said, "and the summons is to uncertainties which may +lead to something worse than a duel. You are asked to come because you +can fight. Do you want to go for that? To go to let the devil, as you +call it, out of you?" + +Now the metal was soft with the heat of the shame of the moment when Jack +had called to Leddy, "I am going to kill you!" and of the moment when he +saw Pedro Nogales's limp, broken arm and ghastly face. + +"No, no!" Jack gasped. "I want no fight! I never want to draw a bead on a +man again! I never want to have a revolver in my hand again!" + +He was shuddering, half leaning against the desk for support. His +father waited in observant comprehension. Convulsively, Jack +straightened with desperation and all the impassioned pleading to Mary +on the pass was in his eyes. + +"But the thing that I cannot help--the transcendent thing, not of logic, +not of Little Rivers' difficulties--how am I to give that up?" he cried. + +"Miss Ewold, you mean?" + +"Yes!" + +"Jack, I know! I understand! Who should understand if not I?" The father +drew Jack's hand into his own, and the fluid force of his desire for +mastery was flowing out from his finger-ends into the son's fibres, which +were receptively sensitive to the caress. "I know what it is when the +woman you love dismisses you! You have her to think of as well as +yourself. Your own wish may not be lord. You may not win that which will +not be won"--how well he knew that!--"either by protest, by persistence, +or by labor. You are dealing with the tender and intangible; with +feminine temperament, Jack. And, Jack, it is wise for you, isn't it, to +bear in mind that your life has not been normal? With the switch from +desert to city life homesickness has crept over you. From to-night things +will not be so strange, will they? But if you wish a change, go to +Europe--yes, go, though I cannot bear to think of losing you the very +moment that we have come to know each other; when the past is clear and +amends are at hand. + +"And, Jack, if your mother were here with us and were herself, would she +want you to go back to take up a rifle instead of your work at my side? I +do not pretend to understand Jasper Ewold's or Mary Ewold's thoughts. She +has preferred to make another generation's ill-feeling her own in a thing +that concerns her life alone. She has seen enough of you to know her +mind. For, from all I hear, you have not been a faint-hearted lover. Is +it fair to her to follow her back to the desert? Is it the courage of +self-denial, of control of impulse on your part? Would your mother want +you to persist in a veritable conquest by force of your will, whose +strength you hardly realize, against Mary Ewold's sensibilities? And if +you broke down her will, if you won, would there be happiness for you and +for her? Jack, wait! If she cares for you, if there is any germ of love +for you in her, it will grow of itself. You cannot force it into blossom. +Come, Jack, am I not right?" + +Jack's hands lay cold and limp in his father's; so limp that it seemed +only a case of leading, now. Yet there was always the uncertain in the +boy; the uncertain hovering under that face of ashes that the father was +so keenly watching; a face so clearly revealing the throes of a struggle +that sent cold little shivers into his father's warm grasp. Jack's eyes +were looking into the distance through a mist. He dropped the lids as if +he wanted darkness in which to think. When he raised them it was to look +in his father's eyes firmly. There was a half sob, as if this +sentimentalist, this Señor Don't Care, had wrung determination from a +precipice edge, even as Mary Ewold had. He gripped his father's hands +strongly and lifted them on a level with his breast. + +"You have been very fine, father! I want you to be patient and go on +helping me. The trail is a rough one, but straight, now. I--I'm too +brimming full to talk!" And blindly he left the library. + +When the door closed, John Wingfield, Sr. seized the telegram, rolled it +up with a glad, fierce energy and threw it into the waste-basket. His +head went up; his eyes became points of sharp flame; his lips parted in a +smile of relief and triumph and came together in a straight line before +he sank down in his chair in a collapse of exhaustion. After a while he +had the decanter brought in; he gulped a glass of brandy, lighted another +cigar, and, swinging around, fell back at ease, his mind a blank except +for one glowing thought: + +"He will not go! He will give up the girl! He is to be all mine!" + +It is said that the best actors never go on the stage. They play real +parts in private life, making their own lines as they watch the other +players. One of this company, surveying the glint of his bookcases, was +satisfied with the greatest effort of his life in his library. + + + + +XXXIII + +PRATHER SEES THE PORTRAIT + + +It did not occur to Jack to question a word of the narrative that had +reduced a dismal enigma to luminous, connected facts. With the swift +processes of reason and the promptness of decision of which he was +capable on occasion, he had made up his mind as to his future even as he +ascended the stairs to his room. The poignancy of his father's appeal had +struck to the bed-rock of his affection and his conscience, revealing +duty not as a thing that you set for yourself, but which circumstances +set for you. + +Never before had he realized how hopelessly he had been a dreamer. Firio, +P.D., Wrath of God, and Jag Ear became the fantastic memory of another +incarnation. His devil should never again rejoice in having his finger on +a trigger or send him off an easy traveller in search of gorgeous +sunrises. His devil should be transformed into a backbone of unremitting +apprenticeship in loving service for the father who had built for him in +love. Though his head split, he would master every detail of the +business. And when Jack stepped into the Rubicon he did not splash around +or look back. He went right over to the new country on the other bank. + +But there were certain persons whom he must inform of the crossing. +First, he wrote a telegram to Jim Galway: "Sorry, but overwhelming duty +here will not permit. Luck and my prayers with you." Then to Firio a +letter, which did not come quite so easily: "You see by now that you are +mistaken, Firio. I am not coming back. Make the most of the ranch--your +ranch--that you can." The brevity, he told himself, was in keeping with +Firio's own style. Besides, anything more at length would have opened up +an avenue of recollections which properly belonged to oblivion. + +And Mary? Yes, he would write to her, too. He would cut the last strand +with the West. That was best. That was the part of his new courage of +self-denial stripping itself of every trammeling association of +sentiment. Other men had given up the women of their choice; and he could +never be the man of this woman's choice. Somehow, his father's talk had +made him realize an inevitable outcome which had better be met and +mastered in present fortitude, rather than after prolonged years of +fruitless hope centering two thousand miles away. He started a dozen +letters to Mary, meaning each to be a fitting _envoi_ to their +comradeship and a song of good wishes. Each one he wrote in the haste of +having the task quickly over, only to throw away what he had written when +he read it. The touch that he wanted would not come. He was simply +flashing out a few of a thousand disconnected thoughts that ran away +incoherently with his pen. + +But wasn't any letter, any communication of any kind, superfluous? Wasn't +it the folly of weak and stupid stubbornness? She had spoken her final +word in their relations at the hotel door. There was no Little Rivers; +there was no Mary; there was nothing but the store. To enforce this fiat +he had only to send the wire to Jim and post the letter to Firio. This he +would do himself. A stroll would give him fresh air. It was just what he +needed after all he had been through that evening; and he would see the +streets not with any memory of the old restlessness when he and his +father were strangers, but kindly, as the symbol of the future. + +His room was on the second floor. As he left it, he heard the door-bell +ring, its electric titter very clear in the silence of the house. No +doubt it meant a telegram for his father. At the turn of the stairs on +the first floor he saw the back of the butler before the open door. +Evidently it was not a matter of a telegram, but of some late caller. +Jack paused in the darkness of the landing, partly to avoid the bother of +having to meet anyone and partly arrested by the manner of the butler, +who seemed to be startled and in doubt about admitting a stranger at that +hour. Indistinctly, Jack could hear the caller's voice. The tone was +familiar in a peculiar quality, which he tried to associate with a voice +that he had heard frequently. The butler, apparently satisfied with the +caller's appearance, or, at least, with his own ability to take care of a +single intruder, stepped back, with a word to come in. Then, out of the +obscurity of the vestibule, appeared the pale face of John Prather. Jack +withdrew farther into the shadows instinctively, as if he had seen a +ghost; as if, indeed, he were in fear of ghosts. + +"I will take your card to Mr. Wingfield," said the butler. + +Prather made a perfunctory movement as if for a card-case, but +apparently changed his mind under the prompting suggestion that it was +superfluous. + +"My name is John Prather," he announced. "Mr. Wingfield knows who I am +and I am quite sure that he will see me." + +While the butler, after rapping cautiously, went into the library with +the message, John Prather stood half smiling to himself as he looked +around the hall. The effect seemed to please him in a contemplative +fashion, for he rubbed the palms of his hands together, as he had in his +survey of the diamond counters. He was serenity itself as John Wingfield, +Sr. burst out of the library, his face hard-set. + +"I thought you were going this evening!" he exclaimed. "By what right do +you come here?" + +He placed himself directly in front of Prather, thus hiding Prather's +figure, but not his face, which Jack could see was not in the least +disturbed by the other's temper. + +"Oh, no! The early morning train has the connections I want for Arizona," +he answered casually, as if he were far from being in any hurry. "I was +taking a walk, and happening to turn into Madison Avenue I found myself +in front of the house. It occurred to me what a lot I had heard about +that ancestor, and seeing a light in the library, and considering how +late it was, I thought I might have a glimpse of him without +inconveniencing any other member of the family. Do you mind?" + +He put the question with an inflection that was at once engaging and +confident. + +"Mind!" gasped John Wingfield, Sr. + +"I am sure you do not!" Prather returned. Now a certain deference and a +certain pungency of satire ran together in his tone, the mixture being +nicely and pleasurably controlled. "Is it in there, in the drawing-room?" + +"And then what else? Where do you mean to end? I thought that--" + +"Nothing else," Prather interrupted reassuringly. "Everything is settled, +of course. This is sort of a farewell privilege." + +"Yes, in there!" snapped John Wingfield, Sr. "It's the picture on the +other side of the mantel. I will wait here--and be quick, quick, I tell +you! I want you out of this house! I've done enough! I--" + +"Thanks! It is very good-natured of you!" + +John Prather passed leisurely into the drawing-room and John Wingfield, +Sr. stood guard by the door, his hand gripping the heavy portieres for +support, while his gaze was steadily fixed at a point in the turn of the +stairs just below where Jack was obscured in the shadow. His face was +drawn and ashen against the deep red of the hangings, and torment and +fear and defiance, now one and then the other, were in ascendency over +the features which Jack had always associated with composed and +unchanging mastery until he had seen them illumined with affection only +an hour before. And the father had said that he had never met or heard of +John Prather! The father had said so quietly, decidedly, without +hesitation! This one thought kept repeating itself to Jack's stunned +brain as he leaned against the wall limp from a blow that admits of no +aggressive return. + +"The ancestor certainly must have been a snappy member of society in his +time! It has been delightful to have a look at him," said John Prather, +as he came out of the drawing-room. + +He paused as he spoke. He was still smiling. The mole on his cheek was +toward the stairway; and it seemed to heighten the satire of his smile. +The faces of the young man and the old man were close together and they +were standing in much the same attitude, giving an effect of likeness in +more than physiognomy. That note of John Prather's voice that had sounded +so familiar to Jack was a note in the father's voice when he was +particularly suave. + +"This is the end--that is the understanding--the end?" demanded John +Wingfield, Sr. + +"Oh, quite!" John Prather answered easily, moving toward the door. He +did not offer his hand, nor did John Wingfield, Sr. offer to take it. +But as he went out he said, his smile broadening: "I hope that Jack +makes a success with the store, though he never could run it as well as +I could. Good-by!" + +"Good-by!" gasped John Wingfield, Sr. + +He wheeled around distractedly and stood still, his head bowed, his +fingers working nervously before his hands parted in a shrugging, +outspread gesture of relief; then, his head rising, his body stiffening, +once more his arbitrary self, he started up the stairs with the firm yet +elastic step with which he mounted the flights of the store. + +If Jack remained where he was they would meet. What purpose in questions +now? The answer to all might be as false as to one. He was no more in a +mood to trust himself with a word to his father than he had been to trust +himself with a word to John Prather. He dropped back into the darkness +of the dining-room and sank into a chair. When a bedroom door upstairs +had closed softly he was sequestered in silence with his thoughts. + +His own father had lied to him! Lied blandly! Lied with eyes limpid with +appeal! And the supreme commandment on which his mother had ever insisted +was truth. The least infraction of it she would not forgive; it was the +only thing for which she had ever punished him. He recalled the one +occasion when she had seemed harsh and merciless, as she said: + +"A lie fouls the mouth of the one who utters it, Jack. A lie may torture +and kill. It may ruin a life. It is the weapon of the coward--and never +be a coward, Jack, never be afraid!" + +At the New England preparatory school which he had attended after he came +home, a lie was the abomination on which the discipline of student +comradeship laid a scourge. Out on the desert, where the trails run +straight and the battle of life is waged straight against thirst and +fatigue and distance, men spoke straight. + +And nothing had been explained, after all! The phantom was back, +definite of form and smiling in irony. For it had a face, now, the face +of John Prather! How was he connected with the story of the mother? the +father? the Doge? + +Then, like a shaft of light across memory, came the recollection of a +thing that had been so negligible to Jack at the time. It was Dr. +Bennington's first question in Jack's living-room; a question so +carelessly put and so dissociated from the object of his visit! Jack +remembered Dr. Bennington's curious glance through his eyebrows as he +asked him if he had met John Prather. And Dr. Bennington had brought Jack +into the world! He knew the family history! The Jack that now rose from +the chair was a Jack of action, driven by the scourge of John Prather's +smile into obsession with the one idea which was crying: "I will know! I +will know!" + +Downstairs in the hall he learned over the telephone that Dr. Bennington +had just gone out on a call. It would be possible to see him yet +to-night! An hour later, as the doctor entered his reception-room he was +startled by a pacing figure in the throes of impatience, who turned on +him without formality in an outburst: + +"Dr. Bennington, you asked me in Little Rivers if I had ever met John +Prather. I have met him! Who is he? What is he to me?" + +The doctor's suavity was thrown off its balance, but he did not lose +his presence of mind. He was too old a hand at his profession, too +capable, for that. + +"I refuse to answer!" he said quickly and decisively. + +"Then you do know!" Jack took a step toward the doctor. His weight was on +the ball of his foot; his eyes had the fire of a command that was not to +be resisted. + +"Heavens! How like the ancestor!" the doctor exclaimed involuntarily. + +"Then you do know! Who is he? What is he to me?" + +It seemed as if the ceiling were about to crack. The doctor looked away +to avoid the bore of Jack's unrelenting scrutiny. He took a turn up and +down, rapidly, nervously, his fingers pressed in against the palms and +the muscles of his forearms moving in the way of one who is trying to +hold himself in control by an outward expression of force against inward +rebellion. + +"I dined with your father to-night!" he exclaimed. "I counseled him to +tell you the truth! I said that if he did not want to tell it for its own +sake, as policy it was the only thing to you! I--I--" he stopped, facing +Jack with a sort of grisly defiance. "Jack, a doctor is a confessor of +men! He keeps their secrets! Good-night!" And he strode through the +office door, which he closed behind him sharply, in reminder that the +interview was at an end. + +As Jack went down the steps into the night, the face of John Prather, +with a satirical turn to the lips, was preceding him. Now he walked madly +up and down and back and forth across town to the river fronts, with +panting energy of stride, as he fastened the leash of will on quivering +nerves. When dawn came it was the dawn of the desert calling to a brain +that had fought its way to a lucid purpose. It started him to the store +in the fervor of a grateful mission, while a familiar greeting kept +repeating itself in his ears on the way: + +"You won't forget, Jack, about giving me a chance to come along if you +ever go out West again, will you?" + +The question was one in answer to a promise; a reminder from certain +employees into whom he had fused his own spirit of enthusiasm about dry +wastes yielding abundance. + +"But you must work very hard," he had told them. "Not until you have +callouses on your hands can you succeed or really know how to enjoy a +desert sunrise or sunset. After that, you will be able to stand erect and +look destiny in the face." + +"No February slush!" Burleigh, the fitter, had said. "No depending on +one man to hold your job!" + +"Your own boss! You own some land and you just naturally get what you +earn!" according to Joe Mathewson. + +"And from what I can make out," observed one of the automobile van +drivers whom Jack had accompanied on the suburban rounds, "it requires +about as much brains as running an automobile to be what you'd call a +first-class, a number one desert Rube, Jack!" + +"Yes," Jack told him. "The process that makes the earth fruitful is not +less complicated than a motor, simply because it is one of the earliest +inventions. You mix in nature's carbureter light and moisture with the +chemical elements of the soil." + +"I'm on!" the chauffeur rejoined. "If a man works with a plow instead of +a screwdriver, it doesn't follow that his mind is as vacant as a cow that +stands stockstill in the middle of the road to show you that you can't +fool her into thinking that radiators are good to eat." + +In explaining the labor and pains of orange-growing, which ended only +with the careful picking and packing, Jack would talk as earnestly as his +father would about the tedious detail which went into the purchase and +sale of the articles in any department of the store. He might not be able +to choose the best expert for the ribbon counter, but he had a certain +confidence that he could tell the man or the woman who would make good in +Little Rivers. No manager was more thorough in his observation of clerks +for promotion than Jack in observing would-be ranchers. He had given his +promise to one after another of a test list of disciples; and at times he +had been surprised to find how serious both he and the disciples were +over a matter that existed entirely on the hypothesis that he was not +going to stay permanently in New York. + +This morning he was at the store for the last time, arriving even before +the delivery division, to circulate the news that he was returning to +Little Rivers. Trouble was brewing out there, he explained, but they +could depend on him. He would make a place for them and send word when he +was ready; and all whom he had marked as faithful were eager to go. Thus +he had builded unwittingly for another future of responsibilities when he +had paused in the midst of the store's responsibilities to tell stories +of how a desert ranch is run. + +But one disciple did not even want to wait on the message. It was Peter +Mortimer, whom Jack caught on his way to the elevator at eight, his usual +hour, to make sure of having the letters opened and systematically +arranged when his employer should appear. + +"So you are going, Jack! And--and, Jack, you know?" asked Peter +significantly. + +"Yes, Peter. And I see that you know." + +"I do, but my word is given not to tell." + +Through that night's march Jack had guessed enough. He had guessed his +fill of chill misery, which now took the place of the hunger of inquiry. +The full truth was speeding out to the desert. It was with John Prather. + +"Then I will not press you, Peter," he said. "But, Peter, just one +question, if you care to answer; was it--was it this thing that drove my +mother into exile?" + +"Yes, Jack." + +Then a moment's silence, with Peter's eyes full of sympathy and Jack's +dull with pain. + +"And, Jack," Peter went on, "well, I've been so long at it that suddenly, +now you're going, I feel choked up, as if I were about to overflow with +anarchy. Jack, I'm going to give notice that I will retire as soon as +there is somebody to take my place. I want to rest and not have to keep +trying to remember if I have forgotten anything. I've saved up a little +money and whatever happens out there, why, there'll be some place I can +buy where I can grow roses and salads, as you say, if nothing more +profitable, won't there?" + +"Yes, Peter. I know other fertile valleys besides that of Little Rivers, +though none that is its equal. I shall have a garden in one of them and +you shall have a garden next to mine." + +"Then I feel fixed comfortable for life!" said Peter, with a perfectly +wonderful smile enlivening the wrinkles of his old face, which made Jack +think once more that life was worth living. + +Later in the morning, after he had bought tickets for Little Rivers, Jack +returned to the house. When he stood devoutly before the portrait, whose +"I give! I give!" he now understood in new depths, he thought: + +"I know that you would not want to remain here another hour. You would +want to go with me." + +And before the portrait on the other side of the mantel he thought, +challengingly and affectionately: + +"And you? You were an old devil, no doubt, but you would not lie! No, +you would not lie to the Admiralty or to Elizabeth even to save your +head! Yes, you would want to go with me, too!" + +Tenderly he assisted the butler to pack the portraits, which were put in +a cab. When Jack departed in their company, this note lay on the desk in +the library, awaiting John Wingfield, Sr.'s return that evening: + +"Father: + +"The wire to Jim Galway which I enclose tells its own story. It was +written after our talk. When I was going out to send it I saw John +Prather and you in the hall. You said that you knew nothing of him. I +overheard what passed between you and him. So I am going back to Little +Rivers. The only hope for me now is out there. + +"I am taking the portrait of my mother, because it is mine. I am taking +the portrait of the ancestor, because I cannot help it any more than he +could help taking a Spanish galleon. That is all I ask or ever could +accept in the way of an inheritance. + +"Jack." + + + + +XXXIV + +"JOHN WINGFIELD, YOU--" + + +John Wingfield, Sr. had often made the boast that he never worried; +that he never took his business to bed with him. When his head touched +the pillow there was oblivion until he awoke refreshed to greet the +problems left over from yesterday. Such a mind must be a reliably +co-ordinated piece of machinery, with a pendulum in place of a heart. It +is overawing to average mortals who have not the temerity to say +"Nonsense!" to great egos. Yet the best adjusted clocks may have a lapse +in a powerful magnetic storm, and in an earthquake they might even be +tipped off the shelf, with their metal parts rendered quite as helpless +by the fall as those of a human organism subject to the constitutional +weaknesses of the flesh. + +It was also John Wingfield, Sr.'s boast to himself that he had never been +beaten, which average mortals with the temerity to say "Nonsense!"--that +most equilibratory of words--might have diagnosed as a bad case of +self-esteem finding a way to forget the resented incidental reverses of +success. Yet, even average mortals noted when John Wingfield, Sr. +arrived late at the store the morning after Jack's departure for the West +that he had not slept well. His haggardness suggested that for once the +pushbutton to the switch of oblivion had failed him. The smile of +satisfied power was lacking. In the words of the elevator boy, +impersonal observer and swinger of doors, "I never seen the old man like +that before!" + +But the upward flight through the streets of his city, if it did not +bring back the smile, brought back the old pride of ownership and +domination. He still had a kingdom; he was still king. Resentment rose +against the cause of the miserable twelve hours which had thrown the +machinery of his being out of order. He passed the word to himself that +he should sleep to-night and that from this moment, henceforth things +would be the same as they had been before Jack came home. Yes, there was +just one reality for him. It was enthroned in his office. This morning +was to be like any other business morning; like thousands of mornings to +come in the many years of activity that stretched ahead of him. + +"A little late," he said, explaining his tardiness to his secretary; a +superfluity of words in which he would not ordinarily have indulged. "I +had some things to attend to on the outside." + +With customary quiet attentiveness, Mortimer went through the mail with +his employer, who was frequently reassuring himself that his mind was as +clear, his answers as sure, and his interest as concentrated as usual. +This task finished, Mortimer, with his bundle of letters and notes in +hand, instead of going out of the room when he had passed around the +desk, turned and faced the man whom he had served for thirty years. + +"Mr. Wingfield--" + +"Well, Peter?" + +John Wingfield, Sr. looked up sharply, struck by Mortimer's tone, which +seemed to come from another man. In Mortimer's eye was a placid, +confident light and his stoop was less marked. + +"Mr. Wingfield, I am getting on in years, now," he said, "and I have +concluded to retire as soon as you have someone for my place; the sooner, +sir, the more agreeable to me." + +"What! What put this idea into your head?" John Wingfield, Sr. snapped. +Often of late he had thought that it was time he got a younger man in +Peter's place. But he did not like the initiative to come from Peter; not +on this particular morning. + +"Why, just the notion that I should like to rest. Yes, rest and play a +little, and grow roses and salads," said the old secretary, respectfully. + +"Roses and salads! What in--where are you going to grow them?" + +There was something so serene about Peter that his highly imperious, +poised employer found it impertinent, not to say maddening. Peter had a +look of the freedom of desert distances in his eyes already. A lieutenant +was actually radiating happiness in that neutral-toned sanctum of power, +particularly this morning. + +"I am going out to Little Rivers, or to some place that Jack finds +for me, where I am to have a garden and work--or maybe I better call +it potter around--out of doors in January and February, just like it +was June." + +Peter spoke very genially, as if he were trying to win a disciple on his +own account. + +"With Jack! Oh!" gasped John Wingfield, Sr. He struck his closed fist +into the palm of his hand in his favorite gesture of anger, the +antithesis of the crisp rubbing of the palms, which he so rarely used of +late years. Rage was contrary to the rules of longevity, exciting the +heart and exerting pressure on the artery walls. + +"Yes, sir," answered Peter, pleasantly. + +"Well--yes--well, Jack has decided to go back!" Then there rose strongly +in John Wingfield, Sr.'s mind a suspicion that had been faintly signaled +to his keen observation of everything that went on in the store. "Are any +other employees going?" he demanded. + +"Yes, sir, I think there are; not immediately, but as soon as he finds a +place for them." + +"How many?" + +"I don't think it is any secret. About fifty, sir." + +"Name some of them!" + +"Joe Mathewson, that big fellow who drives a warehouse truck, and +Burleigh;" and Peter went on with those of the test proof list +whom he knew. + +Every one of them had high standing. Every one represented a value. While +at first John Wingfield, Sr. had decided savagely that Mortimer should +remain at his pleasure, now his sense of outraged egoism took an opposite +turn. He could get on without Mortimer; he could get on if every employee +in the store walked out. There were more where they came from in a city +of five millions population; and no one in the world knew so well as he +how to train them. + +"Very good, Peter!" he said rigidly, as if he were making a declaration +of war. "Fix up your papers and leave as soon as you please. I will have +one of the clerks take your place." + +"Thank you. That is very kind, Mr. Wingfield!" Mortimer returned, so +politely, even exultantly, that his aspect seemed treasonable. + +John Wingfield, Sr. tried to concentrate his attention on some long and +important letters that had been left on his desk for further +consideration; but his mind refused to stick to the lines of typewriting. + +"This one is a little complicated," he thought, "I will lay it aside." + +He tried the second and the third letters, with no better results. A +tanned face and a pair of broad shoulders kept appearing between him and +the paper. Again he was thinking of Jack, as he had all night, to the +exclusion of everything else. Unquestionably, this son had a lot of +magnetic force in him; he had command of men. Why, he had won fifty of +the best employees out of sheer sentiment to follow him out to the +desert, when they had no idea what they were in for! + +His gaze fell and rested for some time on the bunch of roses on his desk. +Every morning there had been a fresh bunch, in keeping with the custom +that Jack had established. The father had become so used to their +presence that he was unconscious of it. For all the pleasure he got out +of them, they might as well have been in the cornucopia vase in the +limousine. His hand went out spasmodically toward the roses, as if he +would crush them; crush this symbol of the thing drawn from the mother +that had invaded the calm autocracy of his existence. The velvety +richness of the petals leaning toward him above the drooping grace of +their stems made him pause in realization of the absurdity of his anger. +A feeling to which he had been a stranger swept over him. It was like a +breaking instinct of dependableness; and then he called up Dr. +Bennington. + +"Well, he has gone!" he told the doctor, desperately. + +"You did not tell him the truth!" came the answer; and he noted that the +doctor's voice was without its usual suavity. It was as matter-of-fact to +the man of millions as if it had been advising an operation in a +dispensary case. + +"No, not exactly," John Wingfield, Sr. confessed. + +"I told you what his nature was; how it had drawn on the temperament of +his mother. I told you that with candor, with a decently human humility +appealing to his affections, everything was possible. And remember, he is +strong, stronger than you, John Wingfield! There's a process of fate in +him! John Wingfield, you--" The sentence ended abruptly, as if the doctor +had dropped the receiver on the hooks with a crash. + +Phantoms were closing in around John Wingfield, Sr.... His memory +ranged back over the days of ardent youth, in the full tide of growing +success, when to want a thing, human or material, meant to have it.... +And in his time he had told a good many lies. The right lie, big and +daring, at the right moment had won more than one victory. With John +Prather out of the way, he had decided on an outright falsehood to his +son. Why had he not compromised with Dr. Bennington's advice and tried +part falsehood and part contrition? But no matter, no matter. He would +go on; he was made of steel. + +Again the tanned face and broad shoulders stood between him and the +page. Jack was strong; yes, strong; and he was worth having. All the old +desire of possession reappeared, in company with his hatred of defeat. +He was thinking of the bare spot on the wall in the drawing-room in place +of the Velasquez. There would be an end of his saying: "The boy is the +spit of the ancestor and just as good a fighter, too; only his abilities +are turned into other channels more in keeping with the spirit of the +age!" An end of: "Fine son you have there!" from men at the club who had +given him only a passing nod in the old days. For he was not displeased +that the boy was liked, where he himself was not. The men whom he admired +were those who had faced him with "No!" across the library desk; who had +got the better of him, even if he did not admit it to himself. And the +strength of his son, baffling to his cosmos, had won his admiration. No, +he would not lose Jack's strength without an effort; he wanted it for his +own. Perhaps something else, too, there in the loneliness of the office +in the face of that bunch of roses was pulling him: the thrill that he +had felt when he saw the moisture in Jack's eyes and felt the warmth of +his grasp before Jack left the library. + +And Jack and John Prather were speeding West to the same destination! +They would meet! What then? There was no use of trying to work in an +office on Broadway when the forces which he had brought into being over +twenty years ago were in danger of being unloosed out on the desert, with +Jack riding free and the fingers of the ancestor-devil on the reins. John +Wingfield, Sr. called in the general manager. + +"You are in charge until I return," he said; and a few hours later he was +in a private car, bound for Little Rivers. + + + + +PART III + +HE FINDS HIS PLACE IN LIFE + + + + +XXXV + +BACK TO LITTLE RIVERS + + +As with the gentle touch of a familiar hand, the ozone of high altitudes +gradually and sweetly awakened Jack. The engine was puffing on an +upgrade; the car creaked and leaned in taking a curve. Raising the shade +of his berth he looked out on spectral ranges that seemed marching and +tumbling through dim distances. With pillows doubled under his head he +lay back, filling sight and mind with the indistinctness and spacious +mystery of the desert at night; recalling his thoughts with his last +view of it over two months ago in the morning hours after leaving El +Paso and seeing his future with it now, where then he had seen his +future with the store. + +"Think of old Burleigh raising oranges! I am sure that the trees will be +well trimmed," he whispered. "Think of Mamie Devore in the thick of the +great jelly competition, while the weight of Joe Mathewson's shoulders +starts a spade into the soil as if it were going right to the centre of +the earth. Why, Joe is likely to get us into international difficulties +by poking the ribs of a Chinese ancestor! Yes--if we don't lose our +Little Rivers; and we must not lose it!" + +The silvery face of the moon grew fainter with the coming of a ruddier +light; the shadows of the mountains were being etched definitely on the +plateaus that stretched out like vast floors under the developing glow +of sunrise; and the full splendor of day had come, with its majestic +spread of vision. + +"When Joe sees that he will feel so strong he will want to get out and +carry the Pullman," Jack thought. "But Mamie will not let him for fear +that he will overdo!" + +How slow the train seemed to travel! It was a snail compared to Jack's +eagerness to arrive. He was inclined to think that P.D., Wrath of God, +and Jag Ear were faster than through expresses. He kept inquiring of the +conductor if they were on time, and the conductor kept repeating that +they were. How near that flash of steel at a bend around a tongue of +chaotic rock, stretching out into the desert sea, with its command to man +to tunnel or accept a winding path for his iron horse! How long in coming +to it in that rare air, with its deceit of distances! Landmark after +landmark of peak or bold ridge took the angle of some recollected view of +his five years' wanderings. It was already noon when he saw Galeria from +the far end of the long basin that he had crossed, with the V as the +compass of his bearings, on the ride that brought him to the top to meet +Mary and Pete Leddy. + +Then the V was lost while the train wound around the range that formed +one side of the basin's rim. The blaze of midday had passed before it +entered the reaches of the best valley yet in the judgment of a +connoisseur in valleys; and under the Eternal Painter's canopy a spot of +green quivered in the heat-rays of the horizon. His Majesty was in a +dreamy mood. He was playing in delicate variations, tranquil and +enchanting, of effects in gold and silver, now gossamery thin, now +thick and rich. + +"What is this thing crawling along on two silken threads and so afraid of +the hills?" he was asking, sleepily. "Eh? No! Bring the easel to me, if +you want a painting. I am not going to rise from my easy couch. There! +Fix that cushion so! I am a leisurely, lordly aristocrat. Palette? No, I +will just shake my soft beard of fine mist back and forth across the sky, +a spectrum for the sunrays. So! so! I see that this worm is a railroad +train. Let it curl up in the shadow of a gorge and take a nap. I will +wake it up by and by when I seize my brush and start a riot in the +heavens that will make its rows of window-glass eyes stare." + +"I am on this train and in a hurry!" Jack objected. + +"Do I hear the faint echo of a human ego down there on the earth?" +demanded the Eternal Painter. "Who are you? One of the art critics?" + +"One of Your Majesty's loving subjects, who has been away in a foreign +kingdom and returns to your allegiance," Jack answered. + +"So be it. I shall know if what you say is true when I gaze into your +eyes at sunset." + +"I am bringing you a Velasquez!" Jack added. + +"Good! Put him where he can have a view out of the window of his first +teacher at work in the studio of the universe." + +The train crept on toward the hour of the Eternal Painter's riot and +toward Little Rivers, while the patch of green was softly, impalpably +growing, growing, until the crisscross breaks of the streets developed +and Jack could identify the Doge's and other bungalows. He was on the +platform of the car before the brakes ground on the wheels, leaning out +to see a crowd at the station, which a minute later became a prospect of +familiar, kindly, beaming faces. There was a roar of "Hello, Jack!" in +the heavy voices of men and the treble of children. Then he did not see +the faces at all for a second; he saw only mist. + +"Not tanned, Jack, but you'll brown up soon!" + +"Gosh! But we've been lonesome without you!" + +"Cure any case of sore eyes on record!" + +Jack was too full of the glory of this unaffected welcome in answer to +his telegram that he was coming to find words at first; but as he fairly +dropped off the steps into the arms of Jim Galway and Dr. Patterson he +shouted in a shaking voice: + +"Hello, everybody! Hello, Little Rivers!" + +He noted, while all were trying to grasp his hands at once, that the men +had their six-shooters. A half-dozen were struggling to get his suit +case. Not one of his friends was missing except the Doge and Mary. + +"Let the patient have a little air!" protested Dr. Patterson, as some +started in to shake hands a second time. + +"Fellow-citizens, if there's anything in the direct primary I feel sure +of the nomination!" said Jack drily. + +"You're already elected!" shouted Bob Worther. + +Around at the other side of the station Jack found Firio waiting his turn +in patient isolation, with P.D., Wrath of God, and Jag Ear. + +"_SÃ! sÃ_!" called Firio triumphantly to all the sceptics who had told +him that Jack would not return. + +Jack took the little Indian by the shoulders and rocked him back and +forth in delight, while Firio's eyes were burning coals of jubilation. + +"You knew!" Jack exclaimed. "You were right! I have come back!" + +"_SÃ, sÃ_! I know!" repeated Firio. + +"No stopping him from bringing the whole cavalcade to the station, +either," said Jim Galway. "And he wouldn't join the rest of us out in +front of the station. He was going to be his own reception committee and +hold an overflow meeting all by himself!" + +There was no disguising the fact that the equine trio of veterans +remembered Jack. With P.D. and Jag Ear the demonstration was +unrestrained; but however exultant Wrath of God might be in secret, he +was of no mind to compromise his reputation for lugubriousness by any +public display of emotional weakness. + +"Wrath of God, I believe you were a cross-eyed Cromwellian soldier in +your previous incarnation!" said Jack; "and as it is hard for a horse to +be crosseyed, you could not retain the characteristic. Think of that! +Wouldn't a cross-eyed Cromwellian soldier strike fear to the heart of any +loyalist? And Jag Ear, you're getting fat!" + +"I keep his hoofs hard. When he fat he eat less on trail!" explained +Firio, becoming almost voluble. "All ready for trail!" he hinted. + +"Not now, Firio," said Jack. "And, Firio, there's a package at the +station, a big, flat case. It came by express on the same train with +me--the most precious package in the world. See that it is taken to +the house." + +"SÃ! You ride?" asked Firio, offering P.D.'s reins. + +"No, we'll all walk." + +The procession had started toward the town when Jack felt something soft +poking him in the small of the back and looked around to find that the +cause was P.D.'s muzzle. Wrath of God and Jag Ear might go with Firio, +but P.D. proposed to follow Jack. + +"And after I have ridden you thousands of miles and you've heard all my +songs over and over! Well, well, P.D., you are a subtle flatterer! Come +along!" Then he turned to Jim Galway: "Has John Prather arrived?" + +"Yes, last night." + +"He is here now?" Jack put in quickly. + +"No; he pulled out at dawn on his way to Agua Fria." + +"Oh!" Jack was plainly disappointed. "He has the grant for the +water rights?" + +"Yes," said Jim, "though he hasn't made the fact public. He does +everything in his smooth, quiet fashion, with a long head, and I suppose +he hasn't things just right yet to spring his surprise. But there is no +disputing the fact--he has us!" + +One man henceforth was in control of the water. His power over the +desert community would be equivalent to control of the rains in a +humid locality. + +"You see," Jim continued, "old man Lefferts' partners had really never +sold out to him; so his transfer to the Doge wasn't legal. He turned his +papers over to Prather, giving Prather full power to act for him in +securing the partners' surrender of their claims and straighten out +everything with the Territory and get a bonafide concession. That is as I +understand it, for the whole business has been done in an underhand way. +Prather represented to the Doge that he was acting entirely in the +interests of the community and his only charge would be the costs. The +Doge quite believed in Prather's single-mindedness and public spirit. +Well, with the use of money and all the influences he could command, +including the kind that Pete Leddy exercises, he got the concession and +in his name. It was very smart work. I suppose it was due to the crafty +way he could direct the Doge to do his wishes that the Doge happened to +be off the scene at the critical stage of the negotiations. When he went +to New York all that remained was for him to obtain the capital for his +scheme. Lefferts and his partners had the underlying rights and the Doge +the later rights, thanks to his improvements, and Prather has them both. +Well, Leddy and his crowd have been taking up plots right and left; +that's their share in the exploitation. They're here, waiting for the +announcement to be made and--well, the water users' association is still +in charge; but it won't be when Prather says the word." + +"And you have no plans?" Jack asked. + +"None." + +"And the Doge?" + +"None. What can the old man do? Though nobody exactly blames him, a good +many aren't of a mind to consult him at all. The crisis has passed beyond +him. Three or four men, good men, too, were inclined to have it out with +John Prather; but that would have precipitated a general fight with +Leddy's gang. The conservatives got the hot-heads to wait till you came. +You see, the trouble with every suggestion is that pretty much everybody +is against it except the fellow who made it. The more we have talked, +the more we have drifted back to you. It's a case of all we've got in the +world and standing together, and we are ready to get behind you and take +orders, Jack." + +"Yes, ready to fight at the drop of the hat, seh, or to sit still on our +doorsteps with our tongues in our cheeks and doing the wives' mending, as +you say!" declared Bob Worther. "It's right up to you!" + +"You are all of the same opinion?" asked Jack. + +They were, with one voice, which was not vociferous. For theirs was that +significantly quiet mood of an American crowd when easy-going good nature +turns to steel. Their partisanship in pioneerdom had not been with +six-shooters, but with the ethics of the Doge; and such men when aroused +do not precede action with threats. + +"All right!" said Jack. + +There was a rustle and an exchange of satisfied glances and a chorus of +approval like an indrawing of breath. + +"First, I will see the Doge," Jack added; "and then I shall go to +the house." + +Galway, Dr. Patterson, Worther, and three or four others went on with him +toward the Ewold bungalow. They were halted on the way by Pete Leddy, +Ropey Smith, and a dozen followers, who appeared from a side street and +stopped across Jack's path, every one of them with a certain slouching +aggressiveness and staring hard at him. Pete and Ropey still kept faith +with their pledge to Jack in the _arroyo_. They were without guns, but +their companions were armed in defiance of the local ordinance which had +been established for Jack's protection. + +"Howdy do, Leddy?" said Jack, as amiably as if there had never been +anything but the pleasantest of relations between them. + +"Getting polite, eh! Where's your pretty whistle?" Leddy answered. + +"I put it in storage in New York," Jack said laughing; then, with a +sudden change to seriousness: "Leddy, is it true that you and John +Prather have got the water rights to this town?" + +"None of your d----d business!" Leddy rapped out. "The only business I've +got with you has been waiting for some time, and you can have it your way +out in the _arroyo_ where we had it before, right now!" + +"As I said, Pete, I put the whistle in storage and I have already +apologized for the way I used it," returned Jack. "I can't accommodate +you in the _arroyo_ again. I have other things to attend to." + +"Then the first time you get outside the limits of this town you will +have to play my way--a man's way!" + +"I hope not, Pete!" + +"Naturally you hope so, for you know I will get you, you--" + +"Careful!" Jack interrupted. "You'd better leave that out until we are +both armed. Or, if you will not, why, we both have weapons that nature +gave us. Do you prefer that way?" and Jack's weight had shifted to the +ball of his foot. + +Plainly this was not to Pete's taste. + +"I don't want to bruise you. I mean to make a clean hole through you!" +he answered. + +"That is both courteous and merciful; and you are very insistent, Leddy," +Jack returned, and walked on. + +"Just as sweet as honey, just as cool as ice, and just as sunny as +June!" whispered Bob Worther to the man next him. + +Again Jack was before the opening in the Ewold hedge, with its glimpse +of the spacious living-room. The big ivory paper-cutter lay in its +accustomed place on the broad top of the Florentine table. In line with +it on the wall was a photograph of Abbey's mural in the Pennsylvania +capitol and through the open window a photograph of a Puvis de Chavannes +was visible. Evidently the Doge had already hung some of the +reproductions of masterpieces which he had brought from New York. But no +one was on the porch or in the living-room; the house was silent. As +Jack started across the cement bridge he was halted by a laugh from his +companions. He found that P.D. was taking no risks of losing his master +again; he was going right on into the Doge's, too. Jim took charge of +him, receiving in return a glance from the pony that positively reeked +of malice. + +Again Jack was on his way around the Doge's bungalow on the journey he +had made so many times in the growing ardor of the love that had mastered +his senses. The quiet of the garden seemed a part of the pervasive +stillness that stretched away to the pass from the broad path of the +palms under the blazonry of the sun. As he proceeded he heard the +crunching of gravel under a heavy tread. The Doge was pacing back and +forth in the cross path, fighting despair with the forced vigor of his +steps, while Mary was seated watching him. As the Doge wheeled to face +Jack at the sound of his approach, it was not in surprise, but rather in +preparedness for the expected appearance of another character in a +drama. This was also Mary's attitude. They had heard of his coming and +they received his call with a trace of fatalistic curiosity. The Doge +suddenly dropped on a bench, as if overcome by the weariness and +depression of spirits that he had been defying; but there was something +unyielding and indomitable in Mary's aspect. + +"Well, Sir Chaps, welcome!" said the Doge. "We still have a seat in the +shade for you. Will you sit down?" + +But Jack remained standing, as if what he had to say would be soon said. + +"I have come back and come for good," he began. "Yes, I have come back to +take all the blue ribbons at ranching," he added, with a touch of garden +nonsense that came like a second thought to soften the abruptness of his +announcement. + +"For good! For good! You!" The Doge stared at Jack in incomprehension. + +"Yes, my future is out here, now." + +"You give up the store--the millions--your inheritance!" cried the Doge, +still amazed and sceptical as he sounded the preposterousness of this +idea to worldly credulity. + +"Quite!" + +There was no mistaking the firmness of the word. "To make your fortune, +your life, out here?" + +The Doge's voice was throbbing with the wonder of the thing. + +"Yes!" + +"Why? Why? I feel that I have a right to ask why!" demanded the Doge, in +all the majesty of the moment when he faced John Wingfield, Sr. in the +drawing-room. + +"Because of a lie and what it concealed. Because of reasons that may not +be so vague to you as they are to me." + +"A lie! Yes, a lie that came home!" the Doge repeated, while he passed +his hand back and forth over his eyes. The hand was trembling. Indeed, +his whole body was trembling, while he sought for self-control and to +collect his thoughts for what he had to say to that still figure awaiting +his words. When he looked up it was with an expression wholly new to +Jack. Its candor was not that of transparent mental processes in serene +philosophy or forensic display, but that of a man who was about to lay +bare things of the past which he had kept secret. + +"Sir Chaps, I am going to give you my story, however weak and blameworthy +it makes me appear," he said. "Sir Chaps, you saw me in anger in the +Wingfield drawing-room, further baffling you with a mystery which must +have begun for you the night that you came to Little Rivers when we +exchanged a look in which I saw that you knew that I recognized you. I +tried to talk as if you were a welcome stranger, when I was holding in my +rancor. There was no other face in the world that I would not rather have +seen in this community than yours! + +"How glad I was to hear that you were leaving by the morning train! How I +counted the days of your convalescence after you were wounded! How glad I +was at the news that you were to go as soon as you were well! With what a +revelry of suggestion I planned to speed your parting! How demoralized I +was when you announced that you were going to stay! How amazed at your +seriousness about ranching--but how distrustful! Yet what joy in your +companionship! At times I wanted to get my arms around you and hug you as +a scarred old grizzly bear would hug a cub. And, first and last, your +success with everybody here! Your cool hand in the duel! That iron in +your will which would triumph at any cost when you broke Nogales's arm! +For some reason you had chosen to stop, in the play period of youth, on +the way to the inheritance to overcome some obstacle that it pleased you +to overcome and to amuse yourself a while in Little Rivers--you with your +steadiness in a fight and your airy, smiling confidence in yourself!" + +"I--I did not know that I was like that!" said Jack, in hurt, groping +surprise. "Was I truly?" + +The Doge nodded. + +"As I saw you," he said. + +Jack looked at Mary, frankly and calmly. + +"Was I truly?" he asked her. + +"As I saw you!" she repeated, as an impersonal, honest witness. + +"Then I must have been!" he said, with conviction. "But I hope that I +shall not be in the future." And he smiled at Mary wistfully. But her +gaze was bent on the ground. + +"And you want it all--all the story from me?" the Doge asked, hesitating. + +"All!" Jack answered. + +"It strikes hard at your father." + +"The truth must strike where it will, now!" + +"Then, your face, so like your father's, stood for the wreck of two +lives to me, and for recollections in my own career that tinged my view +of you, Jack. You were one newcomer to Little Rivers to whom I could not +wholly apply the desert rule of oblivion to the past and judgment of +every man solely by his conduct in this community. No! It was out of the +question that I could ever look at you without thinking who you were. + +"You know, of course, that your father and I spent our boyhood in +Burbridge. Once I found that he had told me an untruth and we had our +difference out, as boys will; and, as I was in the right, he confessed +the lie before I let him up. That defeat was a hurt to his egoism that he +could not forget. He was that way, John Wingfield, in his egoism. It was +like flint, and his ambition and energy were without bounds. I remember +he would say when teased that some day he should have more money than all +the town together, and when he had money no one would dare to tease him. +He had a remarkable gift of ingratiation with anyone who could be of +service to him. My uncle, who was the head of the family, was fond of +him; he saw the possibilities of success in this smart youngster in a New +England village. It was the Ewold money that gave John Wingfield his +start. With it he bought the store in which he began as a clerk. He lost +a good part of the Ewold fortune later in one of his enterprises that did +not turn out well. But all this is trifling beside what is to come. + +"He went on to his great commercial career. I, poor fool, was an egoist, +too. I tried to paint. I had taste, but no talent. In outbursts of +despair my critical discrimination consigned my own work to the rubbish +heap. I tried to write books, only to find that all I had was a head +stuffed with learning, mixed with the philosophy that is death to the +concentrated application that means positive accomplishment. But I could +not create. I was by nature only a drinker at the fountain; only a +student, the pitiful student who could read his Caesar at eight, learn a +language without half trying, but with no ability to make my knowledge of +service; with no masterful purpose of my own--a failure!" + +"No one is a failure who spreads kindliness and culture as he goes +through life," Jack interrupted, earnestly; "who gives of himself +unstintedly as you have; who teaches people to bring a tribute of flowers +to a convalescent! Why, to found a town and make the desert bloom--that +is better than to add another book to the weight of library shelves or to +get a picture on the line!" + +"Thank you, Jack!" said the Doge, with a flash of his happy manner of +old, while there was the play of fleeting sunshine over the hills and +valleys of his features. "I won't call it persiflage. I am too selfish, +too greedy of a little cheer to call it persiflage. I like the illusion +you suggest." + +He was silent for a while, and when he spoke again it was with the tragic +simplicity of one near his climax. + +"Your father and I loved the same girl---your mother. It seemed that in +every sympathy of mind and heart she and I were meant to travel the long +highway together. But your father won her with his gift for ingratiation +with the object of his desire, which amounts to a kind of genius. He won +her with a lie and put me in a position that seemed to prove that the +lie was truth. She accepted him in reaction; in an impulse of heart-break +that followed what she believed to be a revelation of my true character +as something far worse than that of idler. I married the woman whom he +had made the object of his well-managed calumny. My wife knew where my +heart was and why I had married her. It is from her that Mary gets her +dark hair and the brown of her cheeks which make her appear so at home on +the desert. Soon after Mary's birth she chose to live apart from me--but +I will not speak further of her. She is long ago dead. I knew that your +mother had left your father. I saw her a few times in Europe. But she +never gave the reason for the separation. She would talk nothing of the +past, and with the years heavy on our shoulders and the memory of what we +had been to each other hovering close, words came with difficulty and +every one was painful. Her whole life was bound up in you, as mine was in +Mary. It was you that kept her from being a bitter cynic; you that kept +her alive. + +"Some of the Ewold money that John Wingfield lost was mine. You see how +he kept on winning; how all the threads of his weaving closed in around +me. I came to the desert to give Mary life with the fragments of my +fortune; and here I hope that, as you say, I have done something worthier +than live the life of a wandering, leisurely student who had lapsed into +the observer for want of the capacity by nature or training to do +anything else. + +"But sometimes I did long for the centres of civilization; to touch +elbows with their activities; to feel the flow of the current of +humanity in great streets. Not that I wanted to give up Little Rivers, +but I wanted to go forth to fill the mind with argosies which I could +enjoy here at my leisure. And Mary was young. The longing that she +concealed must be far more powerful than mine. I saw the supreme +selfishness of shutting her up on the desert, without any glimpse of the +outer world. I sensed the call that sent her on her lonely rides to the +pass. I feared that your coming had increased her restlessness. + +"But I wander! That is my fault, as you know, Sir Chaps. Well, we come to +the end of the weaving; to the finality of John Wingfield's victory. +Little Rivers was getting out of hand. I could plan a ranch, but I had +not a business head. I had neither the gift nor the experience to deal +with lawyers and land-grabbers. I knew that with the increase of +population and development our position was exciting the cupidity of +those who find quicker profit in annexing what others have built than in +building on their own account. I knew that we ought to have a great dam; +that there was water to irrigate ten times the present irrigated area. + +"Then came John Prather. I saw in him the judgment, energy, and ability +for organization of a real man of affairs. He was young, self-made, +engaging and convincing of manner. He liked our life and ideals in Little +Rivers; he wanted to share our future. In his resemblance to you I saw +nothing but a coincidence that I passed over lightly. He knew how to +handle the difficult situation that arose with the reappearance of old +man Lefferts' partners. He would get the water rights legalized beyond +dispute and turn them over to the water users' association; he would +bring in capital for the dam; the value of our property would be +enhanced; Little Rivers would become a city in her own right, while I was +growing old delectably in the pride of founder. So he pictured it and so +I dreamed. I was so sure of the future that I dared the expense of a trip +to New York. + +"And always to me, when I looked at you and when I thought of you, you +were the son of John Wingfield; you incarnated the inheritance of his +strength. But when, from the drawing-room, I saw your father, whom I had +not seen for fifteen years, then--well, the thing came to me in a burning +second, the while I glimpsed his face before he saw mine. He was smiling +as if pleased with himself and his power; he was rubbing the palms of his +hands together; and I saw that it was John Prather who was like John +Wingfield in manner, pose, and feature. You were like the fighting man, +your ancestor, and your airy confidence was his. And I, witless and +unperceiving, had been won by the same methods of ingratiation with which +John Wingfield had won the assistance of the Ewold fortune for the first +step of his career; with which he had won Alice Jamison and kept me +unaware of his plan while he was lying to her. + +"Finally, let us say, in all charity, that your father is what he is +because of what is born in him and for the same reason that the snowball +gathers size as it rolls; and I am what I am for the same reason that the +wind scatter the sands of the desert--a man full of books and tangent +inconsequence of ideas, without sense; a simpleton who knows a painting +but does not know men; a garrulous, philosophizing, blind, old +simpleton, whose pompous incompetency has betrayed a trust! Through me, +men and women came here to settle and make a home! Through me they +lose--to my shame!" + +The Doge buried his face in his hands and drew a deep breath more +pitiful than a sob, which, as it went free of the lungs, seemed to leave +an empty ruin of what had once been a splendid edifice. He was in +striking contrast to Mary, who, throughout the story fondly regarding +him, had remained as straight as a young pine. Now, with her rigidity +suddenly become so pliant that it was a fluid thing mixed of +indignation, fearlessness, and compelling sympathy, she sprang to his +side. She knew the touchstone to her father's emotion. He did not want +his cheek patted in that moment of agony. He wanted a stimulant; some +justification for living. + +"There is no shame in believing in those who speak fairly! There is +honor, the honor of faith in mankind!" she cried penetratingly. "There is +no shame in being the victim of lies!" + +"No! No shame!" the Doge cried, rising unsteadily to his feet +under the whip. + +"And we are not afraid for the future!" she continued. "And the other men +and women in Little Rivers are not afraid for the future!" + +"No, not afraid under this sun, in this air. Afraid!" + +An unconquerable flame had come into his eyes in answer to that in +Mary's. + +"The others have asked me to act for them, and I think I may yet save our +rights," said Jack. "Will you also trust me?" + +"Will I trust you, Jack? Trust you who gave up your inheritance?" +exclaimed the Doge. "I would trust you on a mission to the stars or to +lead a regiment; and the wish of the others is mine." + +Jack had turned to go, but he looked back at Mary. + +"And you, Mary? I have your good wishes?" + +He could not resist that question; and though it was clear that nothing +could stay him--as clear as it had been in the _arroyo_ that he would +keep his word and face Leddy--he was hanging on her word and he was +seeing her eyes moist, with a bright fire like that of sunshine on still +water. She was swaying slightly as a young pine might in a wind. Her eyes +darkened as with fear, then her cheeks went crimson with the stir of her +blood; and suddenly, her eyes were sparkling in their moisture like water +when it ripples under sunshine. + +"Yes, Jack," she said quietly, with the tense eagerness of a good cause +that sends a man away to the wars. + +"That is everything!" he answered. + +So it was! Everything that he could ask now, with his story and hers so +fresh in mind! He started up the path, but stopped at the turn to look +back and wave his hand to the two figures in a confident gesture. + +"Luck with you, Sir Chaps!" called the Doge, with all the far-carrying +force of his oldtime sonorousness. + +"Luck! luck!" Mary called, on her part; and her voice had a flute note +that seemed to go singing on its own ether waves through the tender +green foliage, through all the gardens of Little Rivers, and even away +to the pass. + +"Mary! Mary!" he answered, with a ring of cheeriness. "Luck for me will +always come at your command!" + +A moment later Galway and the others saw him smiling with a hope that ran +as high as his purpose, as he passed through the gateway of the hedge. + +"It will all be right!" he told them. + +With P.D. keeping his muzzle close to the middle of Jack's back, the +party started toward his house, which took them almost the length of the +main street. + +"Prather went by the range trail, of course?" Jack asked Galway. + +"No, straight out across the desert," said Galway. + +"Straight out across the desert!" exclaimed Jack, mystified. + +For one had a choice of two routes to Agua Fria, which was well over the +border in Mexico. Not a drop of water was to be had on the way across the +trackless plateau, but halfway on the range trail was a camping-place, +Las Cascadas, where a spring which spouted in a tiny cascade welcomed the +traveller. Under irrigation, most of the land for the whole stretch +between the two towns would be fertile. There was said to be a big +underground run at Agua Fria that could be pumped at little expense. + +"All I can make out of Prather's taking a straight line, which really is +slower, as you know, on account of the heavy sand in places, is to look +over the soil," said Galway. "He may be preparing to get a concession in +Mexico at the same time as on this side, so as to secure control of the +whole valley. It means railroads, factories, new towns, millions--but you +and I have talked all this before in our dreams." + +"Who was with him?" Jack asked. + +"Pedro Nogales. He seems to have taken quite a fancy to Pedro and Pedro +is acting as guide. Leddy recommended him, I suppose." + +"No one else?" + +"No." + +"Good!" said Jack. + +As they turned into the side street where the front of Jack's bungalow +was visible, Jim Galway observed that they had seen nothing of Leddy or +any of his followers. + +"Maybe he's gone to join Prather," said Bob Worther. + +But Jack paid no attention to the remark. He was preoccupied with the +first sight of his ranch in over two months. + +"It will be all right!" he called out to the crowd in his yard; for the +others who had met him at the station were waiting for him there. "Bob, +those umbrella-trees could shade a thin, short man now, even if he didn't +hug the trunk! Firio has done well, hasn't he?" he concluded, after he +had walked through the garden and surveyed the fields and orchards in +fond comparison as to progress. + +"The best I ever knew an Indian to do!" said Jim Galway. + +"And everything kept right on growing while I was away! That's the joy of +planting things. They are growing for somebody, if not for you!" + +Inside the house he found Firio, with the help of some of the ranchers, +taking the pictures out of their cases. Firio surveyed the buccaneer +for some time, squinting his eyes and finally opening them saucer-wide +in approval. + +"You!" he said to Jack. And of the Sargent, after equally deliberate +observation, he said: "A lady!" + +That seemed about all there was to say and expressed the thought of the +onlookers. + +"And, Firio, now it's the trail!" said Jack. + +"_SÃ, sÃ_!" said Firio, ever so softly. "We take rifles?" + +"Yes. Food for a week and two-days' water." + +It pleased Jack to hang the portraits while Firio was putting on Jag +Ear's pack; and he made it a ceremony in which his silence was +uninterrupted by the comments of the ranchers. They stood in wondering +awe before John Wingfield, Knight, hung where he could watch the Eternal +Painter at his sunset displays and looking at the "Portrait of a Lady" +across the breadth of the living-room, whose neutral tones made a perfect +setting for their dominant genius. + +"I believe they are at home," said Jack, with a fond look from one to the +other, when Firio came to say that everything was ready. + +"Señor Jack," whispered Firio insinuatingly, "for the trail you wear the +grand, glad trail clothes and the big spurs. I keep them shiny--the big +spurs!" He was speaking with the authority of an expert in trail +fashions, who would consider Jack in very bad form if he refused. + +"Why, yes, Firio, yes; it is so long since we have been on the trail!" +And he went into the bedroom to make the change. + +"I've never seen him quite so dumb quiet!" said Worther. + +Jack certainly had been quiet, ominously quiet and self-contained. When +he came out of the bedroom he was without the jaunty freedom of manner +that Little Rivers always associated with his full regalia. In place of +the dreamy distances in his eyes on such occasions were a sad +preoccupation and determination. When they went outside to Firio and the +waiting ponies, the Eternal Painter was in his evening orgy of splendor. +But even Jack did not look up at the sky this time as he walked along in +silence with his fellow-citizens to the point where the farthest furrow +of his ranch had been drawn across the virgin desert. His foot was +already in the stirrup when Jim Galway spoke the thought of all: + +"Jack, there's only two of you, and if it happened that you met +Leddy--" + +"It is Prather that I want to see," Jack answered. + +"But Leddy's whole gang! We don't know what your plans are, but if +there's going to be a mix-up, why, we've got to be with you!" + +"No!" said Jack, decidedly. "Remember, Jim, you were to trust me. This is +a mission that requires only two; it is between Prather and me. We are +going to get acquainted for the first time." + +Already Firio, riding Wrath of God, had started, and the bells of Jag Ear +were jingling, while the rifles, their bores so clean from Firio's care, +danced with the gleams of sunset in their movement with the burro's +jogging trot. Jack sprang into the saddle, his face lighting as the foot +came home in the stirrup. + +"It will be all right!" he called back. + +P.D. in the freshness of his long holiday, feeling a familiar pressure of +a leg, hastened to overtake his companions; and the group of Little +Riversites watched a chubby horseman and a tall, gaunt horseman, bathed +in gold, riding away on a hazy sea of gold, with Jag Ear's bells growing +fainter and fainter, until the moving specks were lost in the darkness. + + + + +XXXVI + +AROUND THE WATER-HOLE + + +Easy traveller had turned speedy traveller, on a schedule. Never had he +and Firio ridden so fast as in pursuit of John Prather, who had eight +hours' start of them on a two-days' journey. Jag Ear had to trot all the +time to keep up. Ounce by ounce he was drawing on his sinking fund of fat +in a constitutional crisis. + +"I keep his hoofs good. I keep his wind good. All right!" said Firio. + +It was after midnight before the steady jingle of Jag Ear's orchestra had +any intermission. An hour for food and rest and the little party was off +again in the delicious cool of the night, toward a curtain pricked with +stars which seemed to be drawn down over the edge of the world. + +"What sort of horses had Prather and Nogales?" Jack asked. He must reach +the water-hole as soon as Prather; for it was not unlikely that Prather +might have fresh mounts waiting there to take him on to the nearest +railroad station in Mexico. + +"Look good, but bad. Nogales no know horses!" Firio answered. + +"And they rode in the heat of the day!" said Jack, confidently. + +"_SÃ_! And we ride P.D. and Wrath of God!" + +There were no sign-posts on this highway of desert space except the +many-armed giant cacti, in their furrowed armor set with clusters of +needles, like tawny auroras gleaming faintly; no trail on the hard earth +under foot, mottled with bunches of sagebrush and sprays of low-lying +cacti, all as still as the figures of an inlaid flooring in the violet +sheen, with an occasional quick, irregular, shadowy movement when a +frightened lizard or a gopher beat a precipitate retreat from the +invading thud of hoofs in this sanctuary of dust-dry life. And the course +of the hoofs was set midway between the looming masses of the mountain +walls of the valley. + +Firio listened for songs from Señor Jack; he waited for stories from +Señor Jack; but none came. He, the untalkative one of the pair, the +living embodiment of a silent and happy companionship back and forth from +Colorado to Chihuahua, liked to hear talk. Without it he was lonesome. +If, by the criterion of a school examination, he never understood more +than half of what Jack said, yet, in the measure of spirit, he understood +everything. + +Now Jack was going mile after mile with nothing except occasional urging +words to P.D. His close-cut hair well brushed back from his forehead +revealed the sweep of his brow, lengthening his profile and adding to the +effect of his leanness. The moonlight on his face, which had lost its +tan, gave him an aspect of subdued and patient serenity in keeping with +the surroundings. You would have said that he could ride on forever +without tiring, and that he could go over a precipice now without even +seeing any danger sign. He had never been like this in all Firio's +memory. The silence became unsupportable for once to Indian taciturnity. +If Jack would not talk Firio would. Yes, he would ask a question, just to +hear the sound of a voice. + +"We go to fight?" + +"No, Firio." + +"Not to fight Prather?" + +"No." + +"To fight Leddy?" + +"I hope not." + +"Why we go? Why so--why so--" he had not the language to express the +strange, brooding inquiry of his mind. + +"I go to save Little Rivers." + +"_SÃ_!" said Firio, but as if this did not answer his question. + +"I go to get the end of a story, Firio--my story!" continued Jack. "I +have travelled long for the story and now I shall have it all from +John Prather." + +"_SÃ, sÃ_!" said Firio, as if all the knowledge in the world had flashed +into his head quicker than the hand of legerdemain could run the leaves +of a pack of cards through its fingers. "And then?" + +At last Firio had won a smile from the untanned face which could not be +the same to him until it was tanned. + +"Then I shall plant seeds and keep the ground around them soft and +the weeds out of it; and I shall wear my heart on my sleeve and lay a +siege--a siege in the open, without parallels or mines! A siege in +the open!" + +Firio did not understand much about parallels or mines or, for that +matter, about sieges; but he could see the smile fading from Jack's lips +and could comprehend that the future of which Jack was speaking was very +far from another prospect, which was immediate and vivid in his mind. + +"But you must fight Leddy! _SÃ, sÃ_! You must fight Leddy first!" + +"Then I must, I suppose," said Jack, absently. "All things in their turn +and time." + +"_SÃ_!" answered Firio. All things in their turn and time! This desert +truth was bred in him through his ancestry, no less than in the Eternal +Painter himself. + +Again the silence of the morning darkness, with all the stars twinkling +more faintly and some slipping from their places in the curtain into the +deeper recesses of the broad band of night on the surface of the rolling +ball. The plodding hoofs kept up their regular beat of the march of their +little world of action in the presence of the Infinite; plodding, +plodding on into the dawn which sent the last of the stars in flight, +while the curtain melted away before blue distances swimming with light. +Still bareheaded, Jack looked into the face of the sun which heaved above +an irregular roof of rocks. It blazed into the range on the other side of +the valley. It slaked its thirst with the slight fall of dew as a great, +red tongue would lick up crumbs. Sun and sky, cactus and sagebrush, rock +and dry earth and sand, that was all. Nowhere in that stretch of basin +that seemed without end was there a sign of any other horseman or of +human life. + +But at length, as they rode, their eyes saw what only eyes used to desert +reaches could see, that the speck in the distance was not a cactus or +even two or three cacti in line, but something alive and moving. +Perceptibly they were gaining on it, while it developed into two riders +and a pack animal in single file. Now Jack and Firio were coming into a +region of more stunted vegetation, and soon the two figures emerged into +a stretch of gray carpet on which they were as clearly silhouetted as a +white sail on a green sea. + +"Very thick sand there--five or six miles of it. It make this the +long way," said Firio. "They call it the apron of hell to fools who +ride at noon." + +"And beyond that how many miles to the water-hole?" + +"Five or six." + +But Firio knew a way around where the going was good. It made a +difference of two or three miles in distance against them, but two or +three times that in their favor in time and the strength taken out of +their ponies. + +"How long will Prather be in getting through the sand?" Jack asked. + +Firio squinted at the objects of their pursuit for a while, as if he +wanted to be exact. + +"Almost as many hours as miles," he said. + +Near the zenith now, the sun was a bulging furnace eye, piercing through +shirts into the flesh and sucking the very moisture of the veins. A +single catspaw was all that the Eternal Painter had to offer over that +basin shut in between the long, jagged teeth of the ranges biting into +the steel-blue of the sky. The savage, merciless hours of the desert day +approached; the hours of reckoning for unknowing and unprepared +travellers. + +Jag Ear's bells had a faint plaintiveness at intervals and again their +jingling was rapid and hysterical, as he tried to make up the distance +lost through a lapse in effort. He had ceased altogether to wiggle the +sliver of ear--the baton with which he conducted his orchestra--because +this was clearly a waste of energy. P.D.'s steps still retained their +dogged persistence, but their regular beat was slower, like that of a +clock that needs winding. His head hung low. Wrath of God was no more and +no less melancholy than when he was rusticating in Jack's yard. It seemed +as if his sad visage, so reliably and grandly sad, might still be +marching on toward the indeterminate line of the horizon when his legs +were worn off his body. + +"Firio, you brown son of the sun," said Jack, with a sudden display of +his old-time trail imagery, "you prolix, garrulous Firio, you knew! You +had the great equine trio ready, and look at the miles they have done +since sunset to prove it! You, P.D., favorite trooper of our household +cavalry! You, Wrath of God, don't be afraid to make an inward smile, for +your face will never tell on you! You, Jag Ear, beat a tattoo with the +fragment of the gothic glory of burrohood, for we rest, to go on all the +faster when the heat of the day is past!" + +While Prather and Nogales were riding over hell's apron, their pursuers +had saddles off hot, moist backs, over which knowing hands were run to +find no sores. After they had eaten, P.D. and Wrath of God and Jag Ear +stood in drooping relaxation which would make the most of every moment of +respite. Jack and Firio, with a blanket fastened to the rifles as +standards, made a patch of shade in which they lay down. + +"Have a nap, Firio," said Jack. "I will wake you when it is time +to start." + +"And you--you no sleep?" asked Firio. + +"I could not sleep to-day," Jack answered. "I don't feel as if I could +sleep until I've seen Prather and heard his story--my story--Firio!" And +he lay with eyes half closed, staring at the steel blue overhead. + +It was well after midday when they mounted for the remainder of the +journey. The Eternal Painter was shaking out the silvery cloud-mist of +his beard across a background that had a softer, kindlier, deeper blue. +The shadows of the ponies and their riders and Jag Ear and his pack no +longer lay under their bellies heavily, but were stretched out to one +side by the angle of the sun, in cheerful, jogging fraternity. Prather +and Nogales had again become only a speck. + +"Do you think that they are out of the sand?" asked Jack. + +"Very near," Firio answered. + +"Their ponies had a whole night's rest--we must not forget that," said +Jack; "and they must be in a hurry, for certainly Nogales had sense +enough to rest over noon." + +"_Quien sabe_!" answered Firio. "But we catch them--_sÃ, sÃ_!" + +Leading the way, Firio turned toward the eastern range until he came to a +narrow tongue of shale almost as hard to the hoofs as asphalt, that ran +like a shoal across that sea of sand. Rest had given the great equine +trio renewed life. P.D., reduced in rank to second place, could not think +of allowing more than a foot between his muzzle and the tail of Wrath of +God, who was bound to make up the time he had lost in pursuit of the +horizon. Another hypothesis of Jack's as to the cause of Wrath of God's +melancholy was that solemn Covenanter's inability to get any nearer to +the edge of the earth. Once he could poke his nose through the blue +curtain and see what was on the other side, the satisfaction of his +eternal curiosity might have made him a rollicking comedian. As for Jag +Ear, his baton was once more conducting his orchestra in spirited tempo. +He, who was nearest of all three in heart to Firio, might well have been +saying to himself: "I knew! I knew we were not going through the sand! +Firio and I knew!" + +So rapidly were they gaining that, when past the sand and they turned +back westward, it was only a question of half an hour or so to come up +with Prather and Nogales. Nogales had been riding ahead; but now Prather, +after gazing over his shoulder for some time at his pursuers, took the +lead. He was urging his horse as if he would avoid being overtaken. +Evidently Nogales did not share that desire, for he let Prather go on +alone. But Prather's horse was too tired after its effort in the sand and +he halted and waited until Nogales, at a slow walk, closed up the gap +between them, when they proceeded at their old, weary gait. + +As Jack and Firio came within hailing distance, both Prather and Nogales +glanced at them sharply; but no word was spoken on either side. The +absence of any call between these isolated voyagers of the desert sea was +strangely unlike the average desert meeting. Prather and Nogales did not +look back again, not even when Jack and Firio were very near. A neigh by +P.D., a break into a trot by him and Wrath of God, and Firio was saying +to Nogales: + +"You went right through the sand!" + +"_SÃ_!" answered Pedro, with a grin. + +Still Prather did not so much as turn his head to get a glimpse of Jack, +nor did he offer any sign of knowledge of Jack's presence when Jack +reined alongside him so close that their stirrup leathers were brushing. +Prather was gazing at the desert exactly in front of him, the reins +hanging loose, almost out of hand. His horse was about spent, if not on +the point of foundering. Jack was so near the mole on the cheek of the +peculiar paleness that never tans that by half extending his arm he might +have touched it. After all, it was only a raised patch of blue, a blemish +removable by the slightest surgical operation which its owner must have +preferred to retain. + +Firio and Nogales, also riding side by side, were also silent. There was +no sound except Jag Ear's bells, now sunk to a faint tinkle in keeping +with the slow progress of Prather's beaten horse. Looking at Prather's +hands, Jack was thinking of another pair of hands amazingly like them. In +the uncanniness of its proximity he was imagining how the profile would +look without the birthmark, and he found himself grateful for the +silence, which spoke so powerfully to him, in the time that it provided +for bringing his faculties under control. + +"How do you do?" he said at last, pleasantly. + +Probably the silence had been equally welcome to Prather in charting his +own course in the now unavoidable interview. He looked around slowly, and +he was smiling with a trace of the satire that Jack had seen in the +elevator, but smiling watchfully in a way that covers the apprehension of +a keen glance. And he saw features that were calm and eyes that were +still as the sky. + +"How do you do?" he answered; and paused as one who is about to slip a +point of steel home into a scabbard. "How do you do, brother?" he +added, as if uttering a shibboleth that could protect him from any +physical violence. + +"Brother! Brother! Yes!" repeated Jack, with dry lips. + +This shaping of conviction into fact so nakedly, so coolly, made all the +desert and the sky swim before him in kaleidoscopic patches of blue and +gray, shot with zigzag flashes. He half reeled in the saddle; his hands +gripped the pommel to hold himself in place. It was as if a long strain +of nervous tension had come to an end with a crack. Prather's smile took +a turn of deeper satisfaction. It was like John Wingfield, Sr.'s after +Jack had left the library. + +"This is the first time we have ever met to speak," said Prather, easily. + +"Yes!" assented Jack, the gray settling back into desert and the blue +into sky and the zigzag flashes becoming only the brilliance of late +afternoon sunshine. + +"Certainly it is time that we got acquainted, brother," said Prather. + +"It is!" agreed Jack. "It is time that I knew your story!" + +"Which you have hardly heard from your--I mean, our father!" The pause +between the "your" and the "our" was made with an appreciative +significance. "Well, you see, I was the brother who had the mole on +his cheek!" + +"Yes--pitifully yes!" said Jack, with a kind of horror at the expression +of this face in his father's likeness, no less than at the words. + +"Why, no! I've often thought of _you_ rather pitifully!" said Prather. + +"You well might!" Jack answered, feelingly. "We may well share a common +pity for each other." + +There was no sign that John Prather subscribed to the sentiment except in +a certain quizzical turn of his lips, as he looked away. + +"Yes, the story has been kept from me. I have come for it!" said Jack. + +"That is raking out the skeletons. But why not rake out our skeletons +together, you and I?" said Prather. + +It was clear that he enjoyed the prospect as an opportunity for +retributive enlightenment. + +"To begin with, I have the rights of primogeniture in my favor," he said. +"I was born a day before you were, in the same city of New York. My +mother's name was not down in the telephone list as Mrs. Wingfield, +however--I look at it all philosophically, you understand--and it was +just that which made the difference between you and me, outside of the +difference of our natures. But I am proud of my birth on both sides, in +my own way. My mother was won without marriage and she was true to +father. A woman of real ability, my mother! She was well suited to be +John Wingfield's wife; better, I think, in the practical world of +materialism than your mother. By a peculiar coincidence, unknown to +father, my mother called in Dr. Bennington. So you and I have a further +bond, in that the same doctor brought us into the world." + +"And my mother must have known this!" Jack exclaimed, in racking horror. + +At last the cause of her exile was clear in all its grisly monstrousness; +the source of the pain in her eyes in the portrait had been traced home. +Again he saw her white and trembling when she returned to the house in +Versailles to find a visitor there; and now he realized the fulness of +her relief when the frail boy said that he did not like his father. Her +travels had spoken the restlessness of flight in search of oblivion to +the very fact of his paternity. The "I give! I give!" of the portrait was +the giving of the infinity of her fine, sensitive being to him to make +him all hers. His feeling which had held him on the desert when he should +have gone home, that feeling of literal revulsion toward his inheritance, +was a thing born in him which had grown under her caresses and her +training. She had been living solely for him to that last moment when the +book dropped out of her hand; and the incarnation of that which had +killed her was riding beside him now in the flesh. He felt a weaving of +his muscles, a tightening of his nerves, as if waiting on the spark of +will, and all the strength that he had built in the name of the store was +madly tempted. But no! John Prather was not to blame, any more than +himself. He would listen to John Prather, as justice listens to evidence, +and endure his stare to the end. + +"Yes, your mother knew," continued Prather. "My mother made a point of +having her know. That was part of my mother's own bitterness. That was +her teaching to me from the first. She had no illusions. She knew the +advantages and the disadvantages of her position. She was and is one of +the few persons in the world of whom my father is a little afraid." + +"Then she still lives?" asked Jack sharply. + +"Yes, she is in California," Prather returned. "She often referred to the +mole on my cheek as the symbol of my handicap in the world of convention. +'But for the mole, Jack, you would have the store,' she often said. It +delighted her that I had my father's face. As I grew older the +resemblance became more marked. I could see that I pleased my father with +my practical ideas of life, which I developed when quite young. He saw to +it that my mother and I lived well and that I went to a good school. From +my books I drew the same lesson as from my peculiar inheritance; the +lesson that my mother was always inculcating. 'A bank account,' she would +repeat, 'will erase even a mole patch on the cheek. It is the supreme +power that will carry you anywhere, Jack. You must make money!' + +"When father came to see her he would talk with a candor with which I am +sure he never talked to your mother. He would tell of his successes, +revealing the strategy and system by which they were won, finding her +both understanding and sympathetic. I became a little blade that +delighted to get sharp against his big blade by asking him questions. He +did not want me about the store, and this was one of the things in which +my mother humored him. She knew just when to humor and just when to +threaten the play of the strong card which she always held. + +"All the while her ambition was laying its plans. It was that I should +have the Wingfield store one day, myself. Out of school hours I would +range the other department stores. You see, I had not only inherited my +father's face more strikingly than you had, but also his talents. I +spent the summer vacations of my fourteenth and fifteenth years in a +store. I won the attention of my superiors and promise of promotion. I +foresaw the day when I should so prove my ability that father would take +me into his own store, and then, gradually, I would make my place, +secure, while you were idling about Europe. And in those days you were +frail and I was vigorous. + +"There was no mistaking that father's sense of convention was the one +thing that stood between him and my desire. He feared the world's opinion +if the truth became known, and deep down in heart he could never get over +the pride of having married into your mother's family. You had very good +blood on the maternal side, as they say, while my mother had begun in the +cloak department and was self-made, like father. Again, I was so truly +his son in every instinct that he may have been a little jealous of me. +Father does not like to think that any other man was ever quite as great +as he is. I confess that is the way I feel, too. That is what life is, +after all--it is yourself. Yes, I saw the store as mine--surely mine, +with time!" + +Prather's reins lay across the pommel of the saddle drawn taut by the +drooping head of his horse, which was barely dragging one foot after +another. He gave Jack a glance of flashing resentment and then, in his +first impulse of real emotion, made a fist of one hand and drove it +angrily into the palm of the other before continuing. + +"Then father went to Europe to bring you home. He had decided for the +son of convention, the son of blood! Though self-made, he was for family +as against talent. Besides, it was a victory for him. At last you were +his. After your return there was a scene between mother and him, a cool, +bitter argument. He defied her to play her last card. He said that you +knew the truth and that she could at best only make a row. And he wanted +us out of New York; the place for me was a new country. He would make us +a handsome allowance. So my mother agreed to his terms and we went to the +Pacific coast. There I was to enter one of the colleges. My mother wanted +me to have a college education, you see. The last meeting between father +and me was very interesting, blade playing on blade. He really hated to +let me go, for by this time he knew how hopeless you were. He embraced me +and said that I would get on, anyway. I told him that the only trouble +was that while I was the real son, I had a mole on my cheek. + +"The West was best. There we could claim the favor of convention, Mrs. +Prather and her son. I matriculated at Stanford, but I saw nothing in it +for me. It was all dream stuff. Greek and Latin don't help in building a +fortune. They handicap you with the loss of time it takes to learn them, +at least; and I meant to be worth a million before I was thirty. Now I +know that I shall be worth two or three or four millions at thirty, if +all goes as I plan. So I cut college and broke for Goldfield. I ran a +store and was a secret partner in a saloon that paid better than the +store. I was in the game morning, noon, and night; it beat marching to +class to recite Horace and fiddle with the binomial theorem, as it must +for every man who counts for something in the world." + +Throughout, Prather's tone, except for the one moment of anger, had been +that of an even recital of facts by one who does not allow himself to +consider anything but facts in the judgment of his position. At times he +gave Jack covert glances out of the tail of his eye and saw Jack's face +white and drawn and his head lowered. Now Prather became the victim--so +he would have put it, no doubt--of another outburst of feeling. + +"But it was not like having the store!" he said. "No, my heart was in the +store; and that morning when you saw me looking down from the gallery I +was permitting myself to dream. I was thinking of what had come to you, +the fairy prince of good fortune, who had no talent for your inheritance, +and of what I might have done with it. I was thinking how I could win men +to work for me"--and there he was smiling with the father's charm--"and +of the millions to come if I could begin to build on the foundation that +father had laid. I saw branches in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia--a great +chain of stores all co-ordinated under my directing hand--I the master!" + +He rubbed the palms of his hands together as he had over the +scintillation of the jewelry counters. Though Jack had not looked around, +his ear recognized that crisp sound of exultant power. + +"Yes," Jack murmured thoughtfully, as if inviting Prather to go on with +anything further he might have to say. + +"All mine--mine!" Prather concluded, in a sort of hypnosis with his +own picture. + +Jack still stared at the earth, his profile limned in gold and the side +of his face toward Prather in shadow. They were nearing the clump of +cotton-woods around the water-hole at the base of a tongue of the range +which ran out into the desert, and Firio rode up to whisper in Spanish: + +"Señor Jack, see there! Horsemen!" + +Jack raised his head with a returning sense of his surroundings to see +some mounted men, eight in all he counted, riding along the range trail a +half mile nearer the water-hole than themselves. Their horses had the +gait of exhaustion after a long, hard ride. + +"You know who it is?" Firio whispered. + +"Yes," Jack answered. "They had the better trail and have outridden us. +All right, Firio!" + +"Leddy--Pete Leddy and some of his men!" exclaimed Prather, shading his +eyes to watch the file of figures now passing under the cotton-woods. It +seemed to relieve him. "I suppose he came on my account," he added, +nodding to Nogales. + +"Yes," said Nogales, with a grin. He always either grinned or his face +had a half savage impassiveness. + +"I wonder if Leddy thought I was in danger," and Prather gave Jack a +knowing glance of satisfaction. "We shall all camp together," he +added, smiling. + +Jack did not answer for a moment. He was intent on the cotton-woods. +Leddy and his companions appeared on the other side, the figures of +riders and horses bathed in the sunset glow. Then they disappeared as if +the earth had swallowed them up. + +"They are going on! They are not going to stop!" said Prather +apprehensively. + +"There is a basin beyond the water-hole and the seepage makes a little +pasture," Jack explained. "You will see them back in a moment." + +"Oh, yes!" said Prather, with a thrill in his voice; and again the +palms of his hands were making that refrain of delight. "But I have +told my story," he resumed. "Now may I ask you a question? Why have you +come back?" + +Jack looked around frankly and dispassionately. + +"To save Little Rivers from you! I understand that you have secured the +water rights." + +"Well, then, I have!" declared Prather, confidently, "and I mean to have +the rights for the whole valley!" and he struck his fist into his palm. +"You see," he went on, with another flash of satire, "it is not exactly +fair that you should have the store and Little Rivers, too. I had heard +of the possibilities here from my friend Leddy, who was also at +Goldfield. A useful man in his place! He got his sixth notch there. When +I came and looked around and saw that here was the opportunity I wanted, +I wired father that in any fair division of territory everything west of +the Mississippi belonged to me"--he was showing some bravado in his sense +of security now, when he saw that Leddy and his men were returning +through the cotton-woods to the water-hole--"and I should like to have +you out of my way. I told him you were the picture of health, even if you +didn't have anything in your head, and if you were ever going to learn +the business it was time that you began. But father is always careful. +Naturally he wanted to check off my report with another's; for he didn't +want you back if you were ill. So he sent Dr. Bennington out to get +professional confirmation of my statement." + +"And you told Jasper Ewold that you wanted the rights only to turn them +over to the water users' association and then bring in capital to build a +dam, with everybody sharing alike in the prosperity that was to come." + +"Yes, and Jasper Ewold was so simple! Well, what I told him was +strategy--strategy of which I think father would approve. When you have a +big object in view the end must justify the means. Look at the situation! +Two hundred thousand acres of land waiting on water to be the most +fertile in the world! Why, when I rode up the valley the first time and +saw what could be done, I was amazed to think that such an opportunity +should be lying around loose. Little Rivers was so out of the way that +other promoters had overlooked it, and everybody had sort of taken it for +granted that Jasper Ewold and his water users' association really had +legal possession. It was my chance. I thought big. That dam should be +mine. I had the money I had made in Goldfield, but it was not enough for +my purpose. + +"Where should I turn for outside capital that would not demand a +majority interest in the project? I concluded that it was time father +did something for me in return for giving up the store. Besides this +call of justice I had another influence with him. I was sure that when +he told my mother that you knew the truth he was making a statement that +suited his purpose. I was sure that you knew nothing of my story and +that father did not want you to know it. I was ready to tell if he did +not meet my demands. + +"Well, you know how he can talk when he wants to gain a point. I fancy +that I talked as well as father when I showed him how that dam would pay +for itself in five years in tolls and twenty per cent on the capital +after that; when I showed him how a population ten times that of his +store would have to take their water from me; when I showed him all the +side issues of profit from town sites and the increase of values of the +big holdings which Leddy's men would take up for me. You ought to have +seen his eyes glow. He could not withstand his pride in me. 'You have the +gift, the one gift!' he said. I told him yes, it was in the blood; and I +struck while the iron was hot. I got an outright sum from him; and he +could not resist a chance to share all that profit when capital was to be +had in New York for three or four per cent. He went in as silent partner, +as I was in the saloon at Goldfield; as a partner with a minority +interest." + +John Prather paused to laugh to himself over his victory, while the +movement of palm on palm was rapid and prolonged. + +"Our arrangement amounted to the commercial division of territory for the +family, which I had suggested," he went on with appreciative irony. "You +and he were to have the east side of the Mississippi and I was to have +the west, and you were never to know my story. Publicly, father and I +were strangers and quits, and we came to this agreement in the room of a +down-town hotel. + +"The day before I started West I simply had to have a look through the +store--the store that I loved and that I had to lose. Yes, the store is +far more to my taste than this rough western life. Naturally, as my +existence was to be kept a secret from you, when you followed me to the +elevator and tried to get acquainted I couldn't have it." + +"But as the elevator descended you pointed to the mole," said Jack. + +"Did I? I suppose that was an involuntary, instinctive pleasantry. The +previous evening father and I had had a farewell visit together. We went +into the country." + +"The night after the scene in the drawing-room!" Jack thought. + +"I knew that father was worried because he had to make an effort to show +that he was not. Usually he can cover his worries perfectly. He said that +he might have a fight in order to keep you and that he very much wanted +you to stay. But he did not succeed," concluded Prather, fist driving +into palm. "You came on the express after me." + +"Because, fortunately, you went to the house to have a look at the +ancestor!" + +"Yes," said Prather. "But I did not see you." + +"However, I saw you from the landing and overheard what passed between +you and father!" + +"No matter!" cried Prather harshly. "I am prepared for you!" He looked +toward the water-hole significantly. "And the concession is mine! The dam +will be mine!" + +"The dam could be built and all the valley might bloom without so much +power passing into the hands of one man," said Jack. + +P.D. scenting the pasturage and feeling the pangs of thirst was starting +forward at a smarter pace; but Jack held him back to the snail's crawl of +Prather's pony. + +"Who would do it? Jasper Ewold? Jim Galway?" Prather demanded. "What +these men need is a leader. They don't realize what I am doing for them. +Do they think I want to put in ten years out here for nothing? For every +dollar that they make for me they are going to make one for themselves. +That's the rule of prosperity. I am not robbing them. I am taking only my +fair share in return for creative business genius. The fellows in Little +Rivers who sulk and don't get on will have only themselves to thank." + +"But they lose their independence," Jack was arguing quietly, as if he +would thrash out the subject. "There are other things than money in +this world." + +"There's nothing much money won't do!" said Prather. + +"It will not give one self-respect or courage or moral fibre; it will not +bring the gift of poetry, music, or painting; or turn a lie into truth; +or bring back virtue to a woman who has been defiled; or make the courage +to face death calmly." + +"It will do all I want!" Prather answered. "Father not having been true +to his agreement by keeping you in New York, why should I keep his +secret? He breaks faith; I break faith. It seems to me as if there were +no escaping the penalty of my birth. I no sooner arrive than I find the +whole town knows of your return; and not only that, but a wire comes from +father saying that we had better not meet until he comes." + +"Until he comes! Yes, go on!" + +"Well, as you say, you are here to save Little Rivers and that meant an +interview with me, and--well," again the palms in their crisp movement, +"before I started out I told Pete Leddy that if you came after me I +should look to him for protection, and it seems he is on time." + +"Yes," said Jack, without looking at Prather. All the while he had kept +watch on the water-hole, and he received Prather's announcement stoically +as a confirmation of his suspicions. + +"So, if you will take my advice, brother, the best thing for you to do is +to ride back before we reach the water-hole, unless you prefer Leddy's +company. This time he will fight you in his way." + +"My horse is tired and there is neither water nor feed for him except +there." Jack stated this quietly and stubbornly, as he nodded toward the +cotton-woods. Then he looked around to Prather. Suddenly Prather found +himself looking at a face that seemed to have only the form of that face +by the side of which he had been riding. It was as if another man had +taken Jack's place in the saddle. The ancestor was rising in Jack. +Prather saw an electric spark in Jack's eyes, the spark of the high +voltage that made his muscles weave and a flutter come in his cheeks. +"No, I am not going back until I have recovered the rights that you have +taken from Little Rivers!" he said. + +Prather in sudden confusion realized that he had let his feelings go too +soon. They were not yet at the water-hole, and he was within easy reach +of that hand working on the reins in a way that promised an outburst. + +"You think of physical violence against me--your own flesh and blood!" he +said defensively. + +He saw Jack shudder in reaction and knew that he was safe for the moment. +When Jack looked away at the water-hole Prather's fingers slipped to his +own six-shooter and rested there, twitching nervously; and in the rear +Firio was watching both him and Nogales shrewdly. + +From any outward sign now, Jack might have been starting on another +journey with quiet eagerness; a journey that might end at a precipice a +few yards ahead or at the other side of the world. Of this alone you +could be sure from the resoluteness of his features, that he was going +straight on; while Firio, in the telepathy of desert companionship, +understood that he was missing no developing detail within the narrow +range of vision in front of P.D.'s nose. Trusting all to Jack, Firio was +on wires, ready for a spring in any direction. + +They were coming to the edge of a depression of an old watercourse that +wound around past the cotton-woods to the ridge itself and included the +basin where Leddy and his followers had tethered their horses. But this +part of it was dry sand. The standing figures around the water-hole had +sunk down. Jack could see them as lumps in a row. A blade of flame from +the setting sun fell on them, revealing the glint of rifle barrels. + +"Firio! Quick--down! P.D., down!" Jack called, dismounting with a leap; +and as though in answer to his warning came the singing of bullets about +their ears. + +P.D. had been trained to sink on all fours at a word and he and Jack +together dropped into the cover of the _arroyo_, below the desert line. +When he looked around Firio was at his side, still holding the reins of +Wrath of God. But Wrath of God's sturdy, plodding nature had little +facility in learning tricks. A tiny stream of blood was flowing down his +forehead and he lay still. At last, all in loyal service, he had reached +the horizon. His bony, homely, good old face seemed singularly peaceful, +as if satisfied with the reward at his journey's end. Jag Ear was +standing beside P.D. and Prather's burro next to him, both unharmed. +Nogales's horse had also been killed, but its rider was safe. Prather was +crawling down the side of the _arroyo_ on his belly, digging his hands +into the dirt, his face white and contorted and his eyes shifting back +and forth in ghastly incomprehension. His horse followed him and sank +down in final surrender to exhaustion. + +By common impulse, Jack and Firio seized the rifles from Jag Ear's pack, +while Nogales, a spectator, squatted beside Prather. + +"What--what does it mean?" Prather gasped, spasmodically. "I--I--was it +Leddy that fired on us?" + +"Yes," said Jack over his shoulder, as he and Firio started up the bank +of the _arroyo_ facing the water-hole. "No doubt of it." + +"It was you they wanted--not me--not me! I--I--" + +"I don't know. At all events, I do not mean they shall rush us!" Jack +answered, as he and Firio hugged the slope with their rifles resting on +top and only their heads showing above it. + +"No! It couldn't be that they recognized me. They will let me by! They +expect me!" + +"Yes, you belong on their side!" Jack called back. + +"I will send out a flag of truce!" said Prather, brightening with +the thought. "You, Nogales, take my handkerchief and go and explain +to Leddy!" + +Nogales seemed agreeable to the suggestion. Indeed, he was very +expeditious in starting. While Jack never took his eye off the sight of +his barrel, Nogales walked across the gleaming interval between the two +parties waving Prather's handkerchief. Leddy rose on his knee watchfully, +rifle in hand, while he spoke with Nogales. Then Nogales started back +with his head thrown up jubilantly, but stopped when he was within +calling distance and sang out, truculently: + +"Leddy get you both! He get everything!" + +He turned on his heel and soon was another lump around the water-hole. + +"That makes nine, Firio!" said Jack. + +He smiled in relief to be rid of Nogales; smiled in happy confidence, as +if he were truly the ancestor's child. + +"_SÃ_!" answered Firio, as if he had just as soon there were a regiment +against them. He was happy beyond words. He patted his rifle barrel; he +spread out his big red bandanna beside his elbow and on it nicely +arranged a couple of extra charges of cartridges. + +Prather remained flat on the bottom of the _arroyo_, overwhelmed. It was +some time before he could speak. + +"I--I don't understand! It isn't possible!" he said finally. + +"Everything is possible with Leddy. It seems that there can be peace +between him and me in this valley in only one way," Jack answered. + +"But me! I suppose he found out that I--" Prather stopped without +finishing the sentence. "What am I to do?" he asked Jack in livid appeal. + +"Why, it is three against nine, if you choose!" Jack answered. "You have +a rifle, and it is for your life." + +"My life!" Prather gasped, another wave of fear submerging him. + +"Yes. We have no horses with which to make our escape and we should be +winged as soon as we exposed ourselves. Leddy means that we shall die of +thirst, or die fighting." + +Through all this dialogue Jack had been speaking to the head that lay +between his eye and a target. As Prather reached up a trembling hand to +take his rifle from the back of his burro one of the lumps around the +water-hole rose, possibly to change position. When it became the +silhouette of a kneeling man, Jack fired and the figure plunged forward +like an automaton that had had its back broken. + +"Eight!" whispered Firio. + +"Duck!" Jack told him; for a response instantly came in a volley that +kicked up the dust around their heads. + +But Jack's rifle lay in limp hands. + +"Eight!" he repeated, dazedly. "And I shot to kill--to kill!" + +His face blanched with horror at the thing that he had done. It seemed as +if the strength had been struck out of him. He appeared ready to let +destiny overtake him rather than fire again. Then as in a flash, the +ancestor in him reappeared and in his features was written that very +process of fate which Dr. Bennington had said was in him. Again his hand +was firm on the barrel and his eye riveted on the sight, as he drew +himself up until he lay even with the bank of the _arroyo_. + +The volley from the cotton-woods had swept over Prather's head at the +instant that he had taken hold of his rifle. It dropped from his grasp. +He burrowed in the sand under the pressure of that near and sinister rush +of singing breaths. + +"I can't! I can't!" he said helplessly. + +He was leaden flesh, without the power to move. At his words Jack glanced +back to see a dropped jaw and glassy, staring eyes. + +"You are suffering!" exclaimed Jack. "Are you hit?" + +"No!" Prather managed to say, and reached out for his rifle in clumsy +desperation, as if he were feeling for it in the dark. + +"Take your time!" said Jack encouragingly, as one would to a victim of +stage fright. "There isn't any danger for the moment, while advantage of +position is with us--the sun over our shoulders and in their faces." + +The lumps around the water-hole grew smaller. Evidently, as a result of +the lesson, they were creeping backward on their stomachs to a less +exposed position. Two had quite disappeared, or else the brilliant play +of light had melted them into the golden carpet of reflected sunshine on +which they rested. Directly, Jack saw two figures creeping over the rim +of the pasturage basin. + +"So, that's it!" he said to Firio. + +Firio nodded his understanding of Leddy's plan to take them in flank +under cover of the _arroyo_. + +"We shall have to respond in kind!" said Jack. + +He left his hat where his head had been and began crawling along the side +of the _arroyo_, but paused to call to Prather, who, now that no bullets +were flying, was trying the mechanism of his rifle with a somewhat +steadier hand: + +"Prather, if you could manage to get up there beside Firio and join him +in pouring out a magazine full at the right moment, it would help! If +not, put your hat up there beside mine. You can do that without exposing +yourself." + +Jack's tone was that of one who urges a tired man to take a few more +steps, or an invalid without any appetite to try another sup of broth. It +had no hint of irony. + +"No matter," said Firio. "Leddy know he can't fight. Leddy know there is +only two of us!" His tone was without satire, but its sting was sharper +than satire; that of an Indian shrug over a negligible quantity. It +started Prather on all fours laboriously toward him. + +"I am going to the turn in the _arroyo_ that commands the next turn," +Jack explained. "When I whistle you empty your magazines. Keep your heads +down and fire fast, no matter if not accurately, so as to disturb their +aim at me!" + +"_SÃ_!" said Firio. "I know!" No one could deny that he was having a very +good time making war in the company of Señor Jack. "Yes, Mister Prather," +he added, when, after toiling painfully on his belly for the few feet he +had to go, Prather lay with his stark face near Firio's; a face strangely +like that of John Wingfield, Sr. when he saw Jasper Ewold from the +drawing-room doorway. "For your life, Mister Prather! _SÃ_! Up a little +more! Chin high as mine, so! Eye on sight, so!" + +Prather obeyed in an abyssmal sort of shame which, for the time being, +conquered his fear, though not his palsy; for his rifle barrel trembled +on its rest. + +Meanwhile, Jack had crept to the bend in the _arroyo_. He was listening. +It would not do to show his head as a warning of his presence. Faintly he +heard men moving in the sand, moving slowly and cautiously. At the moment +he chose as the right one, with rifle cocked and finger on trigger, he +gave his signal. Then he sprang to the top of the bank, fully exposed to +the marksmen at the water-hole. For no half measure would do. He must +have a full view of the bottom of the next bend. There he saw two +crawling figures. He fired twice and dropped down with three or four +stinging whispers in his ears and a second volley overhead as he was +under cover. Again he sprang up over the bank in the temptation to see +the result of his aim. One of the would-be flankers lay prostrate and +still, face downward. The other was disappearing beyond the second bend. + +"Seven, now!" he thought miserably, in comprehension of the whole +business as ridicule in human savagery. "They won't trouble us again +immediately. They will wait on darkness and thirst," he concluded; and +called, as he turned back, to Firio: "It worked like a charm, O son of +the sun! They could not fire at all straight with your bullets flying +about their heads, disturbing their--" His speech ended at sight of +Prather, half rolling, half tumbling down the slope, his hands over his +face, while he uttered a prolonged moan. + +"Bullet hit a rock under sand!" said Firio, as Jack hastened to assist +Prather, who had come to a halt at the very bottom of the _arroyo_ and +lay gasping on his side. Jack took hold of Prather's wrists to draw his +hands away from the wound. + +"My God! Out here, like a rat in a trap!" Prather groaned. "When I have +all life before me! In sight of millions and power--a rat in a trap out +on this damnable desert, as if I were of no more account than a rancher!" + +"Let me see!" said Jack; for Prather was holding his hands tight against +his face, as if he feared that all the blood in his body would pour out +if he removed them. "Let me see! Maybe it is not so bad!" + +Prather let his hands drop and the right one which was over the cheek +with the mole was splashed red between the fingers. On the cheek was a +raw spot, from which ran a slight trickle. The mole had gone. A splinter +of rock, or perhaps a bullet, with its jacket split, ricocheting +sidewise, had torn it clean from the flesh. + +"Not at all dangerous!" said Jack. + +"No?" exclaimed Prather, in utter relief. + +"It will heal in a fortnight!" + +A small medicine case was among the regular supplies that were always +packed on that omnibus of a burro, Jag Ear. While Jack was bandaging the +wound, Firio, who kept watch, had no news to report. + +"Nothing matters! They will get us, anyway!" Prather moaned. The shock of +being hit had quite finished any pretence at concealing his mortal fear +of the outcome. + +"Oh, I wouldn't say that! We already have them down to seven!" said Jack +encouragingly, as he made a pillow of a blanket and bade Prather rest +his head on it. + +But he knew well that they were a seven who had learned wisdom from the +fate of their comrades. From Nogales, Leddy must have heard of the loss +of two horses. At best, but one of the beleaguered three had any means of +escape. Leddy could well afford to curb his impatience as he camped +comfortably by the water-hole, while his own horses grazed. + +The sun was still above the western ridge in the effulgence of its adieu +for the day. Jack was on his knee, with the broad, level glare full on +him, looking at Prather, who was in the shadow; and his reflections were +mixed with that pity which one feels toward another who is lame or blind +or suffers for the want of any sense or faculty that is born to the +average human being. For a man of true courage rarely sees a coward as +anything but a man ailing; he is grateful for nature's kindness to +himself. And the spark of John Wingfield, Knight, skipping generations +before it settled on a descendant, had not chosen John Prather for its +favor. The ancestor was all Jack's. + +Prather, in his agony of mind, had moments of wondering envy as he +watched Jack's changing expression. He could see that Jack, in entire +detachment from his problem of fighting Leddy, was thinking soberly in +the silence of the desert, unconscious in his absorption of the presence +of any other human being. Suddenly his eyes opened wide in the +luminousness of a happy discovery; his lips turned a smile of supreme +satisfaction, and his face seemed to be giving back the light of the sun. + +"It's all right!" he said. "Yes, everything is going to be all right!" + +"How?" asked Prather wistfully, feeling the infection of the confident +ring of Jack's tone. + +"There is one horse left," said Jack. "He is in better condition than +Leddy imagines. When darkness comes you can get away with him and by +morning he will have brought you to water at Las Cascadas, halfway on the +range trail. Then you will be quite safe." + +"Yes! Yes!" Prather half rose, his breath coming fast, his eyes ravenous. + +"And in return you will give Little Rivers back its water rights! Is that +a bargain?" Jack asked. + +"Give up my concession and all it means to me! Give it up absolutely--its +millions!" objected Prather, in an uncontrollable impulse of greed. + +"King Richard III, you remember," Jack declared, with a trace of his old +humor breaking out over the new aspect of the situation, "said he would +give his kingdom for a horse. He could not get the horse and he lost both +his kingdom and his life. If he had been able to make the trade he might +have saved his life and perhaps--who knows?--have won another kingdom." + +"I will save my life!" Prather concluded; but under his breath he added +bitterly: "And you get both the store and Little Rivers!" in the +prehensile instinct which gains one thing only to covet another. + +"You have the papers for the concession with you?" Jack asked. + +"I--I--" + +"Yes!" interposed Jack firmly. + +"Yes!" Prather admitted. + +"And you have pencil and paper to make some sort of transfer that will be +the first legal step in undoing what you have done?" + +"Yes." + +While Prather was occupied with this, Jack found pencil and paper on his +own account and by the light of the sun's last rays and in the happiness +of one who has brought a story to a good end, he wrote to his father: + +"John Prather will tell you how he and I met out on the desert before you +came and of the long talk we had. + +"You wanted a son who would go on building on the great foundation you +had laid. You have one. He said that you wanted to give him the store. +The reason why you might not give it to him no longer exists. The mole is +gone. Of course there will be a scar where the mole was. I, too, shall +have to carry a scar. But the means is in your power to go far toward +erasing his, for his mother, Mrs. Prather, is still living. + +"So everything is clear. Everything is coming out right. John Prather and +I change places, as nature intended that we should. You need have no +apprehensions on my account. Though I had not a cent in the world I could +make my living out here--a very sweet thought, this, to me, with its +promise of something real and practical and worth while, at which I can +make good. I know that you are going to keep the bargain that Prather and +I have made; and think of me as over the pass and very happy as I write +this, in the confidence that at last all accounts have been balanced and +we can both turn to a fresh page in the ledger. JACK." + +When Jack, after he had received the transfer, gave the letter to Prather +to read, Prather was transfixed with incredulity. + +"You mean this?" he gasped blankly, as his surprise became articulate. + +"Yes. You have quite the better of King Richard--you gain both the +kingdom and the horse." + +"The store, yes, the store--mine! Mine--the store!" said Prather, in a +slow, passionate monotone, his fingers trembling with the very triumph of +possession as he thrust the letter into his pocket. "The store, yes, the +store!" he repeated, amazement mixed with exultation. "But--" his keen, +practical mind was recovering its balance; he was on guard again. Between +him and the realization of his inheritance lay the shadow of the fear of +the miles in the night. "But--there is no trick?" he hazarded in +suspicion. + +"No!" + +Jack spoke in such a way that it removed the last doubt for Prather, who +kneaded his palms together in a kind of frenzy, oblivious of all except +the moneyed prospect of the kingdom craved that had become a kingdom won. + +"How long before I start?" he asked. + +"As soon as the first darkness settles and before the moon rises." + +"I shall need some food," Prather went on ingratiatingly. "And they say +wounds bring on fever. Have you any water to drink on the way?" + +"We will fix you up the best we can. I will divide what water remains +between you and P.D. He shall have his share now and you can drink +yours later." + +The sun had set. The afterglow was fading, and in a few minutes, when the +light was quite out of the heavens, Jack announced that it was time for +Prather to start. + +"How shall I know the direction?" Prather asked. + +"Trust P.D. He will find it," said Jack. He held the stirrup for Prather +to mount with the relief of freeing himself at last from the clinging +touch of the phantoms. "You are perfectly safe. In two days you will be +mounting the steps of a Pullman on your way to New York." + +"And you? What--what are you going to do?" Prather inquired hectically, +with a momentary qualm of shame. + +"Why, if Firio and I are to have water to make coffee for breakfast we +must take the water-hole!" Jack answered, as if this were a thing of +minor importance beside seeing Prather safely on his way. "Be sure not to +overwater P.D. after the night's ride, and don't overdo him on the final +stretch, and turn him over to Galway when you arrive. Home, P.D.! Home!" +he concluded, striking that good soldier with the flat of his hand on the +buttocks. And P.D. trotted away into the night. + +Jack listened to the hoof-beats on the soft earth dying away and then +crept up beside Firio on the bank and gazed into the black wall in the +direction of the cotton-woods. A slight glow in the basin, which must be +Leddy's camp-fire, was the only sign of life in the neighborhood. The +silence was profound. He had not spoken a word to Firio. With one +problem forever solved, he was absorbed in another. + +"Leddy drinks, eats, waits!" whispered Firio. "If we try to go they +hunt us down!" + +"Yes," said Jack. + +"And we not go, eh? We stay? We fight?" + +"For water, Firio, yes! Two against seven!" + +"_SÃ_!" Firio had no illusions about the situation. "_SÃ_!" he repeated +stoically. + +"And, Firio--" Jack's hand slipped with a quick, gripping caress onto +Firio's shoulder. An inspiration had come to the mind of action, just as +a line comes to a poet in a flash; as one must have come to the ancestor +many times after he had gone into a tight place trusting to his wits and +his blade to bring him out. "And, Firio, we are going to change our base, +as the army men say--and change it before the moon rises. Jag Ear, we +shall have to leave you behind," he added, when they had dropped back to +the burro's side. "Just make yourself comfortable. Leddy surely wouldn't +think of killing so valuable a member of the non-combatant class. We will +come for you, by and by. It will be all right!" + +He gave the sliver of ear an affectionate corkscrew twist before he and +Firio, taking all their ammunition, crawled along the bottom of the +_arroyo_ and up the ridge where they settled down comfortably behind a +ledge commanding the water-hole at easy range. + +"It's lucky we learned to shoot in the moonlight!" Jack whispered. + +"_SÃ"!_ Firio answered, in perfect understanding. + + + + +XXXVII + +THE END OF THE WEAVING + + +For over a week a private car had stood on a siding at Little Rivers. +Every morning a porter polished the brasswork of the platform in heraldry +of the luxury within. Occasionally a young man with a plaster over a +wound on his cheek would walk up and down the road-bed on the far side of +the car. Indeed, he had worn a path there. He never went into town, and +any glances that he may have cast in that direction spoke his desire to +be forever free of its sight. Not a train passed that he did not wish +himself aboard and away. But as heir-apparent he had no thought of +endangering his new kingdom by going before his father went. He meant to +keep very close to the throne. He had become clingingly, determinedly +filial. At times the gleam of the brasswork would exercise the same +hypnosis over his senses as the scintillation of the jewelry counters of +the store, and he would rub his hands crisply together. + +John Wingfield, Sr. spent little time in the car. Morning and afternoon +and evening he would go over to Dr. Patterson's with the question: "How +is he?" which all Little Rivers was asking. The rules of longevity were +in oblivion and the routine channels of a mind, so used to teeming +detail, had become abysses as dark and void as the canyons of the range. + +On the day of his arrival in Little Rivers he found a town peopled +mostly by women and children. All of the men who could bear arms and get +a horse had departed, and with them Mary. Thereby hangs a story all to +the honor of little Ignacio. After Jack had ridden away with his +insistent refusal of assistance, apprehension among the group that +watched him disappear in the gathering darkness was allayed by reports of +men who had been at the store, where they found the Leddyites hanging +about as usual. True, no one had seen either Pete or Ropey Smith, but +Lang said that they were upstairs playing poker, a favorite relaxation +from the strain of their intellectual life. + +But Ignacio learned from another Indian in Lang's service that Pete and +seven of his best shots had started for Agua Fria about the same time as +Jack, while the rest of the gang that had been left behind were making it +their business to cover the leader's absence. Distrusting Ignacio, they +locked him in a closet off the bar. In the early hours of the morning he +succeeded in escaping with his news, which he carried first to Mary. She +was not asleep when he rapped at her door. It had been a night of +wakefulness for her, recalling the night after her meeting with Jack on +the pass before the duel in the _arroyo_. + +"I for Señor Don't Care, now! I for every devil in him! And they go to +kill him!" was the incoherent way in which he began his announcement. + +In an hour the alarm had travelled from house to house. While the gang +slept at Lang's or in their tents, a solemn cavalcade set forth quietly +into the night, with rifles slung over their shoulders or lying across +the pommels of their saddles, bound to rescue Jack Wingfield. They had +protested against Mary's going with all the old, familiar arguments that +occur to the male at thought of a woman in physical danger. + +"It is the least that any of us can do," she declared. + +"But of what service will you be?" Dr. Patterson asked. + +"No one can say yet," she replied. "And no one shall stop me!" She was +driven by the same impulse that had sent her across the _arroyo_ in face +of the ruffians on the bank to Jack's side after he was wounded. "My pony +can keep up with the best of yours," she added. + +Leddy had eight hours' start on a two-days' journey. It was not in +horse-flesh to gain much on his fast and hardened ponies. There was +little chance that Jack could hold out against such odds as he must face, +even if he had escaped an ambush. So they rode in desperation and in +silence, each too certain of what was in the minds of the others to make +pretence of a hope that was not in the heart. + +Their only stop for rest was at Las Cascadas in the hot hours of midday. +Darkness had fallen when they overtook a solitary horseman coming from +Agua Fria. John Prather drew rein well to one side of the trail. He had +a moment, as they approached, in which to think out his explanation of +his position. + +"It's Prather, and riding P.D.!" Galway announced. + +"Where is Jack Wingfield?" came the merciless question as in one +voice from all. + +"You are his friends! You have come to rescue him!" Prather cried. + +He seemed overcome by his relief. At all events, the wildness of his +exclamation in face of the force barring the trail was without +affectation. + +"There is time? There is hope?" + +"Yes! yes!" gasped Prather, as the men began to surround him. + +"Why are you here? Why on his horse?" + +"Leddy turned on me, too! I was fighting at Wingfield's side! We got two +of them before dark! Then I was wounded and couldn't see to shoot. And I +came for help. And you will be in time! He's in a good position!" + +"I think you are lying!" said Galway. + +"He couldn't help it!" said Bob Worther. + +"How--how would I have his horse if he weren't willing?" protested +Prather, frantically. + +"By stealing it, in keeping with your character!" + +"Yes! On general principles we ought to--" + +"I have a piece of rope!" called a voice from the rear. + +"There isn't any tree. But we can drop him over the wall of a chasm!" + +Spectral figures with set faces appallingly grim in the thin moonlight +pressed close to Prather. + +"My God! No!" he pleaded, throatily. "We fought together, I tell you! We +drew lots to see which one should take the risk of riding through danger +to save the other!" + +"Lying again!" + +"Here's the rope! All we've got to do is to slip a noose over his head!" + +"It's a clean piece of rope, isn't it?" said the Doge, in his mellow +voice. "I don't think it's worth while soiling a clean piece of +rope. Come! Taking his life is no way to save Jack's. Come, we are +losing time!" + +"Right, Doge!" said the man with the rope. "But it is some satisfaction +to give him a scare." + +"And take care of P.D.!" called another. + +"Yes, if you founder Jack's pony you'll hear from us a-plenty!" + +This was their adieu to John Prather, who was left to pursue his way in +safety to his kingdom, while they rode on, following a hard path at the +base of the range. Those with the best horses took the lead, while the +heavier men, including the Doge, whose weight was telling on their +mounts, fell to the rear. Mary was at the head, between Dr. Patterson and +Jim Galway. + +The stars flickered out; the moon grew pale, and for a while the horsemen +rode into a wall of blackness, conscious of progress only by the sound of +hoof-beats which they were relentlessly urging forward. Then dawn flashed +up over the chaos of rocks, pursuing night with the sweep of its +broadening, translucent wings across the valley to the other range. The +tops of the cotton-woods rose out of the sparkling sea, floating free of +any visible support of trunks, and the rescuers saw that they were near +the end of their journey. + +There was a faint sound of a shot; then of another shot and another. +After that, the radiant, baffling silence of daybreak on uninhabited +wastes, when the very active glory of the spreading, intensifying light +ought, one feels, to bring paeans of orchestral splendor. It set +desperation in the hearts of the riders, which was communicated to weary +ponies driven to a last effort of speed. And still no more shots. The +silence spoke the end of some tragedy with the first streaks from the +rising sun clearing a target to a waiting marksman's eye. + +Around the cotton-woods was no sign of human movement; nothing but +inanimate, dark spots which developed into prostrate human forms, in +pantomimic expression of the story of that night's work done in the +moonlight and finished with the first flush of morning. Two of the +outstretched figures were lying head to head a few yards apart on either +side of the water-hole. The one on the side toward the ridge was +recognized as Jack, still as death. Another a short distance behind him, +at the sound of hoof-beats looked up with face blanched despite its dark +skin, the parched lips stretched over the teeth; but in Firio's eyes +there was still fire, as he whispered, "All right!" before he sank back +unconscious. A wound in his shoulder had been bandaged, but the wrist of +his gun hand lay beside a fresh red spot on the earth. + +Jack had a bullet hole in the upper left arm plugged with a bit of +cotton; and a deep furrow across the temple, which was bleeding. His +rigid fingers were still gripping his six-shooter. He lay partly on his +side, facing Leddy, who had rolled over on his back dead. + +Mary and Dr. Patterson dropped from their horses simultaneously. The +doctor pressed his hand over Jack's heart, to find it still beating. + +"Jack!" they whispered. "Jack!" they called aloud. + +He roused slightly, lifting his weary eyelids and gazing at them as if +they were uncertain shadows who wanted some kind of an explanation from +him which he had not the strength to give. + +"We must drink--blaze away, Leddy," he murmured. "I'm coming down after +the stars go out--close--close as you like--we must drink!" + +"No vital hit!" said the doctor; while Mary bringing water assisted him +to bathe the wounds before he dressed them. "No, not from a bullet!" he +added, after the dressing was finished and he had one hand on Jack's hot +brow and the other on his pulse. + +Then he attended to Firio, who was talking incoherently: + +"Take water-hole--boil coffee in the morning--quail for dinner, Señor +Jack--_sÃ, sÃ_!" + +When they had moved Jack and Firio into the shadow of the cotton-woods +and forced water down their throats, Firio revived enough to recognize +those around him and to cry out an inquiry about Jack; but Jack himself +continued in a stupor, apparently unconscious of his surroundings and +scarcely alive except for breathing. Yet, when litters of blankets and +rifles tied together had been fashioned and attached to the pack-saddles +of tandem burros, as he was lifted into place for the return he seemed to +understand that he was starting on a journey; for he said, disjointedly: + +"Don't forget Wrath of God--and Jag Ear is thirsty--and bury Wrath of God +fittingly--give him an epitaph! He was gloomy, but it was a good gloom, a +kind of kingly gloom, and he liked the prospect when at last he stuck his +head through the blue blanket of the horizon." + +Those of the party who remained behind for the last duty to the dead +counted its most solemn moment, perhaps, the one that gave Wrath of God +the honorable due of a soldier who had fallen face to the enemy. Bob +Worther wrote the epitaph with a pencil on a bit of wood: "Here lies the +gloomiest pony that ever was. The gloomier he was the better he went and +the better Jack Wingfield liked him;" which was Bob's way of interpreting +Jack's instructions. + +Then Worther and his detail rode as fast as they might to overtake the +slow-marching group in trail of the litters with the question that all +Little Rivers had been asking ever since, "How is he?" A ghastly, +painfully tedious journey this homeward one, made mostly in the night, +with the men going thirsty in the final stretches in order that wet +bandages might be kept on Jack's feverish head; while Dr. Patterson was +frequently thrusting his little thermometer between Jack's hot, +cracking lips. + +"If he were free of this jouncing! It is a terrible strain on him, but +the only thing is to go on!" the doctor kept repeating. + +But when Jack lay white and still in his bedroom and Firio was rapidly +convalescing, the fever refused to abate. It seemed bound to burn out the +life that remained after the hemorrhage from his wounds had ceased. Men +found it hard to work in the fields while they waited on the crisis. John +Wingfield, Sr. sat for hours under Dr. Patterson's umbrella-tree in +moody absorption. He talked to all who would talk to him. Always he was +asking about the duel in the _arroyo_ which was fought in Jack's way. He +could not hear enough of it; and later he almost attached himself to the +one eye-witness of the final duel, which had been fought in Leddy's way. + +When Firio was well enough to walk out he was to be found in a long +chair on Jack's porch, ever raising a warning finger for silence to +anyone who approached and looking out across the yard to Jag Ear, who was +winning back the fat he had lost in a constitutional crisis, and P.D., +who, after bearing himself first and last in a manner characteristic of a +pony who was P.D. but never Q., seemed already none the worse for the +hardships he had endured. The master of twenty millions would sit on the +steps, while Firio occupied the chair and regarded him much as if he were +a blank wall. But at times Firio would humor the persistent inquirer with +a few abbreviated sentences. It was out of such fragments as this that +John Wingfield, Sr. had to piece the story of the fight for the +water-hole. + +"Señor Jack and Mister Prather, they no look alike," said Firio one day, +evidently bound to make an end of the father's company. "Anybody say +that got bad eyes. Mister Prather"--and Firio smiled peculiarly--"I call +him the mole! He burrow in the sand, so! His hand tremble, so! He act +like a man believe himself the only god in the world when he in no +danger, but when he get in danger he act like he afraid he got to meet +some other god!" + +"But Jack? Now, after Prather had gone?" persisted the father greedily. + +"We glad the mole go. It sort of hurt inside to think a man like him. He +make you wonder what for he born." + +John Wingfield, Sr. half rose in a sudden movement, as if he were about +to go, but remained in response to another emotion that was stronger than +the impulse. + +"And Jack? He kept his head! He figured out his chances coolly! Now, +that trick he played by going up on the ridge under cover of darkness?" + +"No trick!" said Firio resentfully, in instinctive defence. "That the +place to fight! Señor Jack he see it." + +"And all through the night you kept firing?" + +"_SÃ,_ after moon very bright and over our shoulders in their faces! +_SÃ_, at the little lumps that lie so still. When they move quick like +they stung, we know we hit!" + +"Ah, that was it! You hit! You hit! And the other fellows couldn't. You +had the light with you--everything! Jack had seen to that! He used his +head! He--he was strong, strong!" + +Quite unconsciously, John Wingfield, Sr. rubbed his palms together. + +"When you pleased you always rub your hands same as Mister Prather," +observed Firio. + +"Oh! Do I? I--" John Wingfield, Sr. clasped his fingers together +tightly. "Yes, and the finish of the fight--how was that?" + +"Sometimes, when there no firing, Señor Jack and Leddy call out to each +other. Leddy he swear hard, like he fight. Señor Jack he sing back his +answers cheerful, like he fight. Toward morning we both wounded and +only Leddy and one other man alive on his side. When a cloud slip over +the moon and the big darkness before morning come, we creep down from +the ridge and with first light we bang-bang quick--and I no remember +any more." + +"Forced the fighting--forced it right at the end!" cried John Wingfield, +Sr. in the flush of a great pride. + +"The aggressive, that is it--that is the way to win, always!" + +"But Señor Jack no fight just to win!" said Firio. "He no want to fight. +In the big darkness, before we crawl down to the water-hole, he call out +to Leddy to make quits. He almost beg Leddy. But Leddy, he say: 'I never +quit and I get you!' 'Sorry,' says Señor Jack, with the devil out again, +'sorry--and we'll see!' No, Señor Jack no like to fight till you make him +fight and the devil is out. He fight for water; he fight for peace. He no +want just to win and kill, but--but--" bringing his story to an end, +Firio looked hard at the father, his velvety eyes shot with a +comprehending gleam as he shrugged his shoulders--"but you no understand, +you and the mole!" + +John Wingfield, Sr. shifted his gaze hurriedly from the little Indian. +His face went ashen and it was working convulsively as he assisted +himself to rise by gripping the veranda post. + +"Why do you think that?" he asked. + +"I know!" said Firio. + +His lips closed firmly. That was all he had to say. John Wingfield, Sr. +turned away with the unsteady step of a man who is afraid of slipping or +stumbling, though the path was hard and even. + +Out in the street he met the cold nods of the people of a town where his +son had a dominion founded on something that was lacking in his own. And +one of those who nodded to him ever so politely was a new citizen, who +had once been a unit of his own city within a city. + +Peter Mortimer had arrived in Little Rivers only two days after his late +employer. Peter had been like some old tree that everybody thinks has +seen its last winter. But now he waited only on the good word from the +sick-room for the sap of renewed youth to rise in his veins and his +shriveled branches to break into leaf at the call of spring. + +And the good word did come thrilling through the community. The physical +crisis had passed. The fever was burning itself out. But a mental crisis +developed, and with it a new cause for apprehension. Even after Jack's +temperature was normal and he should have been well on the road to +convalescence, there was a veil over his eyes which would not allow him +to recognize anybody. When he spoke it was in delirium, living over some +incident of the past or of sheer imagination. + +Now he was the ancestor, fitting out his ship: + +"No, you can't come! A man who is a malingerer on the London docks would +be a malingerer on the Spanish Main. I don't want bullies and boasters. +Let them stay at home to pick quarrels in the alleys and cheer the Lord +Mayor's procession!" + +Now his frigate was under full sail, sighting the enemy: + +"Suppose they have two guns to our one! That makes it about even! We'll +get the windward side, as we have before! Who cares about their guns once +we start to board!" + +Another time he was on the trail: + +"I'll grow so strong, so strong that he can never call me a weakling +again! He will be proud of me. That is my only way to make good." + +Then he was apprenticed to the millions: + +"All this detail makes me feel as if my brains were a tangled spool of +thread. But I will master it--I will!" + +Again, he was happily telling stories to the children; or tragically +pleading with Leddy that there had been slaughter enough around the +water-hole; or serenely planning the future which he foresaw for himself +when the phantoms were laid: + +"I may not know how to run the store, but I do seem to fit in here. We +can find the capital! We will build the dam ourselves!" + +His body grew stronger, with little appreciable change otherwise. For an +instant he would seem to know the person who was speaking to him; then he +was away on the winds of delirium. + +"His mind is too strong for him not to come out of this all right. It is +only a question of time, isn't it?" insisted the father. + +"There was a far greater capacity in him for suffering in that hellish +fight than there was in Pete Leddy," said Dr. Patterson. "He had +sensitiveness to impressions which was born in him, at the same time that +a will of steel was born in him--the sensitiveness of the mother, +perhaps, and the will of the ancestor. His life hung by a thread when we +found him and his nerves had been twisted and tortured by the ordeal of +that night. And that isn't all. There was more than fighting. Something +that preceded the fight was even harder on him. I knew from his look when +he set out for Agua Fria that he was under a terrible strain; a strain +worse than that of a few hours' battle--the kind that had been weighing +day after day on the will that grimly sustained its weight. And that +wound in the head was very close, very, and it came at the moment when +he collapsed in reaction after that last telling shot. Something snapped +then. There was a fracture of the kind that only nature can set. Will he +come out of this delirium, you ask? I don't know. Much depends upon +whether that strain is over for good or if it is still pressing on his +mind. When he rises from his bed he may be himself or he may ride away +madly into the face of the sun. I don't know. Nobody on earth can know." + +"Yes, yes!" said John Wingfield, Sr. slowly. + +In Jack's wildest moments it was Mary's voice that had the most telling +effect. However low she spoke he seemed always to recognize the tone and +would greet it with a smile and frequently break into verses and scraps +of remembered conversations of his boyhood exile in villa gardens. One +morning, when she and Dr. Patterson had entered the room together, Jack +called out miserably: + +"Just killing, killing, killing! What will Mary say to me, now?" + +He raised his hands, fingers spread, and stared at them with a ghastly +look. She sprang to the bedside and seized them fast in hers, and bending +very close to him, as if she would impart conviction with every quivering +particle of her being, she said: + +"She thinks you splendid! She is glad, glad! It is just what she wanted +you to do. She wished every bullet that you fired luck--luck for your +sake, to speed it straight to the mark!" + +He seemed to understand what she was saying, as one understands that +shade is cool after the broiling torment of the sun. + +"Luck will always come at your command, Mary!" he whispered, repeating +his last words when he left the Ewold garden to go to the wars. + +"And she wants you to rest--just rest--and not worry!" + +This had the effect of a soothing draught. Smilingly he fell back on the +pillow and slept. + +"You put some spirit into that!" said the doctor, after he and Mary had +tiptoed out of the room; "a little of the spirit in keeping with a +dark-eyed girl who lives in the land of the Eternal Painter." + +"All I had!" answered Mary, with simple earnestness. + +At noon Jack was still sleeping. He slept on through the last hours +of the day. + +"The first long stretch he has had," ran the bulletin, from tongue to +tongue, "and real sleep, too--the kind that counts!" + +In the late afternoon, when the coolness and the shadows of evening were +creeping in at the doors and windows, the doctor, Peter Mortimer, the +father, and Firio were on the veranda, while Mrs. Galway was on watch by +the bedside. + +"He's waking!" she came out to whisper. + +The doctor hastened past her into the sick-room. As he entered, Jack +looked up with a bright, puzzled light in his eyes. + +"Just what does this mean?" he asked. "Just how does it happen that I am +here? I thought that I--" + +"We brought you in some days ago," the doctor explained. "And since you +took the water-hole your mind has been enjoying a little vacation, while +we moved your body about as we pleased." + +"I took the water-hole, then! And Firio? Firio? He--" + +"He is just waiting outside to congratulate you on the re-establishment +of the old cordial relations between mind and body," the doctor returned; +and slipped out to call Firio and to announce: "He is right as rain, +right as rain!" news that Mrs. Galway set forth immediately to herald +through the community. + +As for Firio, he strode into Jack's presence with the air of conqueror, +sage, and prophet in one. + +"Is it really you, Firio? Come here, so that I can feel of you and make +sure, you son of the sun!" + +Jack put out his thin, white hand to Firio, and the velvet of Firio's +eyes was very soft, indeed. + +"Did you know when they brought you in?" Jack asked. + +"When burro stumble I feel ouch and see desert and then I drift away +up to sky again," answered Firio. "All right now, eh? Pretty soon +you so strong I have to broil five--six--seven quail a day and still +you hungry!" + +The doctor who had been looking on from the doorway felt a vigorous touch +on the arm and turned to hear John Wingfield, Sr. asking him to make +way. With a grimace approaching a scowl he drew back free of Jack's sight +and held up his hand in protest. "You had better not excite him!" he +whispered. + +"But I am his father!" said John Wingfield, Sr. with something of his +old, masterful manner in a moment of irritation, as he pushed by the +doctor. He paused rather abruptly when his eyes met Jack's. A faint +flush, appearing in Jack's cheeks, only emphasized his wanness and the +whiteness of his neck and chin and forehead. + +"Well, Jack, right as rain, they say! I knew you would come out all +right! It was in the blood that--" and the rest of John Wingfield, Sr.'s +speech fell away into inarticulateness. + +It was a weak, emaciated son, this son whom he saw in contrast to the one +who had entered his office unannounced one morning; and yet the father +now felt that same indefinable radiation of calm strength closing his +throat that he had felt then. Jack was looking steadily in his father's +direction, but through him as through a thin shadow and into the +distance. He smiled, but very faintly and very meaningly. + +"Father, you will keep the bargain I have made," he said, as if this were +a thing admitting of no dispute. "It is fair to the other one, isn't it? +Yes, we have found the truth at last, haven't we? And the truth makes it +all clear for him and for you and for me." + +"You mean--it is all over--you stay out here for good--you--" said John +Wingfield, Sr. gropingly. + +Then another figure appeared in the doorway and Jack's eyes returned from +the distances to rest on it fondly. In response to an impulse that he +could not control, Peter Mortimer was peering timidly into the sick-room. + +"Why, Peter!" exclaimed Jack, happily. "Come farther in, so I can see +more of you than the tip of your nose." + +After a glance of inquiry at the doctor, which received an affirmative +nod, Peter ventured another step. + +"So it's salads and roses, is it, Peter?" Jack continued. "Well, I think +you may telegraph any time, now, that the others can come as soon as they +are ready and their places are filled." + +Thus John Wingfield, Sr. had his answer; thus the processes of fate that +Dr. Bennington had said were in the younger man had worked out their end. +Under the spur of a sudden, powerful resolution, the father withdrew. In +the living-room he met Jasper Ewold. The two men paused, facing each +other. They were alone with the frank, daring features from Velasquez's +brush and with the "I give! I give!" of the Sargent, both reflecting the +afterglow of sunset; while the features of the living--John Wingfield, +Sr.'s, in stony anger, and Jasper Ewold's, serene in philosophy--told +their story without the touch of a painter's genius. + +"You have stolen my son, Jasper Ewold!" declared John Wingfield, Sr. +with the bitterness of one whose personal edict excluded defeat from his +lexicon, only to find it writ broad across the page. "I suppose you think +you have won, damn you, Jasper Ewold!" + +The Doge flushed. He seemed on the point of an outburst. Then he +looked significantly from the portrait of the ancestor to the portrait +of the mother. + +"He was never yours to lose!" was the answer, without passion. + +John Wingfield, Sr. recoiled, avoiding a glance at the walls where the +pictures hung. The Doge stepped to one side to leave the way clear. John +Wingfield, Sr. went out unsteadily, with head bowed. But he had not gone +far before his head went up with a jerk and he struck fist into palm +decisively. Rigidly, ignoring everyone he passed and looking straight +ahead, he walked rapidly toward the station, as if every step meant +welcome freedom, from the earth that it touched. + +His private car was attached to the evening express, and while it started +homeward with the king and the determinedly filial heir-apparent to the +citadel of the push-buttons, through all the gardens of Little Rivers ran +the joyous news that Jack was "right as rain." It was a thing to start a +continual exchange of visits and to keep the lights burning in the houses +unusually late. + +But all was dark and silent out at Bill Lang's store. After their return +from Agua Fria, the rescuing party, Jim Galway leading, had attended to +another matter. The remnants of Pete Leddy's gang, far from offering any +resistance, explained that they had business elsewhere which admitted of +no delay. There was peace in the valley of Little Rivers. Its phantoms +had been laid at the same time as Jack's. + + + + +XXXVIII + +THEIR SIDE OF THE PASS + + +"Persiflage! Persiflage!" cried the Doge. + +He and Jack were in the full tilt of controversy, Jack pressing an +advantage as they came around the corner of the Ewold house. It was like +the old times and better than the old times. For now there was +understanding where then there had been mystery. The stream of their +comradeship ran smoothly in an open country, with no unsounded depths. + +"But I notice that you always say persiflage just as I am getting the +better of the argument!" Jack whipped back. + +"Has it taken you all this time to find that out? For what purpose is +the word in the English vocabulary? But I'll take the other side, which +is the easy one, next time, and then we'll see! Boom! boom!" The Doge +pursed out his lips in mock terrorization of his opponent. "You are +pretty near yourself again, young sir," he added, as he paused at the +opening in the hedge. + +"Yes, strength has been fairly flooding back the last two or three days. +I can feel it travelling in my veins and making the tissues expand. It is +glorious to be alive, O Doge!" + +"Now, do you want me to take the other side on that question so you can +have another unearned victory? I refuse to humor the invalid any longer +and I agree. The proposition that it is glorious to live on such an +afternoon as this is carried unanimously. But I will never agree that you +can grow dates the equal of mine." + +"Not until my first crop is ripe; then there will be no dispute!" + +"That is real persiflage!" the Doge called after Jack. + +Jack had made his first visit to the Doge's garden since he had left it +to meet Prather and Leddy rather brief when he found that Mary was not at +home. She had ridden out to the pass. Her trips to the pass had been so +frequent of late that he had seen little of her during his convalescence. +Yet he had eaten her jelly exclusively. He had eaten it with his bread, +his porridge, his dessert, and with the quail that Firio had broiled. He +had even intimated his willingness to mix it with his soup. She advised +him to stir it into his coffee, instead. + +When he was seated in the long chair on the porch and she called to ask +how he was, they had kept to the domain of nonsense, with never a +reference to sombre memories; but she was a little constrained, a little +shy, and he never gave her cause to raise the barrier, even if she had +been of the mind in face of a possible recurrence of former provocations +while he was weak and easily tired. It was enough for him to hear her +talk; enough to look out restfully toward the gray masses of the range; +enough to know that the desert had brought him oblivion to the past; +enough to see his future as clear as the V of Galeria against the sky, +sharing the life of the same community with her. + +And what else? He was almost in fear of the very question that was never +out of his mind. She might wish him luck in the wars, but he knew her too +well to have any illusions that this meant the giving of the great thing +she had to give, unless in the full spontaneity of spirit. This +afternoon, with the flood of returning strength, the question suddenly +became commanding in a fresh-born suspense. + +As he walked back to the house he met Belvy Smith and some of the +children. Of course they asked for a story, and he continued one about a +battered knight and his Heart's Desire, which he had begun some days +previously. + +"He wasn't a particularly handsome knight or particularly good--inclined +to mischief, I think, when he forgot himself--but he was mightily in +earnest. He didn't know how to take no. Say 'No!' to him and push him off +the mountain top and there he was, starting for the peak again! And he +was not so foolish as he might seem. When he reached the top he was happy +just to get a smile from his Heart's Desire before he was tossed back +again. His fingers were worn clear down to the first joint and his feet +off up to the knees, so he could not hold on to the seams of canyons as +well as before. He would have been a ridiculous spectacle if he weren't +so pitiful. And that wasn't the worst of it. He was pretty well shot to +pieces by the brigands whom he had met on his travels. With every ascent +there was less of him to climb, you see. In fact, he was being worn down +so fast that pretty soon there wouldn't be much left of him except his +wishbone. That was indestructible. He would always wish. And after the +hardest climb of all, here he is very near the top again, and--" + +"And--and--" + +"I'll have to finish this story later," said Jack, sending the youngsters +on their way, while he went his own to call to Firio, as he entered the +yard: "Son of the sun, I feel so strong that I am going for a ride!" + +"You wear the big spurs and the grand chaps?" Firio asked. + +Jack hesitated thoughtfully. + +"No, just plain togs," he answered. "I think we will hang up that +circus costume as a souvenir. We are past that stage of our career. My +devil is dead." + +It was Firio's turn to be thoughtful. + +"_SÃ_! We had enough fight! We get old and sober! _SÃ_, I know! We settle +down. I am going to begin to shave!" he concluded, stroking the black +down on his boyish lip. + +With the town behind him and the sinking sun over his shoulder, the +battered knight rode toward the foothills and on up the winding path, +oblivious of the Eternal Painter's magic and conscious only that every +step brought him nearer his Heart's Desire. Here was the rock where she +was seated when he had first seen her. What ages had passed since then! +And there, around the escarpment, he saw her pony on the shelf! Dropping +P.D.'s reins, he hurried on impetuously. With the final turn he found +Mary seated on the rock where she had been the day that he had come to +say farewell before he went to battle with the millions. Now as then, she +was gazing far out over that sea of singing, quivering light, and the +crunch of his footsteps awakened her from her revery. + +But how differently she looked around! Her breaths were coming in a happy +storm, her face crimsoning, her nostrils playing in trembling dilation. +In her eyes he saw open gates and a long vista of a fair highway in a +glorious land; and the splendor of her was something near and yielding. +He sank down beside her. Her hands stole into his; her head dropped on +his shoulder; and he felt a warm and palpitating union with the very +breath of her life. + +"What do I see!" cried the Eternal Painter. "Two human beings who have +climbed up as near heaven as they could and seem as happy as if they had +reached it!" + +"We have reached it!" Jack called back. "And we like it, you +hoary-bearded, Olympian impersonality!" + +Thus they watched the sun go down, gilding the foliage of their +Little Rivers, seeing their future in the fulness and richness of the +life of their choice, which should spread the oasis the length of +that valley, and knowing that any excursions to the world over the +pass would only sink their roots deeper in the soil of the valley +that had given them life. + +"Jack, oh, Jack! How I did fight against the thing that was born in me +that morning in the _arroyo_! I was in fear of it and of myself. In fear +of it I ran from you that day you climbed down to the pine. But I +shan't run again--not so far but that I can be sure you can catch me. +Jack, oh, Jack! And this is the hand that saved you from Leddy--the +right hand! I think I shall always like it better than the left hand! +And, Jack, there is a little touch of gray on the temples"--Mary was +running her fingers very, very gently over the wound--"which I like. But +we shall be so happy that it will be centuries before the rest of your +hair is gray! Jack, oh, Jack!" + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Over the Pass, by Frederick Palmer + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10932 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9e714e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #10932 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10932) diff --git a/old/10932-8.txt b/old/10932-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3d55913 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10932-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13674 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Over the Pass, by Frederick Palmer + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Over the Pass + +Author: Frederick Palmer + +Release Date: February 4, 2004 [EBook #10932] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OVER THE PASS *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + OVER THE PASS + + BY FREDERICK PALMER + + AUTHOR OF THE VAGABOND, DANBURY RODD, ETC. + + 1912 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART I--AN EASY TRAVELLER + +CHAPTER + + I YOUTH IN SPURS + + II DINOSAUR OR DESPERADO + + III JACK RIDES IN COMPANY + + IV HE CARRIES THE MAIL + + V A SMILE AND A SQUARE CHIN + + VI OBLIVION IS NOT EASY + + VII WHAT HAPPENED AT LANG'S + + VIII ACCORDING TO CODE + + IX THE DEVIL IS OUT + + X MARY EXPLAINS + + XI SEÑOR DON'T CARE RECEIVES + + XII MARY BRINGS TRIBUTE + + XIII A JOURNEY ON CRUTCHES + + XIV "HOW FAST YOU SEW!" + + XV WHEN THE DESERT BLOOMS + + XVI A CHANGE OF MIND + + XVII THE DOGE SNAPS A RUBBER BAND + + XVIII ANOTHER STRANGER ARRIVES + + XIX LOOKING OVER PRECIPICES + + XX A PUZZLED AMBASSADOR + + XXI "GOOD-BY, LITTLE RIVERS!" + + XXII "LUCK, JACK, LUCK!" + + +PART II--HE FINDS HIMSELF + + XXIII LABELLED AND SHIPPED + + XXIV IN THE CITADEL OF THE MILLIONS + + XXV "BUT WITH YOU, YES, SIR!" + + XXVII BY RIGHT OF ANCESTRY + + XXVIII JACK GETS A RAISE + + XXIX A MEETING ON THE AVENUE TRAIL + + XXX WITH THE PHANTOMS + + XXXI PRATHER WOULD NOT WAIT + + XXXII A CRISIS IN THE WINGFIELD LIBRARY + + XXXIII PRATHER SEES THE PORTRAIT + + XXXIV "JOHN WINGFIELD, YOU--" + + +PART III--HE FINDS HIS PLACE IN LIFE + + XXXV BACK TO LITTLE RIVERS + + XXXVI AROUND THE WATER-HOLE + + XXXVII THE END OF THE WEAVING + +XXXVIII THEIR SIDE OF THE PASS + + + + +PART I + +AN EASY TRAVELLER + + + + +I + +YOUTH IN SPURS + +Here time was as nothing; here sunset and sunrise were as incidents +of an uncalendared, everlasting day; here chaotic grandeur was that +of the earth's crust when it cooled after the last convulsive +movement of genesis. + +In all the region about the Galeria Pass the silence of the dry Arizona +air seemed luminous and eternal. Whoever climbed to the crotch of that V, +cut jagged against the sky for distances yet unreckoned by tourist +folders, might have the reward of pitching the tents of his imagination +at the gateway of the clouds. + +Early on a certain afternoon he would have noted to the eastward a speck +far out on a vast basin of sand which was enclosed by a rim of tumbling +mountains. Continued observation at long range would have shown the speck +to be moving almost imperceptibly, with what seemed the impertinence of +infinitesimal life in that dead world; and, eventually, it would have +taken the form of a man astride a pony. + +The man was young, fantastically young if you were to judge by his garb, +a flamboyant expression of the romantic cowboy style which might have +served as a sensational exhibit in a shop-window. In place of the +conventional blue wool shirt was one of dark blue silk. The +_chaparejos_, or "chaps," were of the softest leather, with the fringe +at the seams generously long; and the silver spurs at the boot-heels +were chased in antique pattern and ridiculously large. Instead of the +conventional handkerchief at the neck was a dark red string tie; while +the straight-brimmed cowpuncher hat, out of keeping with the general +effect of newness and laundered freshness, had that tint which only +exposure to many dewfalls and many blazing mid-days will produce in +light-colored felt. + +There was vagrancy in the smile of his singularly sensitive mouth and +vagrancy in the relaxed way that he rode. From the fondness with which +his gaze swept the naked peaks they might have been cities _en fête_ +calling him to their festivities. If so, he was in no haste to let +realization overtake anticipation. His reins hung loose. He hummed +snatches of Spanish, French, and English songs. Their cosmopolitan +freedom of variety was as out of keeping with the scene as their lilt, +which had the tripping, self-carrying impetus of the sheer joy of living. + +Lapsing into silence, his face went ruminative and then sad. With a +sudden indrawing of breath he freed himself from his reverie, and bending +over from his saddle patted a buckskin neck in affectionate tattoo. Tawny +ears turned backward in appreciative fellowship, but without any break in +a plodding dog-trot. Though the rider's aspect might say with the desert +that time was nothing, the pony's expressed a logical purpose. Thus the +speed of their machine-like progress was entirely regulated by the +prospect of a measure of oats at the journey's end. + +When they came to the foot-hills and the rider dismounted and led the +way, with a following muzzle at times poking the small of his back, up +the tortuous path, rounding pinnacles and skimming the edge of abysses, +his leg muscles answered with the readiness of familiarity with climbing. +At the top he saw why the pass had received its name of Galeria from the +Spanish. A great isosceles of precipitous walls formed a long, natural +gallery, which the heaving of the earth's crust had rent and time had +eroded. It lay near the present boundary line of two civilizations: in +the neutral zone of desert expanses, where the Saxon pioneer, with his +lips closed on English _s's_, had paused in his progress southward; and +the _conquistadore_, with tongue caressing Castilian vowels, had paused +in his progress northward. + +At the other side the traveller beheld a basin which was a thousand +feet higher than the one behind him. It approached the pass at a +gentler slope. It must be cooler than the other, its ozone a little +rarer. A sea of quivering and singing light in the afternoon glow, it +was lost in the horizon. + +Not far from the foot-hills floated a patch of foliage, checkered by the +roofs of the houses of an irrigation colony, hanging kitelike at the end +of the silver thread of a river whose waters had set gardens abloom in +sterile expanses. There seemed a refusal of intimacy with the one visible +symbol of its relations with the outer world; for the railroad, with its +lines of steel flashing across the gray levels, passed beyond the outer +edge of the oasis. + +"This beats any valley I've seen yet," and the traveller spoke with the +confidence of one who is a connoisseur of Arizona valleys. + +He paused for some time in hesitancy to take a farewell of the rapturous +vista. A hundred feet lower and the refraction of the light would present +it in different coloring and perspective. With his spell of visual +intoxication ran the consciousness of being utterly alone. But the egoism +of his isolation in the towering infinite did not endure; for the sound +of voices, a man's and a woman's, broke on his ear. + +The man's was strident, disagreeable, persistent. Its timbre was such as +he had heard coming out of the doors of border saloons. The woman's was +quiet and resisting, its quality of youth peculiarly emphasized by its +restrained emotion. + +Now the easy traveller took stock of his immediate surroundings, which +had interested him only as a foothold and vantage-point for the panorama +that he had been breathing in. Here, of all conceivable places, he was in +danger of becoming eavesdropper to a conversation which was evidently +very personal. Rounding the escarpment at his elbow he saw, on a shelf of +decaying granite, two waiting ponies. One had a Mexican saddle of the +cowboy type. The other had an Eastern side-saddle, which struck him as +exotic in a land where women mostly ride astride. And what woman, +whatever style of riding she chose, should care to come to this pass? + +Judging by the direction from which the voices came, the speakers were +hidden by still another turn in the defile. A few more steps brought eye +as well as ear back to the living world with the sight of a girl seated +on a bowlder. He could see nothing of her face except the cheek, which +was brown, and the tip of a chin, which he guessed was oval, and her +hair, which was dark under her hatbrim and shimmering with gold where it +was kissed by the rays of the sun. An impression as swift as a flash of +light could not exclude inevitable curiosity as to the full face; a +curiosity emphasized by the poised erectness of her slender figure. + +The man was bending over her in a familiar way. He was thirty, perhaps, +in the prime of physical vigor, square-jawed, cocksure, a six-shooter +slung at his hip. Though she was not giving way before him, her attitude, +in its steadiness, reflected distress in a bowstrung tremulousness. +Suddenly, at something he said which the easy traveller could not quite +understand, she sprang up aflame, her hand flying back against the rock +wall behind her for support. Then the man spoke so loud that he was +distinctly audible. + +"When you get mad like that you're prettier'n ever," he said. + +It was a peculiar situation. It seemed incredible, melodramatic, unreal, +in sight of the crawling freight train far out on the levels. + +"Aren't you overplaying your part, sir?" the easy traveller asked. + +The man's hand flew to his six-shooter, while the girl looked around in +swift and eager impulse to the interrupting voice. Its owner, the color +scheme of his attire emphasized by the glare of the low sun, expressed in +his pose and the inquiring flicker of a smile purely the element of the +casual. Far from making any movement toward his own six-shooter, he +seemed oblivious of any such necessity. With the first glimpse of her +face, when he saw the violet flame of her anger go ruddy with surprise +and relief, then fluid and sparkling as a culminating change of emotion, +he felt cheap for having asked himself the question--which now seemed so +superficial--whether she were good-looking or not. She was, undoubtedly, +yes, undoubtedly good-looking in a way of her own. + +"What business is it of yours?" demanded the man, evidently under the +impression that he was due to say something, while his fingers still +rested on his holster. + +"None at all, unless she says so," the deliverer answered. "Is it?" he +asked her. + +After her first glance at him she had lowered her lashes. Now she raised +them, sending a direct message beside which her first glance had been +dumb indifference. He was seeing into the depths of her eyes in the +consciousness of a privilege rarely bestowed. They gave wing to a +thousand inquiries. He had the thrill of an explorer who is about to +enter on a voyage of discovery. Then the veil was drawn before his ship +had even put out from port. It was a veil woven with fine threads of +appreciative and conventional gratitude. + +"It is!" she said decisively. + +"I'll be going," said the persecutor, with a grimace that seemed mixed +partly of inherent bravado and partly of shame, as his pulse slowed down +to normal. + +"As you please," answered that easy traveller. "I had no mind to exert +any positive directions over your movements." + +His politeness, his disinterestedness, and his evident disinclination to +any kind of vehemence carried an implication more exasperating than an +open challenge. They changed melodrama into comedy. They made his +protagonist appear a negligible quantity. + +"There's some things I don't do when women are around," the persecutor +returned, grudgingly, and went for his horse; while oppressive silence +prevailed. The easy traveller was not looking at the girl or she at him. +He was regarding the other man idly, curiously, though not contemptuously +as he mounted and started down the trail toward the valley, only to draw +rein as he looked back over his shoulder with a glare which took the easy +traveller in from head to foot. + +"Huh! You near-silk dude!" he said chokingly, in his rancor which had +grown with the few minutes he had had for self-communion. + +"If you mean my shirt, it was sold to me for pure silk," the easy +traveller returned, in half-diffident correction of the statement. + +"We'll meet again!" came the more definite and articulate defiance. + +"Perhaps. Who can tell? Arizona, though a large place, has so few people +that it is humanly very small." + +Now the other man rose in his stirrups, resting the weight of his body on +the palm of the hand which was on the back of his saddle. He was rigid, +his voice was shaking with very genuine though dramatic rage drawn to a +fine point of determination. + +"When we do meet, you better draw! I give you warning!" he called. + +There was no sign that this threat had made the easy traveller tighten a +single muscle. But a trace of scepticism had crept into his smile. + +"Whew!" He drew the exclamation out into a whistle. + +"Whistle--whistle while you can! You won't have many more chances! Draw, +you tenderfoot! But it won't do any good--I'll get you!" + +With this challenge the other settled back into the saddle and proceeded +on his way. + +"Whew!" The second whistle was anything but truculent and anything but +apologetic. It had the unconscious and spontaneous quality of the delight +of the collector who finds a new specimen in wild places. + +From under her lashes the girl had been watching the easy traveller +rather than her persecutor; first, studiously; then, in the confusion of +embarrassment that left her speechless. + +"Well, well," he concluded, "you must take not only your zoology, but +your anthropology as you find it!" + +His drollness, his dry contemplation of the specimen, and his +absurdly gay and unpractical attire, formed a combination of elements +suddenly grouped into an effect that touched her reflex nerves after +the strain with the magic of humor. She could not help herself: she +burst out laughing. At this, he looked away from the specimen; looked +around puzzled, quizzically, and, in sympathetic impulse, began +laughing himself. Thus a wholly unmodern incident took a whimsical +turn out of a horror which, if farcical in the abstract, was no less +potent in the concrete. + +"Quite like the Middle Ages, isn't it?" he said. + +"But Walter Scott ceased writing in the thirties!" she returned, quick to +fall in with his cue. + +"The swooning age outlasted him--lasted, indeed, into the era of +hoop-skirts; but that, too, is gone." + +"They do give medals," she added. + +"For rescuing the drowning only; and they are a great nuisance to carry +around in one's baggage. Please don't recommend me!" + +Both laughed again softly, looking fairly at each other in +understanding, twentieth-century fashion. She was not to play the +classic damsel or he the classic rescuer. Yet the fact of a young man +finding a young woman brutally annoyed on the roof of the world, five +or six miles from a settlement--well, it was a fact. Over the bump of +their self-introduction, free of the serious impression of her +experience, she could think for him as well as for herself. This struck +her with sudden alarm. + +"I fear I have made you a dangerous enemy," she said. "Pete Leddy is the +prize ruffian of our community of Little Rivers." + +"I thought that this would be an interesting valley," he returned, in +bland appreciation of her contribution of information about the habits of +the specimen. + + + + +II + +DINOSAUR OR DESPERADO + + +She faced a situation irritating and vitalizing, and inevitably, under +its growing perplexity, her observation of his appearance and +characteristics had been acute with feminine intuition, which is so +frequently right, that we forget that it may not always be. She imagined +him with a certain amiable aimlessness turning his pony to one side so as +not to knock down a danger sign, while he rode straight over a precipice. + +What would have happened if Leddy had really drawn? she asked herself. +Probably her deliverer would have regarded the muzzle of Leddy's gun in +studious vacancy before a bullet sent him to kingdom come. All +speculation aside, her problem was how to rescue her rescuer. She felt +almost motherly on his account, he was so blissfully oblivious to +realities. And she felt, too, that under the circumstances, she ought to +be formal. + +"Now, Mister--" she began; and the Mister sounded odd and stilted in her +ears in relation to him. + +"Jack is my name," he said simply. + +"Mine is Mary," she volunteered, giving him as much as he had given +and no more. "Now, sir," she went on, in peremptory earnestness, "this +is serious." + +"It _was_," he answered. "At least, unpleasant." + +"It is, _now_. Pete Leddy meant what he said when he said that he +would draw." + +"He ought to, from his repeated emphasis," answered Jack, in agreeable +affirmation. + +"He has six notches on his gun-handle--six men that he has killed!" +Mary went on. + +"Whew!" said Jack. "And he isn't more than thirty! He seems a hard worker +who keeps right on the job." + +She pressed her lips together to control her amusement, before she asked +categorically, with the precision of a school-mistress: + +"Do you know how to shoot?" + +He was surprised. He seemed to be wondering if she were not making +sport of him. + +"Why should I carry a six-shooter if I did not?" he asked. + +This convinced her that his revolver was a part of his play cowboy +costume. He had come out of the East thinking that desperado etiquette of +the Bad Lands was _opéra bouffe_. + +"Leddy is a dead shot. He will give you no chance!" she insisted. + +"I should think not," Jack mused. "No, naturally not; otherwise there +might have been no sixth notch. The third or the fourth, even the second +object of his favor might have blasted his fair young career as a +wood-carver. Has he set any limit to his ambition? Is he going to make it +an even hundred and then retire?" + +"I don't know!" she gasped. + +"I must ask," he added, thoughtfully. + +Was he out of his head? Certainly his eye was not insane. Its bluish-gray +was twinkling enjoyably into hers. + +"You exasperated him with that whistle. It was a deadly insult to his +desperado pride. You are marked--don't you see, marked?" she persisted. +"And I brought it on! I am responsible!" + +He shook his head in a denial so unmoved by her appeal that she was sure +he would send Job into an apoplectic frenzy. + +"Pardon me, but you're contradicting your own statement. You just said it +was the whistle," he corrected her. "It's the whistle that gives me Check +Number Seven. You haven't the least bit of responsibility. The whistle +gets it all, just as you said." + +This was too much. Confuting her with her own words! Quibbling with his +own danger in order to make her an accomplice of murder! She lost her +temper completely. That fact alone could account for the audacity of her +next remark. + +"I wonder if you really know enough to come in out of the rain!" +she stormed. + +"That's the blessing of living in Arizona," he returned. "It is such a +dry climate." + +She caught herself laughing; and this only made her the more intense a +second later, on a different tack. Now she would plead. + +"Please--please promise me that you will not go to Little Rivers +to-night. Promise that you will turn back over the pass!" + +"You put me between the devil and the dragon. What you ask is impossible. +I'll tell you why," he went on, confidentially. "You know this is the +land of fossil dinosaurs." + +"I had a brute on my hands," she thought; "now I have the Mad Hatter and +the March Hare in collaboration!" + +"There is a big dinosaur come to life on the other side," he proceeded. +"I just got through the pass in time. I could feel his breath on my +back--a hot, gun-powdery breath! It was awful, simply awful and horrible, +too. And just as I had resigned myself to be his entrée, by great luck +his big middle got wedged in the bottom of the V, and his scales scraped +like the plates of a ship against a stone pier!" + +To her disgust she was laughing again. + +"If I went back now out of fear of Pete Leddy," he continued, "that +dinosaur would know that I was such insignificant prey he would not even +take the trouble to knock me down with a forepaw. He would swallow me +alive and running! Think of that slimy slide down the red upholstery of +his gullet, not to mention the misery of a total loss of my dignity and +self-respect!" + +He had spoken it all as if he believed it true. He made it seem +almost true. + +"I like nonsense as much as anybody," she began, "and I do not forget +that you did me a great kindness." + +"Which any stranger, any third person coming at the right moment might +have done," he interrupted. "Sir Walter's age has passed." + +"Yes, but Pete Leddy belongs still farther back. We may laugh at his +ruffianly bravado, but no one may laugh at a forty-four calibre bullet! +Think what you are going to make me pay for your kindness! I must pay +with memory of the sound of a shot and the fall of a body there in the +streets of Little Rivers--a nightmare for life! Oh, I beg of you, though +it is fun for you to be killed, consider me! Don't go down into that +valley! I beg of you, go back over the pass!" + +There was no acting, no suspicion of a gesture. She stood quite still, +while all the power of her eyes reflected the misery which she pictured +for herself. The low pitch of her voice sounded its depths with that +restraint which makes for the most poignant intensity. As she reached her +climax he had come out of his languid pose. He was erect and rigid. She +saw him as some person other than the one to whom she had begun her +appeal. He was still smiling, but his smile was of a different sort. +Instead of being the significant thing about him in expression of his +casualness, it seemed the softening compensation for his stubbornness. + +"I'd like to, but it is hardly in human nature for me to do that. I +can't!" And he asked if he might bring up her pony. + +"Yes," she consented. + +She thought that the faint bow of courtesy with which he had accompanied +the announcement of his decision he would have given, in common +politeness, to anyone who pointed at the danger sign before he rode over +the precipice. + +"May I ride down with you, or shall I go ahead?" he inquired, after he +had assisted her to mount. + +"With me!" she answered, quickly. "You are safe while you are with me." + +The decisive turn to her mobile lips and the faint wrinkles of a frown, +coming and going in various heraldry, formed a vividly sentient and +versatile expression of emotions while she watched his silhouette against +the sky as he turned to get his own pony. + +"Come, P.D.--come along!" he called. + +In answer to his voice an equine face, peculiarly reflective of trail +wisdom, bony and large, particularly over the eyes, slowly turned toward +its master. P.D. was considering. + +"Come along! The trail, P.D.!" And P.D. came, but with democratic +independence, taking his time to get into motion. "He is never fast," +Jack explained, "but once he has the motor going, he keeps at it all day. +So I call him P.D. without the Q., as he is never quick." + +"Pretty Damn, you mean!" she exclaimed, with a certain spontaneous pride +of understanding. Then she flushed in confusion. + +"Oh, thank you! It was so human of you to translate it out loud! It isn't +profane. Look at him now. Don't you think it is a good name for him?" +Jack asked, seriously. + +"I do!" + +She was laughing again, oblivious of the impending tragedy. + + + + +III + +JACK RIDES IN COMPANY + + +Let not the Grundy woman raise an eyebrow of deprecation at the informal +introduction of Jack and Mary, or we shall refute her with her own +precepts, which make the steps to a throne the steps of the social +pyramid. If she wishes a sponsor, we name an impeccable majesty of the +very oldest dynasty of all, which is entirely without scandal. We remind +her of the ancient rule that people who meet at court, vouched for by +royal favor, need no introduction. + +These two had met under the roof of the Eternal Painter. His palette is +somewhere in the upper ether and his head in the interplanetary spaces. +His heavy eyebrows twinkle with star-dust. Dodging occasional flying +meteors, which harass him as flies harass a landscapist out of doors on a +hot day, he is ever active, this mighty artist of the changing desert +sky. So fickle his moods, so versatile his genius, so quick to creation +his fancy, that he never knows what his next composition will be till the +second that it is begun. + +No earthly rival need be jealous of him. He will never clog the +galleries. He always paints on the same canvas, scraping off one picture +to make room for another. And you do not mind the loss of the old. You +live for the new. + +His Majesty has no artistic memory. He is as young as he was the day +that he flung out his first tentative lunette after chaos. He is the +patron saint of all pilgrims from the city's struggle, where they found +no oases of rest. He melts "pasts" and family skeletons and hidden +stories of any kind whatsoever into the blue as a background with the +abandoned preoccupation of his own brushwork. His lieges, who seek +oblivion in the desert, need not worry about the water that will never +run over the millwheel again, or dwell in prophecy on floods to come. The +omnipotence of the moment transports and soothes them. + +"Time is nothing!" says the Eternal Painter. "If you feel important, +remember that man's hectic bustling makes but worm-work on the planet. +Live and breathe joyfully and magnificently! Do not strain your eyes over +embroidery! Come to my open gallery! And how do you like the way I set +those silver clouds a-tumbling? Do you know anything better under the +dome of any church or capitol? Shall I bank them? Line them with purple? +It is done! But no! Let us wipe it all out, change the tint of our +background, and start afresh!" + +With his eleven hundred million billionth sunset, or thereabouts, His +Majesty held a man and a woman who had met on the roof of the world in +thrall. He was lurid at the outset, dipping his camel's hair in at the +round furnace door sinking toward the hills, whose red vortex shot +tongues of flame into canyons and crevasses and drove out their lurking +shadows with the fire of its inquisition. The foliage of Little Rivers +became a grove of quivering leaves of gold, set on a vast beaten platter +of gold. And the man and the woman, like all things else in the +landscape, were suffused in this still, Parnassian, penetrating +brilliancy, which ought to make even a miser feel that his hoarded eagles +and sovereigns are ephemeral dross. + +"I love it all--all the desert!" said Mary Ewold. + +"And I, too!" + +"I have for six years." + +"I for five." + +The sentences had struck clearly as answering chimes, impersonally, in +their preoccupied gazing. + +"It gave me life!" he added. + +"And it gave me life!" + +Then they looked at each other in mutual surprise and understanding; each +in wonder that the other had ever been anything but radiant of +out-of-doors health. That fleck on the lungs which brought a doctor's +orders had long ago been healed by the physician of the ozone they were +breathing. + +"And you remained," he said. + +"And you, also," she answered. + +Their own silence seemed to become a thing apart from the silence of the +infinite. It was as if both recognized a common thought that even the +Eternal Painter could not compel oblivion of the past to which they did +not return; of the faith of cities to which they had been bred. But it is +one of the Eternal Painter's rules that no one of his subjects should ask +another of his subjects why he stays on the desert. Jack was the first to +speak, and his voice returned to the casual key. + +"Usually I watch the sunset while we make camp," he said. "I am very late +to-night--late beyond all habit; and sunset and sunrise do make one a +creature of habit out here. Firio and my little train will grow impatient +waiting for me." + +"You mean the Indian and the burro with the silver bells that came over +the pass some time before you?" + +Of course they belonged to him, she was thinking, even as she made the +inquiry. This play cowboy, with his absurdly enormous silver spurs, would +naturally put bells on his burro. + +"Yes, I sent Firio with Wrath of God and Jag Ear on ahead and told him to +wait at the foot of the descent. Wrath of God will worry--he is of a +worrying nature. I must be going." + +In view of the dinosaur nonsense she was already prepared for a variety +of inventional talk from him. As they started down from the pass in +single file, she leading, the sun sank behind the hills, leaving the +Eternal Painter, unhindered by a furnace glare in the centre of the +canvas, to paint with a thousand brushes in the radiant tints of the +afterglow. + +"You don't like that one, O art critics!" we hear him saying. "Well, here +is another before you have adjusted your _pince-nez,_ and I will brush it +away before you have emitted your first Ah! I do not criticise. I +paint--I paint for the love of it. I paint with the pigments of the +firmament and the imagination of the universe." + +The two did not talk of that sky which held their averted glances, while +knowing hoofs that bore their weight kept the path. For how can you talk +of the desert sky except in the banality of exclamations? It is _lèse +majesté_ to the Eternal Painter to attempt description. + +At times she looked back and their eyes met in understanding, as true +subjects of His Majesty, and then they looked skyward to see what changes +the Master's witchery had wrought. In supreme intoxication of the +senses, breathing that dry air which was like cool wine coming in long +sips to the palate, they rode down the winding trail, till, after a +surpassing outburst, the Eternal Painter dropped his brush for the night. + +It was dusk. Shadows returned to the crevasses. Free of the magic of the +sky, with the curtains of night drawing in, the mighty savagery of the +bare mountains in their disdain of man and imagination reasserted itself. +It dropped Mary Ewold from the azure to the reality of Pete Leddy. She +was seeing, the smoking end of a revolver and a body lying in a pool of +blood; and there, behind her, rode this smiling stranger, proceeding so +genially and carelessly to the fate which she had provided for him. + +With the last turn, which brought them level with the plain, they came +upon an Indian, a baggage burro, and a riding-pony. The Indian sprang up, +grinning: his welcome and doffing a Mexican steeple-hat. + +"I must introduce you all around," Jack told Mary. + +She observed in his manner something new!--a positive enthusiasm for his +three retainers, which included a certain well-relished vanity in their +loyalty and character. + +"Firio has Sancho Panza beaten to a frazzle," Jack said. "Sancho was fat +and unresourceful; even stupid. Fancy him broiling a quail on a spit! +Fancy what a lot of trouble Firio could have saved Don Quixote de la +Mancha! Why, confound it, he would have spoiled the story!" + +Firio was a solid grain, to take Jack's view, winnowed out of bushels of +aboriginal chaff; an Indian, all Indian, without any strain of Spanish +blood in the primitive southern strain. + +"And Firio rides Wrath of God," Jack continued, nodding to a pony with a +low-hung head and pendant lip, whose lugubrious expression was +exaggerated by a scar. "He looks it, don't you think?--always miserable, +whether his nose is in the oats or we run out of water. He is our sad +philosopher, who has just as dependable a gait as P.D. I have many +theories about the psychology of his ego. Sometimes I explain it by a +desire both to escape and to pursue unhappiness, which amounts to a +solemn kind of perpetual motion. But he has a positively sweet nature. +There is no more malice in his professional mournfulness than in the +cheerful humor of Jag Ear." + +"It is plain to see which is Jag Ear," she observed, "and how he earned +his name." + +Every time a burro gets into the corn, an Indian master cuts off a bit +of long, furry ear as a lesson. Before Jag Ear passed into kindlier +hands he had been clipped closer than a Boston terrier. Only a single +upstanding fragment remained in token of a graded education which had +availed him nothing. + +"There's no curtailing Jag Ear's curiosity," said Jack. "To him, +everything is worth trying. That is why he is a born traveller. He +has been with me from Colorado to Chihuahua, on all my wanderings +back and forth." + +While he spoke, Firio mounted Wrath of God and, with Jag Ear's bells +jingling, the supply division set out on the road. Jack and Mary +followed, this time riding side by side, pony nose to pony nose, in an +intimacy of association impossible in the narrow mountain trail. It was +an intimacy signalized by silence. There was an end to the mighty +transports of the heights; the wells of whimsicality had dried up. The +weight of the silence seemed balancing on a brittle thread. All the +afternoon's events aligned themselves in a colossal satire. In the half +light Jack became a gaunt and lonely figure that ought to be confined in +some Utopian kindergarten. + +Mary could feel her temples beating with the fear of what was waiting for +him in Little Rivers, now a dark mass on the levels, just dark, without +color or any attraction except the mystery that goes with the shroud of +night. She knew how he would laugh at her fears; for she guessed that he +was unafraid of anything in the world which, however, was no protection +from Pete Leddy's six-shooter. + +"I--I have a right to know--won't you tell me how you are going to defend +yourself against Pete Leddy?" she demanded, in a sudden outburst. + +"I hadn't thought of that. Certainly, I shall leave it to Pete himself to +open hostilities. I hadn't thought of it because I have been too busy +thinking out how I was going to break a piece of news to Firio. I have +been an awful coward about it, putting it off and putting it off. I had +planned to do it on my birthday two weeks ago, and then he gave me these +big silver spurs--spent a whole month's wages on them, think of that! I +bought this cowboy regalia to go with them. You can't imagine how that +pleased him. It certainly was great fun." + +Mary could only shake her head hopelessly. + +"Firio and Jag Ear and Wrath of God and old P.D. here--we've sort of +grown used to one another's foolishness. Now I can't put it off any +longer, and I'd about as soon be murdered as tell him that I am going +East in the morning." + +"You mean you are going to leave here for good?" She mistrusted her +own hearing. She was dazzled by this sudden burst of light through +the clouds. + +"Yes, by the first train. This is my last desert ride." + +Why had he not said so at first? It would not only have saved her from +worry, but from the humiliation of pleading with a stranger. Doubtless he +had enjoyed teasing her. But no matter. The affair need not last much +longer, now. She told herself that, if necessary, she would mount guard +over him for the remaining twelve hours of his stay. Once he was aboard +the Pullman he would be out of danger; her responsibility would be over +and the whole affair would become a bizarre memory; an incident closed. + +"Back to New York," he said, as one who enters a fog without a +compass. "Back to fight pleosaurs, dinosaurs, and all kinds of +monsters," he added, with a cheeriness which rang with the first false +note she had heard from him. "I don't care," he concluded, and broke +into a Spanish air, whose beat ran with the trickling hoof-beats of +the ponies in the sand. + +"That is it!" she thought. "That explains. He just does not care about +anything." + +Ahead, the lamps were beginning to twinkle in the little settlement which +had sent such a contrast in citizenship as Mary Ewold and Pete Leddy out +to the pass. They were approaching a single, isolated building, from the +door of which came a spray of light and the sound of men's voices. + +"That is Bill Lang's place," Mary explained. "He keeps a store, with a +bar in the rear. He also has the post-office, thanks to his political +influence, and this is where I have to stop for the mail when I return +from the pass." + +She had not spoken with any sense of a hint which it was inevitable he +should accept. + +"Let me get it for you;" and before she had time to protest, he had +dismounted, drawing rein at the edge of the wooden steps. + +She rode past where his pony was standing. When he entered the door, his +tallness and lean ease of posture silhouetted in the light, she could +look in on the group of idling male gossips. + +"Don't!" + +It was a half cry from her, hardly audible in an intensity which she knew +was futile in the surge of her torturing self-incrimination. Why had she +not thought that it would be here that Pete Leddy was bound to wait for +anyone coming in by the trail from Galeria? The loungers suddenly dropped +to the cover of boxes and barrels, as a flicker of steel shot upward, and +behind the gleaming rim of a revolver muzzle held rigid was a brown hand +and Leddy's hard, unyielding face. + +What matter if the easy traveller could shoot? He was caught like a man +coming out of an alley. He had no chance to draw in turn. In the click of +a second-hand the thing would be over. Mary's eyes involuntarily closed, +to avoid seeing the flash from the revolver. She listened for the report; +for the fall of a body which should express the horror she had visualized +for the hundredth time. A century seemed to pass and there was no sound +except the beat of her heart, which ran in a cataract throb to her +temples; no sound except that and what seemed to be soft, regular steps +on the bare floor of the store. + +"Coward!" she told herself, with the agony of her suspense +breaking. "He saved you from inexpressible humiliation and you are +afraid even to look!" + +She opened her eyes, prepared for the worst. Had she gone out of her +head? Could she no longer trust her own eyesight? What she saw was +inconceivable. The startled faces of the loungers were rising from +behind the boxes and barrels. Pete Leddy's gun had dropped to his side +and his would-be victim had a hand on Pete's shoulder. Jack was talking +apparently in a kindly and reasoning tone, but she could not make out +his words. + +One man alone evidently had not taken cover. It was Jim Galway, a +rancher, who had been standing at the mail counter. To judge by his +expression, what Jack was saying had his approval. + +With a nod to Leddy and then a nod to the others, as if in amicable +conclusion of the affair, Jack wheeled around to the counter, disclosing +Leddy's face wry with insupportable chagrin. His revolver was still in +his hand. In the swift impulse of one at bay who finds himself released, +he brought it up. There was murder, murder from behind, in the catlike +quickness of his movement; but Jim Galway was equally quick. He threw his +whole weight toward Leddy in a catapult leap, as he grasped Leddy's wrist +and bore it down. Jack faced about in alert readiness. Seeing that Galway +had the situation pat, he put up his hand in a kind of questioning, +puzzled remonstrance; but Mary noticed that he was very erect. He spoke +and Galway spoke in answer. Evidently he was asking that Leddy be +released. To this Galway consented at length, but without drawing back +until he had seen Leddy's gun safe in the holster. + +Then Leddy raised himself challengingly on tiptoes to Jack, who turned to +Galway in the manner of one extending an invitation. On his part, Leddy +turned to Ropey Smith, another of Little Rivers' ruffians. After this, +Leddy went through the door at the rear; the loungers resumed their seats +on the cracker barrels and gazed at one another with dropped jaws, while +Bill Lang proceeded with his business as postmaster. + + + + +IV + +HE CARRIES THE MAIL + + +When the suspense was over for Mary, the glare of the store lamp went +dancing in grotesque waves, and abruptly, uncannily, fell away into the +distant, swimming glow of a lantern suffused with fog. She swayed. Only +the leg-rest kept her from slipping off the pony. Her first returning +sense of her surroundings came with the sound of a voice, the same +careless, pleasant voice which she had heard at Galeria asking Pete Leddy +if he were not overplaying his part. + +"You were right," said the voice. "It was the whistle that made him +so angry." + +Indistinctly she associated a slowly-shaping figure with the voice and +realized that she had been away in the unknown for a second. Yes, it was +all very well to talk about Sir Walter being out of fashion, but she had +been near to fainting, and in none of the affectation of the hoop-skirt +age, either. Had she done any foolish thing in expression of a weakness +that she had never known before? Had she extended her hand for support? +Had he caught her as she wobbled in the saddle? No. She was relieved to +see that he was not near enough for that. + +"By no stretch of ethics can you charge yourself with further +responsibility or fears," he continued. "Pete and I understand each other +perfectly, now." + +But in his jocularity ran something which was plain, if unspoken. It was +that he would put an end to a disagreeable subject. His first words to +her had provided a bridge--and burned it--from the bank of the +disagreeable to the bank of agreeable. Her own desire, with full mastery +of her faculties coming swiftly, fell in with his. She wanted to blot out +that horror and scotch a sudden uprising of curiosity as to the exact +nature of the gamble in death through which he had passed. It was enough +that he was alive. + +The blurry figure became distinct, smiling with inquiry in a glance from +her to the stack of papers, magazines, and pamphlets which crowded his +circling arms. He seemed to have emptied the post-office. There had not +been any Pete Leddy; there had been no display of six-shooters. He had +gone in after the mail. Here he was ready to deliver it by the bushel, +while he waited for orders. She had to laugh at his predicament as he +lowered his chin to steady a book on the top of the pile. + +"Oh, I meant to tell you that you were not to bring the second-class +matter!" she told him. "We always send a servant with a basket for that. +You see what comes of having a father who is not only omnivorous, but has +a herbivorous capacity." + +He saw that the book had a row of Italian stamps across the wrapper. +Unless that popular magazine stopped slipping, both the book and a heavy +German pamphlet would go. He took two hasty steps toward her, in mock +distress of appeal. + +"I'll allow salvage if you act promptly!" he said. + +She lifted the tottering apex just in time to prevent its fall. + +"I'll take the book," she said. "Father has been waiting months for +it. We can separate the letters and leave the rest in the store to be +sent for." + +"The railroad station is on the other side of the town, isn't it?" he +asked. + +"Yes." + +"I shall camp nearby, so it will be no trouble to leave my burden at your +door as I pass." + +"He does have the gift of oiling the wheels in either, big or little +moments," she thought, as she realized how simple and considerate had +been his course from the first. He was a stranger going on his way, +stopping, however, to do her or any other traveller a favor _en route_. + +"Firio, we're ready to hear Jag Ear's bells!" he called. + +"_Sí_!" answered Firio. + +All the while the Indian had kept in the shadow, away from the spray of +light from the store lamp, unaware of the rapid drama that had passed +among the boxes and barrels. He had observed nothing unusual in the young +lady, whose outward manifestation of what she had, witnessed was the +closing of her eyes. + +It was out of the question that Jack should mount a horse when both +arms were crowded with their burden. He walked beside Mary's stirrup +leather in the attitude of that attendant on royalty who bears a crown +on a cushion. + +"Little Rivers is a new town, isn't it?" he asked. + +"Yes, the Town Wonderful," she answered. "Father founded it." + +She spoke with an affection which ran as deep into the soil as young +roots after water. If on the pass she had seemed a part of the desert, +of great, lonely distances and a far-flung carpet of dreams, here she +seemed to belong to books and gardens. + +"I wish I had time to look over the Town Wonderful in the morning, but my +train goes very early, I believe." + +After his years of aimless travelling, to which he had so readily +confessed, he had tied himself to a definite hour on a railroad +schedule as something commanding and inviolable. Such inconsistency +did not surprise her. Had she not already learned to expect +inconsistencies from him? + +"Oh, it is all simple and primitive, but it means a lot to us," she said. + +"What one's home and people mean to him is pretty well all of one's own +human drama," he returned, seriously. + +The peace of evening was in the air and the lights along the single +street were a gentle and persistent protest of human life against the +mighty stretch of the enveloping mantle of night. From the cottages of +the ranchers came the sound of voices. The twang of a guitar quivering +starward made medley with Jag Ear's bells. + +Here, for a little distance, the trail, in its long reach on the desert, +had taken on the dignity of the urban name of street. On either side, +fronting the cottages, ran the slow waters of two irrigation ditches, +gleaming where lamp-rays penetrated the darkness. The date of each +rancher's settlement was fairly indicated by the size of the +quick-growing umbrella and pepper-trees which had been planted for shade. +Thus all the mass of foliage rose like a mound of gentle slope toward the +centre of the town, where Jack saw vaguely the outlines of a rambling +bungalow, more spacious if no more pretentious than its neighbors in its +architecture. At a cement bridge over the ditch, leading to a broad +veranda under the soft illumination of a big, wrought-iron lantern, Mary +drew rein. + +"This is home," she said; "and--and thank you!" + +He could not see her face, which was in the shadow turned toward him, as +he looked into the light of the lantern from the other side of her pony. + +"And--thank you!" + +It was as if she had been on the point of saying something else and +could not get the form of any sentence except these two words. Was there +anything further to say except "Thank you"? Anything but to repeat +"Thank you"? + +There he stood, this stranger so correctly introduced by the Eternal +Painter, with his burden, waiting instructions in this moment of awkward +diffidence. He looked at her and at the porch and at his bundle of mail +in a quizzical appeal. Then she realized that, in a peculiar lapse of +abstraction, she had forgotten about his encumberment. + +Before she could speak there was a sonorous hail from the house; a hail +in keeping with the generous bulk of its owner, who had come through the +door. He was well past middle-age, with a thatch of gray hair half +covering his high forehead. In one hand he held the book that he had been +reading, and in the other a pair of big tortoise-shell glasses. + +"Mary, you are late--and what have we here?" + +He was beaming at Jack as he came across the bridge and he broke into +hearty laughter as he viewed Jack's preoccupation with the +second-class matter. + +"At last! At last we have rural free delivery in Little Rivers! We are +the coming town! And your uniform, sir"--Jasper Ewold took in the cowboy +outfit with a sweeping glance which warmed with the picturesque +effect--"it's a great improvement on the regulation; fit for free +delivery in Little Rivers, where nobody studies to be unconventional in +any vanity of mistaking that for originality, but nobody need be +conventional." + +He took some of the cargo in his own hands. With the hearty breeze of his +personality he fairly blew Jack onto the porch, where magazines and +pamphlets were dropped indiscriminately in a pile on a rattan settee. + +"You certainly have enough reading matter," said Jack. "And I must be +getting on to camp." + +For he had no invitation to stay from Mary and the conventional fact +that he had to recognize is that a postman's call is not a social call. +As he turned to go he faced her coming across the bridge. An Indian +servant, who seemed to have materialized out of the night, had taken +charge of her pony. + +"To camp! Never!" said Jasper Ewold. "Sir Knight, slip your lance in the +ring of the castle walls--but having no lance and this being no castle, +well, Sir Knight in _chaparejos_--that is to say, Sir Chaps--let me +inform you"--here Jasper Ewold threw back his shoulders and tossed his +mane of hair, his voice sinking to a serious basso profundo--"yes, inform +you, sir, that there is one convention, a local rule, that no stranger +crosses this threshold at dinner-time without staying to dinner." There +was a resonance in his tone, a liveliness to his expression, that was +infectious. + +"But Firio and Jag Ear and Wrath of God wait for me," Jack said, entering +with real enjoyment into the grandiose style. + +"High sounding company, sir! Let me see them!" demanded Jasper Ewold. + +Jack pointed to his cavalcade waiting in the half shadows, where the +lamp-rays grew thin. Wrath of God's bony face was pointed lugubriously +toward the door; Jag Ear was wiggling his fragment of ear. + +"And Moses on the mountain-top says that you stay!" declared +Jasper Ewold. + +Jack looked at Mary. She had not spoken yet and he waited on her word. + +"Please do!" she said. "Father wants someone to talk to." + +"Yes, Sir Chaps, I shall talk; otherwise, why was man given a tongue in +his head and ideas?" + +Refusal was out of the question. Accordingly, Firio was sent on to make +camp alone. + +"Now, Sir Chaps, now, Mr.--" began Jasper Ewold, pausing blankly. "Why, +Mary, you have not given me his city directory name!" + +"Mr.--" and Mary blushed. She could only pass the, blame back to the +Eternal Painter's oversight in their introduction. + +"Jack Wingfield!" said Jack, on his own account. + +"Jack Wingfield!" repeated Jasper Ewold, tasting the name. + +A flicker of surprise followed by a flicker of drawn intensity ran over +his features, and he studied Jack in a long glance, which he masked just +in time to save it from being a stare. Jack was conscious of the +scrutiny. He flushed slightly and waited for some word to explain it; +but none came. Jasper Ewold's Olympian geniality returned in a +spontaneous flood. + +"Come inside, Jack Wingfield," he said. "Come inside, Sir Chaps--for that +is how I shall call you." + +The very drum-beat of hospitality was in his voice. It was a wonderful +voice, deep and warm and musical; not to be forgotten. + + + + +V + +A SMILE AND A SQUARE CHIN + + +When a man comes to the door book in hand and you have the testimony of +the versatility and breadth of his reading in half a bushel of mail for +him, you expect to find his surroundings in keeping. But in Jasper +Ewold's living-room Jack found nothing of the kind. + +Heavy, natural beams supported the ceiling. On the gray cement walls were +four German photographs of famous marbles. The Venus de Milo looked +across to the David of Michael Angelo; the Flying Victory across to +Rodin's Thinker. In the centre was a massive Florentine table, its broad +top bare except for a big ivory tusk paper-knife free from any mounting +of silver. On the shelf underneath were portfolios of the reproductions +of paintings. + +An effect which at first was one of quiet spaciousness became impressive +and compelling. Its simplicity was without any of the artificiality that +sometimes accompanies an effort to escape over-ornamentation. No one +could be in the room without thinking through his eyes and with his +imagination. Wherever he sat he would look up to a masterpiece as the +sole object of contemplation. + +"This is my room. Here, Mary lets me have my way," said Jasper Ewold. +"And it is not expensive." + +"The Japanese idea of concentration," said Jack. + +Jasper Ewold, who had been watching the effect of the room on Jack, as he +watched it on every new-comer, showed his surprise and pleasure that this +young man in cowboy regalia understood some things besides camps and +trails; and this very fact made him answer in the vigorous and enjoyed +combatancy of the born controversialist. + +"Japanese? No!" he declared. "The little men with their storks and vases +have merely discovered to us in decoration a principle which was Greek in +a more majestic world than theirs. It was the true instinct of the +classic motherhood of our art before collectors mistook their residences +for warehouses." + +"And the books?" Jack asked, boyishly. "Where are they? Yes, what do you +do with all the second-class matter?" + +The question was bait to Jasper Ewold. It gave him an opportunity for +discourse. + +"When I read I want nothing but a paper-cutter close at hand--a good, big +paper-cutter, whose own weight carries it through the leaves. And I want +to be alone with that book. If I am too lazy to go to the library for +another, then it is not worth reading. When I get head-achy with print +and look up, I don't want to stare at the backs of more books. I want +something to rest and fill the eye. I--" + +"Father," Mary admonished him, "I fear this is going to be long. Why not +continue after Mr. Wingfield has washed off the dust of travel and we are +at table?" + +"Mary is merely jealous. She wants to hurry you to the dining-room, which +was designed to her taste," answered her father, with an affectation of +grand indignation. "The dust of travel here is clean desert dust--but I +admit that it is gritty. Come with me, Sir Chaps!" + +He bade Jack precede him through a door diagonally opposite the one by +which he had entered from the veranda. On the other side Jack found +himself surrounded by walls of books, which formed a parallelogram around +a great deal table littered with magazines and papers. Here, indeed, the +printed word might riot as it pleased in the joyous variety and chaos of +that truly omnivorous reader of herbivorous capacity. Out of the library +Jack passed into Jasper Ewold's bedroom. It was small, with a soldier's +cot of exaggerated size that must have been built for his amplitude of +person, and it was bare of ornament except for an old ivory crucifix. + +"There's a pitcher and basin, if you incline to a limited operation for +outward convention," said Jasper Ewold; "and through that door you will +find a shower, if you are for frank, unlimited submersion of the +altogether." + +"Have I time for the altogether?" Jack asked. + +"When youth has not in this house, it marks a retrocession toward +barbarism for Little Rivers which I refuse to contemplate. Take your +shower, Sir Chaps, and"--a smile went weaving over the hills and valleys +of Jasper Ewold's face--"and, mind, you take off those grand boots or +they will get full of water! You will find me in the library when you are +through;" and, shaking with subterranean enjoyment of his own joke, he +closed the door. + +Cool water from the bowels of the mountains fell on a figure as slender +as that of the great Michael's David pictured in the living-room; a +figure whose muscles ran rippling with leanness and suppleness, without +the bunching over-development of the athlete. He bubbled in shivery +delight with the first frigid sting of the downpour; he laughed in +ecstasy as he pulled the valve wide open, inviting a Niagara. + +While he was still glowing with the rough intimacy of the towel, he +viewed the trappings thrown over the chair and his revolver holster on +the bureau in a sense of detachment, as if in the surroundings of +civilization some voice of civilization made him wish for flannels in +which to dine. Then there came a rap at the door, and an Indian appeared +with an envelope addressed in feminine handwriting. On the corner of the +page within was a palm-tree--a crest to which anybody who dwelt on the +desert might be entitled; and Jack read: + +"DEAR MR. WINGFIELD: + +"Please don't tell father about that horrible business on the pass. It +will worry him unnecessarily and might interfere with my afternoon rides, +which are everything to me. There is not the slightest danger in the +future. After this I shall always go armed. + +"Sincerely yours, + +"MARY EWOLD." + +The shower had put him in such lively humor that his answer was born in a +flash from memory of her own catechising of him on Galeria. + +"First, I must ask if you know how to shoot," he scribbled beneath her +signature. + +The Indian seemed hardly out of the doorway before he was back +with a reply: + +"I do, or I would not go armed," it said. + +She had capped his satire with satire whose prick was, somehow, +delicious. He regarded the sweep of her handwriting with a lingering +interest, studying the swift nervous strokes before he sent the note back +with still another postscript: + +"Of course I had never meant to tell anybody," he wrote. "It is not a +thing to think of in that way." + +This, he thought, must be the end of the correspondence; but he was +wrong. The peripatetic go-between reappeared, and under Jack's last +communication was written, "Thank you!" He could hardly write "Welcome!" +in return. It was strictly a case of nothing more to say by either +duelist. In an impulse he slipped the sheet, with its palm symbolic of +desert mystery and oasis luxuriance, into his pocket. + +"Here I am in the midst of the shucks and biting into the meat of the +kernel," said Jasper Ewold, as Jack entered the library to find him +standing in the midst of wrappings which he had dropped on the floor; +"yes, biting into very rich meat." + +He held up the book which was evidently the one that had balanced +uncertainly on the pile which Jack had brought from the post-office. + +"Professor Giuccamini's researches! It is as interesting as a novel. But +come! You are hungry!" + +Book in hand, and without removing his tortoise-shell spectacles, he +passed out into the garden at the rear. There a cloth was laid under +a pavilion. + +"In a country where it never rains," said the host, "where it is eternal +spring, walls to a house are conventions on which to stack books and hang +pictures. Mary has chosen nature for her decorative effect--cheaper, +even, than mine. In the distance is Galeria; in the foreground, what was +desert six years ago." + +The overhead lamp deepened to purple the magenta of the bougainvillea +vines running up the pillars of the pavilion; made the adjacent rows of +peony blossoms a pure, radiant white; while beyond, in the shadows, was a +broad path between rows of young palms. + +Mary appeared around a hedge which hid the open-air kitchen. The girl of +the gray riding-habit was transformed into a girl in white. Jack saw her +as a domestic being. He guessed that she had seen that the table was set +right; that she had had a look-in at the cooking; that the hands whose +boast it was that they could shoot, had picked the jonquils in the +slender bronze vase on the table. + +"Father, there you are again, bringing a book to the dining-room against +the rules," she warned him; "against all your preachments about reading +at meals!" + +"That's so, Mary," said Jasper Ewold, absently, regarding the book as if +some wicked genius had placed it in his hand quite unbeknown to him. +"But, Mary, it is Professor Giuccamini at last! Giuccamini that I have +waited for so long! I beg your pardon, Sir Chaps! When I have somebody to +talk to I stand doubly accused. Books at dinner! I descend into dotage!" + +In disgust he started toward the house with the book. But in the very +doorway he paused and, reopening the book, turned three or four pages +with ravenous interest. + +"Giuccamini and I agree!" he shouted. "He says there is no doubt that +Burlamacchi and Pico were correct. Cosmo de' Medici did call Savonarola +to his death-bed, and I am glad of it. I like good stories to turn out +true! But here I have a listener--a live listener, and I ramble on about +dead tyrants and martyrs. I apologize--I apologize!" and he disappeared +in the library. + +"Father does not let me leave books in the living-room, which is his. +Why should he bring them to the dining-room, which is mine?" Mary +explained. + +"There must be law in every household," Jack agreed. + +"Yes, somebody fresh to talk to, at, around, and through!" called Jasper +Ewold, as he reappeared. "Yes, and over your head; otherwise I shall not +be flattered by my own conversation." + +"He glories in being an intellectual snob," Mary said. "Please pretend at +times not to understand him." + +"Thank you, Mary. You are the corrective that keeps my paternal +superiority in balance," answered her father, with a comprehending wave +of his hand indicating his sense of humor at the same time as playful +insistence on his role as forensic master of the universe. + +How he did talk! He was a mill to which all intellectual grist was +welcome. Over its wheel the water ran now singing, again with the roar of +a cataract. He changed theme with the relish of one who rambles at will, +and the emotion of every opinion was written on the big expanse of his +features and enforced with gestures. He talked of George Washington, of +Andrea del Sarto, of melon-growing, trimming pepper-trees, the Divina +Commedia, fighting rose-bugs, of Schopenhauer and of Florence--a great +deal about Florence, a city that seemed to hang in his mind as a sort of +Renaissance background for everything else, even for melon-growing. + +"You are getting over my head!" Jack warned him at times, politely. + +"That is the trouble," said Jasper Ewold. "Consider the hardship of +being the one wise man in the world! I find it lonely, inconvenient, +stupefying. Why, I can't even convince Jim Galway that I know more about +dry farming than he!" + +Jack listened raptly, his face glowing. Once, when he looked in his +host's direction suddenly, after speaking to Mary, he found that he was +the object of the same inquiring scrutiny that he had been on the porch. +In lulls he caught the old man's face in repose. It had sadness, then, +the sadness of wreckage; sadness against which he seemed to fence in his +wordy feints and thrusts. + +"Christian civilization began in the Tuscan valley," the philosopher +proceeded, harking back to the book which had arrived by the evening's +mail. "Florence was a devil--Florence was divine. They raised geniuses +and devils and martyrs: the most cloud-topping geniuses, the worst +devils, the most saintly martyrs. But better than being a drone in a +Florence pension is all this"--with a wave of his hand to the garden and +the stars--"which I owe to Mary and the little speck on her lungs which +brought us here after--after we had found that we had not as much money +as we thought we had and an old fellow who had been an idling student, +mostly living abroad all his life, felt the cramp of the material facts +of board-and-clothes money. It made Mary well. It made me know the +fulness of wisdom of the bee and the ant, and it brought me back to the +spirit of America--the spirit of youth and accomplishment. Instead of +dreaming of past cities, I set out to make a city like a true American. +Here we came to camp in our first travelled delight of desert spaces for +her sake; and here we brought what was left of the fortune and started a +settlement." + +The spectator-philosopher attitude of audience to the world's stage +passed. He became the builder and the rancher, enthusiastically dwelling +on the growth of orchards and gardens in expert fondness. As Jack +listened, the fragrance of flowers was in his nostrils and in intervals +between Jasper Ewold's sentences he seemed to hear the rustle of borning +leaf-fronds breaking the silence. But the narrative was not an idyll. +Toil and patience had been the handmaidens of the fecundity of the soil. +Prosperity had brought an entail of problems. Jasper Ewold mentioned them +briefly, as if he would not ask a guest to share the shadows which they +brought to his brow. + +"The honey of our prosperity brings us something besides the bees. It +brings those who would share the honey without work," said he. "It brings +the Bill Lang hive and Pete Leddy." + +At the mention of the name, Jack's and Mary's glances met. + +"You have promised not to tell," hers was saying. + +"I will not," his was answering. + +But clearly he had grasped the fact that Little Rivers was getting out of +its patron's hands, and every honest man in that community wanted to be +rid of Pete Leddy. + +"I should think your old friend, Cosmo de' Medici, would have found a +way," Jack suggested. + +"Cosmo is for talk," said Mary. "At heart father is a Quaker." + +"Some are for lynching," said Jasper Ewold, thoughtfully. "Begin to +promote order with disorder and where will you end?" he inquired, +belligerently. "This is not the Middle Ages. This is the Little Rivers +of peace." + +Then, after a quotation from Cardinal Newman, which seemed pretty +far-fetched to deal with desert ruffians, he was away again, setting out +fruit trees and fighting the scale. + +"And our Date Tree Wonderful!" he continued. "This year we get our first +fruit, unless the book is wrong. You cannot realize what this first-born +of promise means to Little Rivers. Under the magic of water it completes +the cycle of desert fecundity, from Scotch oats and Irish potatoes to the +Arab's bread. Bananas I do not include. Never where the banana grows has +there been art or literature, a good priesthood, unimpassioned +law-makers, honest bankers, or a noble knighthood. It is just a little +too warm. Here we can build a civilization which neither roasts us in +summer nor freezes us in winter." + +There was a fluid magnetism in the rush of Jasper Ewold's junketing +verbiage which carried the listener on the bosom of a pleasant stream. +Jack was suddenly reminded that it must be very late and he had far +overstayed the retiring hour of the desert, where the Eternal Painter +commands early rising. + +"Going--going so soon!" protested Jasper Ewold. + +"So late!" Jack smiled back. + +To prove that it was, he called attention to the fact, when they passed +through the living-room to the veranda, that not a light remained in any +ranch-house. + +"I have not started my talk yet," said Jasper. "But next time you come I +will really make a beginning--and you shall see the Date Tree Wonderful." + +"I go by the morning train," Jack returned. + +"So! so!" mused Jasper. "So! so!" he objected, but not gloomily. "I get a +good listener only to lose him!" + +But Jack was hardly conscious of the philosopher's words. In that +interval he had still another glimpse of Mary's eyes without the veil and +saw deeper than he had before; saw vast solitudes, inviting yet offering +no invitation, where bright streams seemed to flash and sing under the +sunlight and then disappear in a desert. That was her farewell to the +easy traveller who had stopped to do her a favor on the trail. And he +seemed to ask nothing more in that spellbound second; nor did he after +the veil had fallen, and he acquitted himself of some spoken form of +thanks for an evening of happiness. + +"A pleasant journey!" Mary said. + +"Luck, Sir Chaps, luck!" called Jasper Ewold. + +Jack's easy stride, as he passed out into the night, confirmed the last +glimpse of his smiling, whimsical "I don't care" attitude, which never +minded the danger sign on the precipice's edge. + +"He does not really want to go back to New York," Mary remarked, and was +surprised to find that she had spoken her thought aloud. + +"I hardly agree with that opinion," said her father absently, his +thoughts far afield from the fetter of his words. "But of one thing I am +sure, John Wingfield! A smile and a square chin!" + + + + +VI + +OBLIVION IS NOT EASY + + +"A smile and a square chin!" Mary repeated, as they went back into the +living-room. + +"Yes, hasn't he both, this Wingfield?" asked her father. + +"This Wingfield"--on the finish of the sentence there was a halting, +appreciable accent. He moved toward the table with the listlessness of +some enormous automaton of a man to whom every step of existence was a +step in a treadmill. There was a heavy sadness about his features which +rarely came, and always startled her when it did come with a fear that +they had so set in gloom that they would never change. He raised his hand +to the wick screw of the lamp, waiting for her to pass through the room +before turning off the flame which bathed him in its rays, giving him the +effect of a Rodinesque incarnation of memory. + +Any melancholy that beset him was her own enemy, to be fought and +cajoled. Mary slipped to his side, dropping her head on his shoulder and +patting his cheek. But this magic which had so frequently rallied him +brought only a transient, hazy smile and in its company what seemed a +random thought. + +"And you and he came down the pass together? Yes, yes!" he said. His tone +had the vagueness of one drawing in from the sea a net that seemed to +have no end. + +Had Jack Wingfield been more than a symbol? Had he brought something +more than an expression of culture, manner, and ease of a past which +nothing could dim? Had he suggested some personal relation to that past +which her father preferred to keep unexplained? These questions crowded +into her mind speculatively. They were seeking a form of conveyance when +she realized that she had been adrift with imaginings. He was getting +older. She must expect his preoccupation and his absent-mindedness to +become more exacting. + +"Yes, yes!" His voice had risen to its customary sonority; his eyes were +twinkling; all the hard lines had become benignant wrinkles of Olympian +charm. "Yes, yes! You and this funny tourist! What a desert it is! I +wonder--now, I wonder if he will go aboard the Pullman in that stage +costume. But come, come, Mary! It's bedtime for all pastoral workers and +subjects of the Eternal Painter. Off you go, or we shall be playing +blind-man's-buff in the dark!" He was chuckling as he turned down the +wick. "His enormous spurs, and Jag Ear and Wrath of God!" he said. + +Her fancy ran dancing rejoicingly with his mood. + +"Don't forget the name of his pony!" she called merrily from the stairs. +"It's P.D." + +"P.D.!" said her father, with the disappointment of one tempted by a good +morsel which he finds tasteless. "There he seems to have descended to +alphabetic commonplace. No imagery in that!" + +"He is a slow, reliable pony," put in Mary, "without the Q." + +"Pretty Damn, without the Quick! Oh, I know slang!" + +Jasper Ewold burst into laughter. It was still echoing through the house +when she entered her room. As it died away it seemed to sound hollow and +veiled, when the texture of sunny, transparent solidity in his laugh was +its most pronounced characteristic. + +Probably this, too, was imagination, Mary thought. It had been an +overwrought day, whose events had made inconsiderable things supreme over +logic. She always slept well; she would sleep easily to-night, because it +was so late. But she found herself staring blankly into the darkness and +her thoughts ranging in a shuttle play of incoherency from the moment +that Leddy had approached her on the pass till a stranger, whom she never +expected to see again, walked away into the night. What folly! What folly +to keep awake over an incident of desert life! But was it folly? What +sublime egoism of isolated provincialism to imagine that it had been +anything but a great event! Naturally, quiet, desert nerves must still be +quivering after the strain. Inevitably, they would not calm instantly, +particularly as she had taken coffee for supper. She was wroth about the +coffee, though she had taken less than usual that evening. + +She heard the clock strike one; she heard it strike two, and three. And +he, on his part--this Sir Chaps who had come so abruptly into her life +and evidently set old passions afire in her father's mind--of course he +was sleeping! That was the exasperating phlegm of him. He would sleep on +horseback, riding toward the edge of a precipice! + +"A smile and a square chin--and dreamy vagueness," she kept repeating. + +The details of the scene in the store recurred with a vividness which +counting a flock of sheep as they went over a stile or any other trick +for outwitting insomnia could not drive from her mind. Then Pete Leddy's +final look of defiance and Jack Wingfield's attitude in answer rose out +of the pantomime in merciless clearness. + +All the indecisiveness of the interchange of guesses and rehearsed +impressions was gone. She got a message, abruptly and convincingly. This +incident of the pass was not closed. An ultimatum had been exchanged. +Death lay between these two men. Jack had accepted the issue. + +The clock struck four and five. Before it struck again daylight would +have come; and before night came again, what? To lie still in the torment +of this new experience of wakefulness with its peculiar, half-recognized +forebodings, had become unbearable. She rose and dressed and went down +stairs softly, candle in hand, aware only that every agitated fibre of +her being was whipping her to action which should give some muscular +relief from the strain of her overwrought faculties. She would go into +the garden and walk there, waiting for sunrise. But at the edge of the +path she was arrested by a shadow coming from the servants' +sleeping-quarters. It was Ignacio, the little Indian who cared for her +horse, ran errands, and fought garden bugs for her--Ignacio, the +note-bearer. + +"Señorita! señorita!" he exclaimed, and his voice, vibrant with something +stronger than surprise, had a certain knowing quality, as if he +understood more than he dared to utter. "Señorita, you rise early!" + +"Sometimes one likes to look at the morning stars," she remarked. + +But there were no stars; only a pale moon, as Ignacio could see +for himself. + +"Señorita, that young man who was here and Pete Leddy--do you know, +señorita?" + +"The young man who came down from the pass with me, you mean?" she asked, +inwardly shamed at her simulation of casual curiosity. + +"Yes, he and Leddy--bad blood between them'" said Ignacio. "You no know, +señorita? They fight at daybreak." + +The pantomime in the store, Jack's form disappearing with its easy step +into the night, analyzed in the light of this news became the natural +climax of a series of events all under the spell of fatality. + +"Come, Ignacio!" she said. "We must hurry!" And she started around the +house toward the street. + + + + +VII + +WHAT HAPPENED AT LANG'S + + +While Jack had been playing the pioneer of rural free delivery in Little +Rivers, Pete Leddy, in the rear of Bill Lang's store, was refusing all +stimulants, but indulging in an unusually large cud of tobacco. + +"Liquor ain't no help in drawing a bead," he explained to the loungers +who followed him through the door after Jack had gone. + +If Pete did not want to drink it was not discreet to press him, +considering the mood he was in. The others took liberal doses, which +seemed only to heighten the detail of the drama which they had witnessed. +To Mary it had been all pantomime; to them it was dynamic with language. +It was something beyond any previous contemplation of possibility in +their cosmos. + +The store had been enjoying an average evening. All present were +expressing their undaunted faith in the invincibility of James J. +Jeffries, when a smiling stranger appeared in the doorway. He was dressed +like a regular cowboy dude. His like might have appeared on the stage, +but had never been known to get off a Pullman in Arizona. And the instant +he appeared, up flashed Pete Leddy's revolver. + +The gang had often discussed when and how Pete would get his seventh +victim, and here they were about to be witnesses of the deed. Instinct +taught them the proper conduct on such occasions. The tenderfoot was as +good as dead; but, being a tenderfoot and naturally a bad shot and prone +to excitement, he might draw and fire wild. They ducked with the avidity +of woodchucks into their holes--all except Jim Galway, who remained +leaning against the counter. + +"I gin ye warning!" they heard Pete say, and closed their eyes +involuntarily--all except Jim Galway--with their last impression the +tenderfoot's ingenuous smile and the gleam on Pete's gun-barrel. They +waited for the report, as Mary had, and then they heard steps and looked +up to see that dude tenderfoot, still smiling, going straight toward the +muzzle pointed at his head, his hands at his side in no attempt to draw. +The thing was incredible and supernatural. + +"Pete is letting him come close first," they thought. + +But there, unbelievable as it was, Pete was lowering his revolver and +the tenderfoot's hand was on his shoulder in a friendly, explanatory +position. Pete seemed in a trance, without will-power over his trigger +finger, and Pete was the last man in the world that you would expect +to lose his nerve. Jim Galway being the one calm observer, whose +vision had not been disturbed by precipitancy in taking cover, let us +have his version. + +"He just walked over to Pete--that's all I can say--walked over to him, +simple and calm, like he was going to ask for a match. All I could think +of and see was his smile right into that muzzle and the glint in his +eyes, which were looking into Pete's. Someway you couldn't shoot into +that smile and that glint, which was sort of saying, 'Go ahead! I'm +leaving it to you and I don't care!'--just as if a flash of powder was +all the same to him as a flash of lightning." + +The desert had given Jack life; and it would seem as if what the desert +had given, it might take away. He was not going to humble himself by +throwing up his arms or standing still for execution. He was on his way +into the store and he continued on his way. If something stopped him, +then he would not have to take the train East in the morning. + +"Now if you want to kill me, Pete Leddy," the astonished group heard this +stranger say, "why, I'm not going to deny you the chance. But I don't +want you to do it just out of impulse, and I know that is not your own +reasoned way. You certainly would want sporting rules to prevail and that +I should have an equal chance of killing you. So we will go outside, +stand off any number of paces you say, let our gun-barrels hang down even +with the seams of our trousers, and wait for somebody to say 'one, two, +three--fire!'" + +Not once had that peculiar smile faded from Jack's lips or the glint in +his eyes diverted from its probe of Leddy's eyes. His voice went well +with the smile and with an undercurrent of high voltage which seemed the +audible corollary of the glint. Every man knew that, despite his gay +adornment, he was not bluffing. He had made his proposition in deadly +earnest and was ready to carry it out. Pete Leddy shuffled and bit the +ends of his moustache, and his face was drawn and white and his shoulder +burning under the easy grip of Jack's hand. From the bore of the +unremitting glance that had confounded him he shifted his gaze +sheepishly. + +"Oh, h--l!" he said, and the tone, in its disgust and its attempt to +laugh off the incident, gave the simplicity of an exclamation from his +limited vocabulary its character. "Oh, h--l! I was just trying you out as +a tenderfoot--a little joke!" + +At this, all the crowd laughed in an explosive breath of relief. The +inflection of the laugh made Pete go red and look challengingly from face +to face, with the result that all became piously sober. + +"Then it is all right? I meant in no way to wound your feelings or even +your susceptibilities," said Jack; and, accepting the incident as closed, +he turned to the counter and asked for the Ewold mail. + +Free from that smile and the glint of the eyes, Pete came to in a torrent +of reaction. He, with six notches on his gun-handle, had been trifled +with by a grinning tenderfoot. Rage mounted red to his brow. No man who +had humiliated him should live. He would have shot Jack in the back if it +had not been for Jim Galway, lean as a lath, lantern-jawed, with deep-set +blue eyes, his bearing different from that of the other loungers. Jim had +not joined in the laugh over Pete's explanation; he had remained +impassive through the whole scene; but the readiness with which he +knocked Leddy's revolver down showed that this immovability had let +nothing escape his quiet observation. + +When Jack looked around and understood what had passed, his face +was without the smile. It was set and his body had stiffened free +of the counter. + +"I'll take the gun away from him. It's high time somebody did," +said Galway. + +"I think you had better, if that is the only way that he knows how to +fight," said Jack. "I have wondered how he got the six. Presumably he +murdered them." + +"To their faces, as I'll get you!" Leddy answered. "I'll play your way +now, one, two, three--fire!" + +Galway, convinced that this stranger did not know how to shoot, +turned to Jack: + +"It's not worth your being a target for a dead shot," he said. + +"In the morning, yes," answered Jack; and he was smiling again in a way +that swept the audience with uncanniness. "But to-night I am engaged. +Make it early to-morrow, as I have to take the first train East." + +"Well, are you going to let me go?" Leddy asked Jim, while he looked in +appeal to the loungers, who were his men. + +"Yes, by all means," Jack told Galway. "And as I shall want a man with +me, may I rely on you? Four of us will be enough, with a fifth to give +the word." + +"Ropey Smith can go with me," said Leddy. + +It scarcely occurred to them to give the name of duel to this meeting, +which Jack held was the only fair way when one felt that he must have +satisfaction from an adversary in the form of death. An _arroyo_ a mile +from town was chosen and the time dawn, for a meeting which was to +reverse the ethics of that boasted fair-play in which the man who first +gets a bead is the hero. + +"It seems a mediaeval day for me," Jack said, when the details were +concluded. "Good-night, gentlemen," he added, after Bill Lang, with +fingers that bungled from agitation, had filled his arms with +second-class matter. + +Jim Galway resumed his position, leaning against the counter watchfully +as the gang filed out to the rear to wet up, and in his right hand, which +was in his pocket, nestled an automatic pistol. + +"I'd shot Pete Leddy dead--'twas the first real fair chance within the +law--so help me, God! I would," he thought, "if there had been time to +spare, and save that queer tenderfoot's life. And me a second in a +regular duel! Well, I'll be--but it ain't no regular duel. One of 'em is +going to drop--that is, the tenderfoot is. I don't just know how to line +him up. He beats me!" + + + + +VIII + +ACCORDING TO CODE + + +It was the supreme moment of night before dawn. A violet mist shrouded +everything. The clamminess of the dew touched Mary's forehead and her +hand brushed the moisture-laden hedge as she left the Ewold yard. She +remembered that Jack had said that he would camp near the station, so +there was no doubt in which direction she should go. Hastening along the +silent street, it was easy for her to imagine that she and Ignacio were +the only sentient beings, abroad in a world that had stopped breathing. + +Softly, impalpably, with both the graciousness of a host and the +determinedness of an intruder who will not be gainsaid, the first rays of +morning light filtered into the mist. The violet went pink. From pale +pink it turned to rose-pink; to the light of life which was as yet as +still as the light of the moon. The occasional giant cactus in the open +beyond the village outskirts ceased to be spectral. + +For the first time Mary Ewold was in the presence of the wonder of +daybreak on the desert without watching for the harbinger of gold in the +V of the pass, with its revelation of a dome of blue where unfathomable +space had been. For the first time daybreak interested her only in +broadening and defining her vision of her immediate surroundings. + +When the permeating softness suddenly yielded to full transparency, +spreading from the fanfare of the rising sun come bolt above the range, +and the mist rose, she left the road at sight of two ponies and a burro +in a group, their heads together in drooping fellowship. She knew them at +once for P.D., Wrath of God, and Jag Ear. Nearby rose a thin spiral of +smoke and back of it was a huddled figure, Firio, preparing the morning +meal. Animals and servant were as motionless as the cactus. Evidently +they did not hear her footsteps. They formed a picture of nightly +oblivion, unconscious that day had come. Firio's face was hidden by his +big Mexican hat; he did not look up even when she was near. She noted the +two blanket-rolls where the two comrades of the trail had slept. She saw +that both were empty and knew that Jack had already gone. + +"Where is Mr. Wingfield?" she demanded, breathlessly. + +Firio was not startled. To be startled was hardly in his Indian nature. +The hat tipped upward and under the brim-edge his black eyes gleamed, as +the sandy soil all around him gleamed in the dew. He shrugged his +shoulders when he recognized the lady speaking as the one who had delayed +him at the foot of the pass the previous afternoon. Thanks to her, he had +been left alone without his master the whole evening. + +"He go to stretch his legs," answered Firio. + +Apparently, Sir Chaps had been disinclined to disturb the routine of camp +by telling Firio anything about the duel. + +"Where did he go? In which direction?" Mary persisted. + +Firio moved the coffee-pot closer to the fire. This seemed to require +the concentration of all his faculties, including that of speech. He was +a fit servant for one who took duels so casually. + +"Where? Where?" she repeated. + +"Where? Have you no tongue?" snapped Ignacio. + +Firio gazed all around as if looking for Jack; then nodded in the +direction of rising ground which broke at the edge of a depression about +fifty yards away. Her impatience had made the delay of a minute seem +hours, while the brilliance of the light had now become that of broad +day. She forgot all constraint. She ran, and as she ran she listened for +a shot as if it were something inevitable, past due. + +And then she uttered a muffled cry of relief, as the scene in a +depression which had been the bed of an ancient river flashed before her +with theatric completeness. In the bottom of it were five men, two +moving and three stationary. Jim Galway and Ropey Smith were walking +side by side, keeping a measured step as they paced off a certain +distance, while Bill Lang and Pete Leddy and Jack stood by. Leddy and +Lang were watching the process inflexibly. Jack was in the costume which +had flushed her curiosity so vividly on the pass and he appeared the +same amused, disinterested and wondering traveller who had then come +upon strange doings. + +She stopped, her temples throbbing giddily, her breaths coming in gasps; +stopped to gain mastery of herself before she decided what she would do +next. On the opposite bank of the _arroyo_ was a line of heads, like +those of infantry above a parapet, and she comprehended that, in the +same way that news of a cock-fight travels, the gallery gods of Little +Rivers had received a tip of a sporting event so phenomenal that it +changed the sluggards among them into early risers. They were making +themselves comfortable lying flat on their stomachs and exposing as +little as possible of their precious bodies to the danger of that +tenderfoot firing wild. + +It was a great show, of which they would miss no detail; and all had +their interest whetted by some possible new complication of the plot when +they saw the tall, familiar figure of Jasper Ewold's daughter standing +against the skyline. She felt the greedy inquiry of their eyes; she +guessed their thoughts. + +This new element of the situation swept her with a realization of the +punishment she must suffer for that chance meeting on Galeria and then +with resentful anger, which transformed Jack Wingfield's indifference to +callous bravado. + +Must she face that battery of leers from the town ruffians while she +implored a stranger, who had been nothing to her yesterday and would be +nothing tomorrow, to run away from a combat which was a creation of his +own stubbornness? She was in revolt against herself, against him, and +against the whole miserable business. If she proceeded, public opinion +would involve her in a sentimental interest in a stranger. She must live +with the story forever, while to an idle traveller it was only an +adventure at a way-station on his journey. + +She had but to withdraw in feigned surprise from the sight of a scene +which she had come upon unawares and she would be free of any association +with it. For all Little Rivers knew that she was given to random walks +and rides. No one would be surprised that she was abroad at this early +hour. It would be ascribed to the nonsense which afflicted the Ewolds, +father and daughter, about sunrises. + +Yes, she had been in a nightmare. With the light of day she was seeing +clearly. Had she not warned him about Leddy? Had not she done her part? +Should she submit herself to fruitless humiliation? Go to him in as much +distress as if his existence were her care? If he would not listen to her +yesterday, why should she expect him to listen to her now? + +She would return to her garden. Its picture of content and isolation +called her away from the stare of the faces on the other bank. She turned +on her heel abruptly, took two or three spasmodic steps and stopped +suddenly, confronted with another picture--one of imagination--that of +Jack Wingfield lying dead. The recollection of a voice, the voice that +had stopped the approach of Leddy's passion-inflamed face to her own on +the pass, sounded in her ears. + +She faced around, drawn by something that will and reason could not +overcome, to see that Jim Galway and Ropey Smith had finished their task +of pacing off the distance. The two combatants were starting for their +stations, their long shadows in the slant of the morning sunlight +travelling over the sand like pursuing spectres. Leddy went with the +quick, firm step which bespoke the keenness of his desire; Jack more +slowly, at a natural gait. His station was so near her that she could +reach him with a dozen steps. And he was whistling--the only sound in a +silence which seemed to stretch as far as the desert--whistling gaily in +apparent unconsciousness that the whole affair was anything but play. +The effect of this was benumbing. It made her muscles go limp. She sank +down for very want of strength to keep erect; and Ignacio, hardly +observed, keeping close to her dropped at her side. + +"Ignacio, tell the young man, the one who was our guest last evening, +that I wish to see him!" she gasped. + +With flickering, shrewd eyes Ignacio had watched her distress. He craved +the word that should call him to service and was off with a bound. His +rushing, agitated figure was precipitated into a scene hard set as men on +a chess-board in deadly serenity. Leddy and Jack, were already facing +each other. + +"Señor! Señor!" Ignacio shouted, as he ran. "Señor Don't Care of the Big +Spurs--wait!" + +The message which he had to give was his mistress's and, therefore, +nobody else's business. He rose on tiptoes to whisper it into Jack's +ear. Jack listened, with head bent to catch the words. He looked over to +Mary for an instant of intent silence and then raised his empty left +hand in signal. + +"Sorry, but I must ask for a little delay!" he called to Leddy. His tone +was wonderful in its politeness and he bowed considerately to his +adversary. + +"I thought it was all bluff!" Leddy answered. "You'll get it, +though--you'll get it in the old way if you haven't the nerve to take it +in yours!" + +"Really, I am stubbornly fond of my way," Jack said. "I shall be only a +minute. That will give you time to steady your nerves," he added, in the +encouraging, reassuring strain of a coach to a man going to the bat. + +He was coming toward Mary with his easy, languid gait, radiant of casual +inquiry. The time of his steps seemed to be reckoned in succeeding +hammer-beats in her brain. He was coming and she had to find reasons to +keep him from going back; because if it had not been for her he would be +quite safe. Oh, if she could only be free of that idea of obligation to +him! All the pain, the confusion, the embarrassment was on her side. His +very manner of approach, in keeping with the whole story of his conduct +toward her, showed him incapable of such feelings. She had another +reaction. She devoutly wished that she had not sent for him. + +Had not his own perversity taken his fate out of her hands? If he +preferred to die, why should it be her concern? Should she volunteer +herself as a rescuer of fools? The gleaming sand of the _arroyo_ rose in +a dazzling mist before her eyes, obscuring him, clothing him with the +unreality of a dream; and then, in physical reality, he emerged. He was +so near as she rose spasmodically that she could have laid her hand on +his shoulder. His hat under his arm, he stood smiling in the bland, +questioning interest of a spectator happening along the path, even as he +had in her first glimpse of him on the pass. + +"I don't care! Go on! Go on!" she was going to say. "You have made sport +of me! You make sport of everything! Life itself is a joke to you!" + +The tempest of the words was in her eyes, if it did not reach her +tongue's end. It was halted by the look of hurt surprise, of real pain, +which appeared on his face. Was it possible, after all, that he could +feel? The thought brought forth the passionate cry of her mission after +that sleepless night. + +"I beg of you--I implore you--don't!" + +Had anyone told her yesterday that she would have been begging any man +in melodramatic supplication for anything, she would have thought of +herself as mad. Wasn't she mad? Wasn't he mad? Yet she broke into +passionate appeal. + +"It is horrible--unspeakable! I cannot bear it!" + +A flood of color swept his cheeks and with it came a peculiar, feminine, +almost awkward, gentleness. His air was that of wordless humility. He +seemed more than ever an uncomprehending, sure prey for Leddy. + +"Don't you realize what death is?" she asked. + +The question, so earnest and searching, had the contrary effect on him. +It changed him back to his careless self. He laughed in the way of one +who deprecates another's illusion or passing fancy. This added to her +conviction that he did not realize, that he was incapable of realizing, +his position. + +"Do you think I am about to die?" he asked softly. + +"With Pete Leddy firing at you twenty yards away--yes! And you pose--you +pose! If you were human you would be serious!" + +"Pose?" He repeated the word. It startled him, mystified him. "The +clothes I bought to please Firio, you mean?" he inquired, his face +lighting. + +"No, about death. It is horrible--horrible! Death for which I am +responsible!" + +"Why, have you forgotten that we settled all that?" he asked. "It was not +you. It was the habit I had formed of whistling in the loneliness of the +desert. I am sorry, now, that I did not stick to singing, even at the +expense of a sore throat." + +Now he called to Leddy, and his voice, high-pitched and powerful, seemed +to travel in the luminous air as on resilient, invisible wires. + +"Leddy, wasn't it the way I whistled to you the first time we met that +made you want satisfaction? You remember"--and he broke into a whistle. +His tone was different from that to Leddy on the pass; the whistle was +different. It was shrill and mocking. + +"Yes, the whistle!" yelled Leddy. "No man can whistle to me like that +and live!" + +Jack laughed as if he appreciated all the possibilities of humor inherent +in the picture of the bloodthirsty Leddy, the waiting seconds and the +gallery. He turned to Mary with a gesture of his outstretched hands: + +"There, you see! I brought it on myself." + +"You are brutal! You are without feeling--you are ridiculous--you--" she +stormed, chokingly. + +And in face of this he became reasoning, philosophical. + +"Yes, I admit that it is all ridiculous, even to farce, this little +_comédie humaine_. But we must remember that beside the age of the desert +none of us last long. Ridiculous, yes; but if I will whistle, why, then, +I must play out the game I've started." + +He was looking straight into her eyes, and there was that in his gaze +which came as a surprise and with something of the effect of a blade out +of a scabbard. It chilled her. It fastened her inactive to the earth with +a helplessness that was uncanny. It mixed the element of fear for him +with the element of fear of him. + +"Remember I am of age--and I don't mind," he added, with the faintest +glint of satire in his reassurance. + +He was walking away, with a wave of his hand to Leddy; he was going +over the precipice's edge after thanking the danger sign. He did not +hasten, nor did he loiter. The precipice resolved itself into an +incident of a journey of the same order as an ankle-deep stream +trickling across a highway. + + + + +IX + +THE DEVIL IS OUT + + +She had done her best and she had failed. What reason was there for her +to remain? Should she endure witnessing in reality the horror which she +had pictured so vividly in imagination? A flash of fire! The fall of a +careening figure to the earth! Leddy's grin of satisfaction! The +rejoicing of his clan of spectators over the exploit, while youth which +sang airs to the beat of a pony's hoofs and knew the worship of the +Eternal Painter lay dead! + +What reason to remain except to punish herself! She would go. But +something banished reason. She was held in the leash of suspense, staring +with clearness of vision in one second; staring into a mist the next; +while the coming and going of Ignacio's breaths between his teeth was the +only sound in her ears. + +"Señor Don't Care of the Big Spurs will win!" he whispered. + +"He will?" she repeated, like one marvelling, in the tautness of every +nerve and muscle, that she had the power of speech. + +She peered into Ignacio's face. Its Indian impassivity was gone. His lips +were twitching; his eyes were burning points between half-closed lids. + +"Why?" she asked. "How?" + +"I know. I watch him. I have seen a mountain lion asleep in a tree. His +paw is like velvet. He smiles. There seems no fight in him. I know. There +is a devil, a big devil, in Señor Don't Care. It sleeps so much it very +terrible when it awakes. And Pete Leddy--he is all the time awake; all +the time too ready. Something in him will make his arm shake when the +moment to shoot comes and something in Señor Don't Care--his devil--will +make his arm steady." + +Could Ignacio be right? Did Jack really know how to shoot? Was he +confident of the outcome? Were his smiles the mask of a conviction that +he was to kill and not to be killed? After all, had his attitude toward +her been merely acting? Had she undergone this humiliation as the fish on +the line of the mischievous play of one who had stopped over a train in +order to do murder? No! If he were capable of such guile he knew that +Leddy could shoot well and that twenty yards was a deadly range for a +good shot. He was taking a chance and the devil in him was laughing at +the chance, while it laughed at her for thinking that he was an innocent +going to slaughter in expression of a capricious sense of chivalry. + +"He will win--he will win if Leddy plays fair!" Ignacio repeated. + +Now she was telling herself that it was solely for the sake of her +conscience that she wanted to see Señor Don't Care survive; solely for +the sake of her conscience that she wanted to see him go aboard the train +safe. After that, she could forget ever having owed this trifler the +feeling of gratitude for a favor done. Literally, he must live in order +to be a dead and unremembered incident of her existence. + +And Jack was back at his station, with the bright sunlight heightening +the colors of his play cowboy attire, his weight on the ball of his right +foot thrown well ahead of the other, his head up, but the whole effect +languid, even deferential. He seemed about to take off his hat to the +joyous sky of a fair day in May. His shadow expressed the same feeling as +his pose, that of tranquil youth with its eyes on the horizon. Leddy had +the peculiar slouch of the desperado, which is associated with the spread +of pioneering civilization by the raucous criers of red-blooded +individualism. If Jack's bearing was amateurish, then Pete's was +professional in its threatening pose; and his shadow, like himself, had +an unrelieved hardness of outline. + +Both drew their guns from their holsters and lowered them till the +barrels lay even with the trousers seams. They awaited the word to fire +which Bill Lang, who stood at an angle equidistant from the two men, +was to give. + +"Wait!" Jack called, in a tone which indicated that something had +recurred to him. Then a half laugh from him fell on the brilliant, +shining, hard silence with something of the sound of a pebble slipping +over glare ice. + +"Leddy, it has just occurred to me that we are both foolish--honestly, we +are!" he said. "The idea when Arizona is so sparsely settled of our +starting out to depopulate it in such a premeditated manner on such a +beautiful morning, and all because I was such an inept whistler! Why, if +I had realized what a perfectly bad whistler I was I would never have +whistled again. If my whistle hurt your feelings I am sorry, and I--" + +"No, you don't!" yelled Leddy. "I've waited long enough! It's +fight, you--" + +"Oh, all right! You are so emphatic," Jack answered. His voice was still +pleasant, but shot with something metallic. The very shadow of him seemed +to stiffen with the stiffening of his muscles. + +"Ready!" called Bill Lang. + +The ruling passion that had carved six notches on his gun-handle +overwhelmed Pete Leddy. At least, let us give him the benefit of the +doubt and say that this and not calculation was responsible for his +action. Before the word for preparation was free of Lang's lips, and +without waiting for the word to fire, his revolver came up in a swift +quarter-circle. He was sure of his aim at that range with a ready draw. +Again and again he had thus hit his target in practice and six times he +had winged his man by such agile promptness. + +With the flash from the muzzle all the members of the gallery rose on +hands and knees. They were as sure that there was to be a seventh notch +as of their identity. There was no question in their minds but Pete had +played a smart trick. They had known from the first that he would win. +And the proof of it was in the sudden, uncontrollable movement of the +adversary. + +Jack whirled half round. He was falling. But even as he fell he was still +facing his adversary. He plunged forward unsteadily and came to rest on +his left elbow. A trickle of blood showed on the chap of his left leg, +which had tightened as his knee twisted under him. Leddy's rage had been +so hot that for once his trigger finger had been too quick. He had aimed +too low. But he was sure that he had done for his man and he looked +triumphantly toward the gallery gods whose hero he was. They had now +risen to their feet. In answer to their congratulations he waved his +left hand, palm out, in salutation. His gun-hand had dropped back to his +trousers seam. + +Even as it dropped, Jack's revolver had risen, his own gun-hand steadied +in the palm of his left hand, which had an elbow in the sand for a rest. +Victor and spectators, in their preoccupation with the relief and elation +of a drama finished, had their first warning of what was to come in a +voice that did not seem like the voice of the tenderfoot as they had +heard it, but of another man. And Leddy was looking at a black hole in a +rim of steel which, though twenty yards away, seemed hot against his +forehead, while he turned cold. + +"Now, Pete Leddy, do not move a muscle!" Jack told him. "Pete Leddy, +you did not play my way. I still have a shot due, and I am going to +kill you!" + +Jack's face seemed never to have worn a smile. It was all chin, and thin, +tightly-pressed lips, and solid, straight nose, bronze and unyielding. + +"And I am going to kill you!" + +This was surely the devil of Ignacio's imagery speaking in him--a cold, +passionless, gray-eyed devil. Though they had never seen him shoot, +everybody felt now that he could shoot with deadly accuracy and that +there was no play cowboy in his present mood. He had the bead of death +on Leddy and he would fire with the first flicker of resistance. His +call seemed to have sunk the feet of everyone beneath the sand to +bed-rock and riveted them there. Lang and the two seconds were as +motionless as statues. + +Mary recalled Leddy's leer at her on the pass, with its intent of +something more horrible than murder. Savagery rose in her heart. It was +right that he should be killed. He deserved his fate. But no sooner was +the savagery born--born, she felt, of the very hypnosis of that carved +face--than she cast it out shudderingly in the realization that she had +wished the death of a fellow human being! She looked away from Jack; and +then it occurred to her that he must be bleeding. He was again a +companion of the trail, his strength ebbing away. Her impulse was +retarded by no fear of the gallery now. It brought her to her feet. + +"But first drop your revolver!" she heard Jack call, as she ran. + +She saw it fall from Leddy's trembling hand, as a dead leaf goes free of +a breeze-shaken limb. All the fight was out of him. The courage of six +notches was not the courage to accept in stoicism the penalty of foul +play. And that black rim was burning his forehead. + +"Galway, you have a gun?" Jack asked. + +"Yes," Galway answered, mechanically. His presence of mind, which had +been so sure in the store, was somewhat shaken. He had seen men killed, +but never in such deliberate fashion. + +"Take it out'" + +There was a quality in the command like frosty madness, which one +instinctively obeyed. The half-prostrate figure of the tenderfoot seemed +to dominate everything--men, earth, and air. + +Mary had a glimpse of Galway drawing an automatic pistol from his pocket +when she dropped at Jack's side. She knew that Jack had not heard or seen +her approach. All his will was flowing out along a pistol's sight, even +as his blood was flowing out on the sand in a broadening circle of red. + +It was well that she had come. Her fingers were splashed as she felt for +the artery, which she closed by leaning her whole weight on the thumb. + +Ignacio had followed her and immediately after him came Firio, who had +been startled in his breakfast preparations by the sound of a shot and +had set out to investigate its cause. He was as changed as his master; a +twitching, fierce being, glaring at her and at the wound and then +prolongedly and watchfully at Pete Leddy. + +"Can you shoot to kill?" Jack asked Galway, in a piercing summons. + +"Yes," drawled Galway. + +"Then up with your gun--quick! There! A bead on Ropey Smith!" + +Galway had the bead before Ropey could protest. + +"Give Ropey ten seconds to drop his gun or we will care for him at the +same time as Pete'" Jack concluded. + +Ropey did not wait the ten seconds. He was over-prompt for the +same reasons of temperament that made Pete Leddy prefer his own +way of fighting. + +"I take it that we can count on the neutrality of our spectators. They +cannot be interested in the success of either side," Jack observed, with +dry humor, but still methodically. "All they ask is a spectacle." + +"Yes, you bet!" came a voice from the gallery, undisguisedly eager +to concur. + +"Now, Pete and Ropey," Jack began, and broke off. + +There was a poignant silence that waited on the processes of his mind. +Not only was there no sound, but to Mary there seemed no movement +anywhere in the world, except the pulse of the artery trying to drive its +flood past the barrier of her thumb. Jack kept his bead unremittingly on +Pete. It was Firio who broke the silence. + +"Kill him! He is bad! He hates you!" said Firio. + +"_Sí, sí_! If you do not kill him now, you must some time," said Ignacio. + +Mary felt that even if Jack heard them he would not let their advice +influence him. On the bank before she had hastened to him a strange and +awful visitor in her heart had wished for Leddy's death. Now she wished +for him to go away unharmed. She wished it in the name of her own +responsibility for all that had happened. Yet her tongue had no urging +word to offer. She waited in a supernatural and dreadful curiosity on +Jack's decision. It was as if he were to answer one more question in +explanation of the mystery of his nature. Could he deliberately shoot +down an unarmed man? Was he that hard? + +"I am thinking just how to deal with you, Pete and Ropey," Jack +proceeded. "As I understand it, you have not been very useful citizens of +Little Rivers. You can live under one condition--that you leave town and +never return armed. Half a minute to decide!" + +"I'll go!" said Pete. + +"I'll go!" said Ropey. + +"And keep your words?" + +"Yes!" they assented. + +But neither moved. The fact that Jack had not yet lowered his +revolver made them cautious. They were obviously over-anxious to play +safe to the last. + +"Then go!" called Jack. + +Pete and Ropey slouched away, leaving behind Ropey's gun, which was +unimportant as it had only one notch, and Pete's precious companion of +many campaigns with its six notches, lying on the sand. + +"And, gentlemen," Jack called to the spectators, "our little +entertainment is over now. I am afraid that you will be late for +breakfast." + +Apparently it came as a real inspiration to all at once that they might +be, for they began to withdraw with a celerity that was amazingly +spontaneous. Their heads disappeared below the skyline and only the +actors were left. Pete and Ropey--Bill Lang following--walked away along +the bed of the _arroyo_, instead of going over the bank. Pete paused when +he was out of range. The old threat was again in his pose. + +"I'm not through with you, yet!" he called. + +"Why, I hope you are!" Jack answered. + +He let his revolver fall with a convulsion of weakness. Mary wondered if +he were going to faint. She wondered if she herself were not going to +faint, in a giddy second, while the red spot on the sand shaped itself in +revolving grotesquery. But the consciousness that she must not lift her +weight from the artery was a centering idea to keep her faculties in some +sort of equilibrium. + +He was looking around at her, she knew. Now she must see his face after +this transformation in him which had made her fears of his competency +silly imaginings; after she had linked her name with his in an +overwhelming village sensation. She was stricken by unanalyzable emotions +and by a horror of her nearness to him, her contact with his very blood, +and his power. She was conscious of a glimpse of his turning profile, +still transfixed with the cool purpose of action. Then they were gazing +full at each other, eyes into eyes, directly, questioningly. He was +smiling as he had on the pass; as he had when he stood with his arms +full of mail waiting for the signal to deposit his load. His devil had +slipped back into his inner being. + +He spoke first, and in the voice that went with his vaguest mood; the +voice in which he had described his escape from the dinosaur whose scales +had become wedged in the defile at the critical moment. + +"You have a strong thumb and it must be tired, as well as all +bluggy," he said, falling into a childhood symbol for taking the +whole affair in play. + +Could he be the same man who had said, "I am going to kill you!" so +relentlessly? He had eased the situation with the ready gift he had for +easing situations; but, at the same time, he had made those unanalyzable +emotions more complex, though they were swept into the background for the +moment. He glanced down at his leg with comprehending surprise. + +"Now, certainly, you are free of all responsibility," he added. "You kept +the strength in me to escape the fate you feared. Jim Galway will make a +tourniquet and relieve you." + +The first available thing for tightening the tourniquet was the barrel +of Pete Leddy's gun and the first suggestion for material came from her. +It was the sash of her gown, which Galway knotted with his strong, +sunburned fingers. + +When she could lift her numbed thumb from its task and rose to her feet +she had a feeling of relief, as if she were free of magnetic bonds and +uncanny personal proximity. The incident was closed--surely closed. She +was breathing a prayer of thanks when a remark from Galway to Jack +brought back her apprehension. + +"I guess you will have to postpone catching to-day's train," he said. + +Certainly, Jack must remain until his wound had healed and his strength +had returned. And where would he go? He could not camp out on the desert. +As Jasper Ewold had the most commodious bungalow it seemed natural that +any wounded stranger should be taken there. The idea chilled her as an +insupportable intrusion. Jack hesitated a moment. He was evidently +considering whether he could not still keep to his programme. + +"Yes, Jim, I'm afraid I shall have to ask you for a cot for a few days," +he said, finally. + +Again he had the right thought at the right moment. Had he surmised what +was passing in her mind? + +"Seeing that you've got Pete Leddy out of town, I should say that you +were fairly entitled to a whole bed," Jim drawled. "These two Indians +here can make a hustle to get some kind of a litter." + +Now she could go. That was her one crying thought: She could go! And +again he came to her rescue with his smiling considerateness. + +"You have missed your breakfast, I'll warrant," he said to her. "Please +don't wait. You were so brave and cool about it all, and--I--" A faint +tide of color rose to his cheeks, which had been pale from loss of blood. +For once he seemed unable to find a word. + +Mary denied him any assistance in his embarrassment. + +"Yes," she answered, almost bluntly. Then she added an excuse: "And you +should have a doctor at once. I will send him." + +She did not look at Jack again, but hastened away. When she was over the +bank of the _arroyo_ out of sight she put her fingers to her temples in +strong pressure. That pulse made her think of another, which had been +under her thumb, and she withdrew her fingers quickly. + +"It is the sun! I have no hat," she said to herself, "and I didn't +sleep well." + + + + +X + +MARY EXPLAINS + + +Dr. Patterson was still asleep when Mary rapped at his door. Having +aroused him to action by calling out that a stranger had been wounded in +the _arroyo_, she did not pause to offer any further details. With her +eyes level and dull, she walked rapidly along the main street where +nobody was yet abroad, her one thought to reach her room uninterrupted. +As she approached the house she saw her father standing on the porch, his +face beaming with the joy of a serenely-lived moment as he had his +morning look at the Eternal Painter's first display for the day. She had +crossed the bridge before he became conscious of her presence. + +"Mary! You are up first! Out so early when you went to bed so late!" he +greeted her. + +"I did not sleep well," she explained. + +"What, Mary, you not sleep well!" All the preoccupation with the +heavens went from his eyes, which swept her from head to foot. "Mary! +Your hand is covered with blood! There is blood on your dress' What +does this mean?" + +She looked down and for the first time saw dark red spots on her skirt. +The sight sent a shiver through her, which she mastered before she spoke. + +"Oh, nothing--or a good deal, if you put it in another way. A real +sensation for Little Rivers!" she said. + +"But you are not telling!" + +"It is such a remarkable story, father, it ought not to be spoiled by +giving away its plot," she said, with assumed lightness. "I don't feel +equal to doing full justice to it until after I've had my bath. I will +tell you at breakfast. That's a reason for your waiting for me." + +And she hastened past him into the house. + +"Was it--was it something to do with this Wingfield?" he called excitedly +after her. + +"Yes, about the fellow of the enormous spurs--Señor Don't Care, as +Ignacio calls him," she answered from the stair. + +Some note underneath her nonchalance seemed to disturb, even to distress +him. He entered the house and started through the living-room on his way +to the library. But he paused as if in answer to a call from one of the +four photographs on the wall, Michael Angelo's young David, in the +supple ease of grace. The David which Michael made from an imperfect +piece of marble! The David which sculptors say is ill-proportioned! The +David into which, however, the master breathed the thing we call genius, +in the bloom of his own youth finding its power, even as David found his +against Goliath. + +This David has come out of the unknown, over the hills, with the dew of +morning freshness on his brow. He is unconscious of self; of everything +except that he is unafraid. If all other aspirants have failed in downing +the old champion, why, he will try. + +Now, Jasper Ewold frowned at David as if he were getting no answer to a +series of questions. + +"I must make a change. You have been up a long time, David," he +thought; for he had many of these photographs which he kept in a +special store-room subject to his pleasure in hanging. "Yes, I will +have a Madonna--two Madonnas, perhaps, and a Velasquez and a Rembrandt +next time." + +In the library he set to reading Professor Giuccamini; but he found +himself disagreeing with the professor. + +"I want your facts which you have dug out of the archives," he said, +speaking to the book as if it were alive. "I don't want your opinions. +Confound it!" he threw Giuccamini on the table. "I'll make my own +opinions! Nothing else to do out here on the desert. Time enough to +change them as often as I want, too." + +He went into the garden--the garden which, next to Mary, was the most +intimate thing in his affections. Usually, every new leaf that had burst +forth over night set itself in the gelatine of his mind like so many +letterpress changes on a printed page to a proof-reader. This time, +however, a new palm leaf, a new spray of bougainvillea blossoms, a bud +on the latest rose setting which he had from Los Angeles, said "Good +morning," without any response from him. + +He paced back and forth, his hands clasped behind him, his head bowed +moodily, and his shoulders drawn together in a way that made him seem +older and more portly. With each turn he looked sharply, impatiently, +toward the door of the house. + +Never had Mary so felt the charm of her room as on this morning; never +had it seemed so set apart from the world and so personal. It was the +breadth of the ell and the size of her father's library and bedroom +combined. The windows could hardly be called windows in a Northern sense, +for there was no glass. It was unnecessary to seal up the source of +light and air in a dry climate, where a blanket at night supplied all the +extra warmth one's body ever required. The blinds swung inward and the +shades softened the light and added to the privacy which the screen of +the growing young trees and creeping vines were fast supplying. Here she +could be more utterly alone than on the summit of the pass itself. She +paused in the doorway, surveying familiar objects in the enjoyed triumph +of complete seclusion. + +While she waited for the water to run into the bowl, she looked fixedly +at the stains of a fluid which had been so warm in its touch. It was only +blood, she told herself. It would wash off, and she held her hands in the +water and saw the spread of the dye through the bowl in a moment of +preoccupation. Then she scrubbed as vigorously as if she were bent on +removing the skin itself. After she had held up her dripping fingers in +satisfied inspection, the spots on her gown caught her eye. For a moment +they, too, held her staring attention; then she slipped out of the gown +precipitately. + +With this, her determined haste was at an end. She was about to enjoy the +feminine luxury of time. The combing of her hair became a delightful and +leisurely function in the silky feel of the strands in her fingers and +the refreshing pull at the roots. The flow of the bath water made the +music of pleasurable anticipation, and immersion set the very spirit of +physical life leaping and tingling in her veins. And all the while she +was thinking of how to fashion a narrative. + +When she started down-stairs she was not only refreshed but remade. She +was going to breakfast at the usual hour, after the usual processes of +ushering herself from the night's rest into the day's activities. There +had been no stealthy trip out to the _arroyo_; no duel; no wound; no +Señor Don't Care. She had only a story which involved all these elements, +a most preposterous story, to tell. + +"Now you shall hear all about it!" she called to her father as soon as +she saw him; "the strangest, most absurd, most amusing affair"--she piled +up the adjectives--"that has ever occurred in Little Rivers!" + +She began at once, even before she poured his coffee, her voice a trifle +high-pitched with her simulation of humor. And she was exactly veracious, +avoiding details, yet missing nothing that gave the facts a pleasant +trail. She told of the meeting with Leddy on the pass and of the arrival +of the gorgeous traveller; of Jack's whistle; of Pete's challenge. + +Jasper Ewold listened with stoical attentiveness. He did not laugh, even +when Jack's vagaries were mentioned. + +"Why didn't you tell me last night?" was his first question. + +"To be honest, I was afraid that it would worry you. I was afraid that +you would not permit me to go to the pass alone again. But you will?" She +slipped her hand across the table and laid her fingers appealingly on the +broad back of his heavily tanned hand, from which the veins rose in +bronze welts. "And he was nice about it in his ridiculous, big-spurs +fashion. He said that it was all due to the whistle." + +"Go on! Go on! There must be more!" her father insisted impatiently. + +She gave him the pantomime of the store, not as a bit of tragedy--she was +careful about that--but as something witnessed by an impersonal +spectator and narrator of stories. + +"He walked right toward a muzzle, this Wingfield?" Jasper asked, his +brows contracting. + +"Why, yes. I told you at the start it was all most preposterous," +she answered. + +"And he was not afraid of death--this Wingfield!" Jasper repeated. + +He was looking away from her. The contraction of his brows had become a +scowl of mystification. + +"Why do you always speak of him as 'this Wingfield,'" she demanded, "as +if the town were full of Wingfields and he was a particular one?" + +He looked around quickly, his features working in a kind of confusion. +Then he smiled. + +"I was thinking of the whistle," he explained. "Well, we'll call him this +Sir Chaps, this Señor Don't Care, or whatever you please. As for his +walking into the gun, there is nothing remarkable in that. You draw on a +man. You expect him to throw up his hands or reach for his gun. He does +nothing but smile right along the level of the sight into your eyes. It +was disturbing to Pete's sense of etiquette on such occasions. It threw +him off. There are similar instances in history. A soldier once put a +musket at Bonaparte's head. Some of Caesar's legionaries once pressed +their swords at his breast. Such old hands in human psychology had the +presence of mind to smile. And the history of the West is full of +examples which have not been recorded. Go on, Mary!" + +"Ignacio says he has a devil in him," she added. + +"That little Indian has a lot of primitive race wisdom. Probably he is +right," her father said soberly. + +"It explains what followed," she proceeded. + +She was emphatic about the reason for her part. She went out to the +_arroyo_ on behalf of her responsibility for a human life. + +"But why did you not rouse me? Why did you go alone?" he asked. + +"I didn't think--there wasn't time--I was upset and hurried." + +She proceeded in a forced monotone which seemed to allow her hardly a +single full breath. + +"And I am going to kill you!" she repeated, shuddering, at the close of +the narrative. + +"When he said that did his face change completely? Did it seem like the +face of another man? Yes, did it seem as if there were one face that +could charm and another that could kill?" Jasper's words came slowly and +with a drawn exactness. They formed the inquiry of one who expected +corroboration of an impression. + +"Yes." + +"You felt it--you felt it very definitely, Mary?" + +"Yes." + +She was living over the moment of Jack's transformation from silk to +steel. The scene in the _arroyo_ became burning clear. Under the strain +of the suppression of her own excitement, concentrated in her purpose to +make all the realism of the duel an absurdity, she did not watch keenly +for the signs of expression by which she usually knew what was passing +in her father's mind. But she was not too preoccupied to see that he was +relieved over her assent that there was a devil in Jack Wingfield, which +struck her as a puzzle in keeping with all that morning's experience. +It added to the inward demoralization which had suddenly dammed her +power of speech. + +"Ignacio saw it, too, so I was interested," Jasper added quickly, +in a more natural tone, settling back into his chair. His agitation +had passed. + +So that was it. Her father's dominant, fine old egoism was rejoicing in +another proof of his excellence as a judge of character. + +"Finis! The story is told!" he continued softly. + +All told! And it had been a success. Mary caught her breath in a gay, +high-pitched exclamation of realization that she had not to go on with +explanations. + +"Our singular cavalier is safe!" she said. "My debt is paid. I need not +worry any further lest someone who did me a favor should suffer for it!" + +"True! true!" + +Jasper's outburst of laughter when he had paused in turning down the wick +of the lamp the previous evening had been as a forced blast from the +brasses. Anyone with strong lungs may laugh majestically; but it takes +depth of feeling and years rich with experience to express the +gratification that now possessed him. He stretched his hands across the +table to her and the laugh that came then came as a cataract of +spontaneity. + +"Exactly, Mary! The duel provided the way to pay a debt," he said. "Why, +it is you who have done our Big Spurs a favor! He has a wound to show to +his friends in the East! I am proud that you could take it all so coolly +and reasonably." + +She improved her opportunity while he held her hands. + +"I will go armed next time, and I do know how to shoot, so you won't +worry"--she put it that way, rather than openly ask his consent--"if I +ride out to the pass?" + +"Mary, I have every reason to believe that you know how to take care of +yourself," he answered. + +And that very afternoon she rode out to Galeria, starting a little +earlier than usual, returning a little later than usual, in +jubilant mood. + +"Everything is the same!" she had repeated a dozen times on the road. +"Everything is the same!" she told herself before she fell asleep; +and her sleep was long and sweet, in nature's gratitude for rest +after a storm. + +The sunlight breaking through the interstices of the foliage of a poplar, +sensitive to a slight breeze, came between the lattices in trembling +patchwork on the bed, flickering over her face and losing itself in the +strands of her hair. + +"Everything is the same!" she said, when her faculties were cleared of +drowsiness. + +For the second time she gave intimate, precious thanks for a simple thing +that had never occurred to her as a blessing before: for the seclusion +and silence of her room, free from all invasion except of her own +thoughts. The quicker flow of blood that came with awaking, the expanding +thrill of physical strength and buoyancy of life renewed, brought with it +the moral courage which morning often brings to flout the compromises of +the confusion of the evening's weariness. The inspiriting, cool air of +night electrified by the sun cleared her vision. She saw all the pictures +on the slate of yesterday and their message plainly, as something that +could not be erased by any Buddhistic ritual of reiterated phrase. + +"No, everything is not the same, not even the ride--not yet!" she +admitted. "But time will make it so--time and a sense of humor, which I +hope I have." + + + + +XI + +SEÑOR DON'T CARE RECEIVES + + +Jack lounged in an armchair in the Galway sitting-room with his bandaged +leg bolstered on a stool after Dr. Patterson had fished a bit of lead +out of the wound. Tribute overflowed from the table to the chairs and +from the chairs to the floor; pineapples, their knobby jackets all +yellow from ripening in the field, with the full succulency of root-fed +and sun-drawn flavor; monstrous navel oranges, leaden with the weight of +juice, richer than cloth of gold and velvet soft; and every fruit of the +fertile soil and benignant climate; and jellies, pies, and custards. But +these were only the edibles. There were flowers in equal abundance. They +banked the windows. + +"It's Jasper Ewold's idea to bring gifts when you call," explained Jim +Galway. "Jasper is always sowing ideas and lots of them have sprung up +and flourished." + +Jack had not been in Little Rivers twenty-four hours, and he had played a +part in its criminal annals and become subject to all the embarrassment +of favors of a royal bride or a prima donna who is about to sail. In a +bower, amazed, he was meeting the world of Little Rivers and its wife. +Men of all ages; men with foreign accent; men born and bred as farmers; +men to whom the effect of indoor occupation clung; men still weak, but +with red corpuscles singing a song of returning health in their +arteries--strapping, vigorous men, all with hands hardened by manual +labor and in their eyes the far distances of the desert, in contrast to +the sparkle of oasis intimacy. + +Women with the accent of college classrooms; women who made plural nouns +the running mates of singular verbs; women who were novices in +housework; women drilled in drudgery from childhood--all expanding, all +dwelling in a democracy that had begun its life afresh in a new land, +and all with the wonder of gardens where there had been only sagebrush +in their beings. + +There was something at odds with Jack's experience of desert towns in the +picture of a bronzed rancher, his arms loaded with roses, saying, in +boyish diffidence: + +"Mister, you fit him fair and you sure fixed him good. Just a few +roses--they're so thick over to our place that they're getting a pest. +Thought mebbe they'd be nice for you to look at while you was tied up to +a chair nursing Pete's soovenir!" + +One visitor whose bulk filled the doorway, the expansion of his smile +spreading over a bounteous rotundity of cheek, impressed himself as a +personality who had the distinction in avoirdupois that Jim Galway had in +leanness. In his hand he had five or six peonies as large as saucers. + +"Every complete community has a fat man, seh!" he announced, with a +certain ample bashfulness in keeping with his general amplitude and a +musical Southern accent. + +"If it wants to feel perfectly comfortable it has!" said Jack, by way +of welcome. + +"Well, I'm the fat man of Little Rivers, name being Bob Worther!" +said he, grinning as he came across the room with an amazingly quick, +easy step. + +"No rivals?" inquired Jack. + +"No, seh! I staked out the first claim and I've an eye out for any +new-comers over the two hundred mark. I warn them off! Jasper Ewold is up +to two hundred, but he doesn't count. Why, you ought to have seen me, +seh, before I came to this valley!" + +"A living skeleton?" + +"No, seh! Back in Alabama I had reached a point where I broke so many +chairs and was getting so nervous from sudden falls in the midst of +conversation, when I made a lively gesture that I didn't dare sit down +away from home except at church, where they had pews. I weighed three +hundred and fifty!" + +"And now?" + +"I acknowledge two hundred and forty, including my legs, which are very +powerful, having worked off that extra hundred. I've got the boss job +for making a fat man spider-waisted--inspector of ditches and dams. Any +other man would have to use a horse, but I hoof it, and that's economy +all around. And being big I grow big things. Violets wouldn't be much +more in my line than drawnwork. I've got this whole town beat on +peonies and pumpkins. Being as it's a fat man's pleasure to cheer +people up, I dropped in to bring you a few peonies and to say that, +considering the few well-selected words you spoke to Pete Leddy on this +town's behalf, I'm prepared to vote for you for anything from coroner +to president, seh!" + +Later, after Bob had gone, a small girl brought a spray of gladiolus, +their slender stems down to her toe-tips and the opening blossoms half +hiding her face. Jack insisted on having them laid across his knee She +was not a fairy out of a play, as he knew by her conversation. + +"Mister, did you yell when you was hit?" she asked. + +Jack considered thoughtfully. It would not do to be vagarious under such +a shrewd examination; he must be exact. + +"No, I don't think I did. I was too busy." + +"I'll bet you wanted to, if you hadn't been so busy. Did it hurt much?" + +"Not so very much." + +"Maybe that was why you didn't yell. Mother says that all you can see is +a little black spot--except you can't see it for the bandages. Is that +the way yours is?" + +"I believe so. In fact, I'll tell you a secret: That's the fashion +in wounds." + +"Mother will be glad to know she's right. She sets a lot by her opinion, +does mother. Say, do you like plums?" + +Jack already had a peck of plums, but another peck would not add much to +the redundancy as far as he was concerned. + +"I'll bring you some. We've got the biggest plums in Little Rivers--oh, +so big! Bigger'n Mr. Ewold's! I'll bring some right away." She paused, +however, in the doorway. "Don't you tell anybody I said they were +bigger'n Mr. Ewold's," she went on. "It might hurt his feelings. He's +what they call the o-rig-i-nal set-tler, and we always agree that he +grows the biggest of everything, because--why, because he's got such a +big laugh and such a big smile. Mother says sour-faced people oughtn't to +have a face any bigger'n a crab apple; but Mr. Ewold's face couldn't be +too big if it was as big as all outdoors! Good-by. I reckon you won't be +s'prised to hear that I'm the dreadful talker of our family." + +"Wait!" Jack called. "You haven't told me your name." + +"Belvedere Smith. Father says it ain't a name for living things. But +mother is dreadfully set in her ideas of names, and she doesn't like it +because people call me Belvy; but they just naturally will." + +"Belvedere, did you ever hear of the three little blue mice"--Jack was +leaning toward her with an air of fascinating mystery--"that thought they +could hide in the white clover from the white cat that had two black +stripes on her back?" + +There was a pellmell dash across the room and her face, with wide-open +eyes dancing in curiosity, was pressed close to his: + +"Why did the cat have two black stripes? Why? why?" + +"Just what I was going to tell," said the pacifier of desperadoes. + +"They were off on a tremendous adventure, with anthills for mountains +and clover-stems for the tree-trunks of forests in the path. Tragedy +seemed due for the mice, when a bee dropped off a thistle blossom for a +remarkable reason--none other than that a hummingbird cuffed him in the +ear with his wing--and the bee, looking for revenge with his stinger on +the first vulnerable spot, stung the cat right in the Achilles tendon of +his paw, just as that paw was about to descend with murderous purpose. +The cat ran away crying, with both black stripes ridges of fur sticking +up straight, while the rest of the fur lay nice and smooth; and the +mice giggled so that their ears nearly wiggled off their heads. So all +ended happily." + +"He does beat all!" thought Mrs. Galway, who had overheard part of the +nonsense from the doorway. "Wouldn't it make Pete Leddy mad if he could +hear the man who took his gun away getting off fairy stuff like that!" + +Mrs. Galway had brought in a cake of her own baking. She was +slightly jealous of the neighbors' pastry as entering into her own +particular field of excellence. Jack saw that the supply of cake in +the Galway pantry must be as limitless as the pigments on the +Eternal Painter's palette. + +"The doctor said that I was to have a light diet," he expostulated; "and +I am stuffed to the brim." + +"I'll make you some floating island," said Mrs. Galway, refusing to +strike her colors. + +"That isn't filling and passes the time," Jack admitted. + +"Jim says if you had to Fletcherize on floating island you would starve +to death and your teeth would get so used to missing a step on the stairs +that they would never be able to deal with real victuals at all." + +"Mrs. Galway," Jack observed sagely, dropping his head on the back of the +chair, "I see that it has occurred to you and Jim that it is an excellent +world and full of excellent nonsense. I am ready to eat both fluffy isles +and the yellow sea in which they float. I am ready to keep on getting +hungry with my efforts, even though you make it continents and oceans!" + +From his window he had a view, over the dark, polished green of Jim's +orange trees, of the range, brown and gray and bare, holding steady +shadows of its own and host to the shadows of journeying clouds, with the +pass set in the centre as a cleft in a forbidding barrier. In the yard +Wrath of God, Jag Ear, and P.D. were tethered. Deep content illumined the +faces of P.D. and Jag Ear; but Wrath of God was as sorrowful as ever. A +cheerful Wrath of God would have excited fears for his health. + +"Yet, maybe he is enjoying his rest more than the others," Jack told +Firio, who kept appearing at the window on some excuse or other. "Perhaps +he takes his happiness internally. Perhaps the external signs are only +the last stand of a lugubriousness driven out by overwhelming forces of +internal joy." + +"_Sí, sí_!" said Firio. + +"Firio, you are eminently a conversationalist," said Jack. "You agree +with any foolishness as if it were a new theory of ethics. You are an +ideal companion. I never have to listen to you in order that I may in +turn have my say." + +"_Sí_," said Firio. He leaned on the windowsill, his black eyes shining +with ingenuous and flattering appeal: "I will broil you a quail on a +spit," he whispered. "It's better than stove cooking." + +"Don't talk of that!" Jack exclaimed, almost sharply. The suggestion +brought a swift change to sadness over his face and drew a veil of +vagueness over his eyes. "No, Firio, and I'll tell you why: the odor of a +quail broiled on a spit belongs at the end of a day's journey, when you +camp in sight of no habitation. You should sit on a dusty blanket-roll; +you should eat by the light of the embers or a guttering candle. No, +Firio, we'll wait till some other day. And it's not exactly courtesy to +our hostess to bring in provender from the outside." + +The trail had apparently taught Firio all the moods of his master. He +knew when it was unwise to persist. + +"_Sí_!" he whispered, and withdrew. + +Jack looked at Galeria and then back quickly, as if resisting its call. +He smiled half wryly and readjusted his position in the chair. Over the +hedge he could see the heads and shoulders of passers-by. Jim Galway had +come into the room, when Jasper Ewold's broad back and great head hove +in sight with something of the steady majesty of progress of a +full-rigged ship. + +"The Doge!" Jack exclaimed, brightening. + +Jim was taken unawares. Was it the name of a new kind of semi-tropical +fruit not yet introduced into Arizona? + +"Not the Doge of Venice--hardly, when Mr. Ewold's love runs to Florence! +The Doge of Little Rivers!" + +"Why, the Doge--of course!" Jim was "on" now and grinning. "I didn't +think of my history at first. That's a good one for Jasper Ewold!" + +"O Doge of Little Rivers, I expected you in a gondola of state!" said +Jack, with a playfully grandiloquent gesture, as Jasper's abundance +filled the doorway. "But it is all the more compliment to me that you +should walk." + +"Doge, eh?" Jasper tasted the word. "Pooh!" he said. "Persiflage! +persiflage! I saw at once yesterday that you had a weakness for it." + +"And Miss Ewold? How is she?" Jack asked. Remembering the promise +that Mary had exacted from him, he took care not to refer to her part +in the duel. + +His question fell aptly for what Jasper had to say. Being a man used to +keeping the gate ever open to the full flood of spontaneity, he became +stilted in the repetition of anything he had thought out and rehearsed. +He was overcheerful, without the mellowness of tone which gave his cheer +its charm on the previous evening. + +"She's not a bit the worse. Why, she went for a ride out to the pass this +afternoon as usual! I've had the whole story, from the pass till the +minute that Jim put the tourniquet on your leg. She recognizes the great +kindness you did her." + +"Not a kindness--an inevitable interruption by any passer-by," +Jack put in. + +"Naturally she felt that it was a kindness, a service, and when she knew +you were in danger she acted promptly for herself, with a desert girl's +self-reliance. When it was all over she saw the whole thing in its proper +perspective, as an unpleasant, preposterous piece of barbarism which had +turned out fortunately." + +"Oh, I am glad of that!" Jack exclaimed, in relief that spoke rejoicing +in every fibre. "I had worried. I had feared lest I had insisted too much +on going on. But I had to. And I know that it was a scene that only men +ought to witness--so horrible I feared it might leave a disagreeable +impression." + +"Ah, Mary has courage and humor. She sees the ridiculous. She laughs at +it all, now!" + +"Laughs?" asked Jack. "Yes, it was laughable;" and he broke into +laughter, in which Jasper joined thunderously. + +Jasper kept on laughing after Jack stopped, and in genuine relief to find +that the affair was to be as uninfluencing a chapter in the easy +traveller's life as in Mary's. + +"Our regret is that we may have delayed you, sir," Jasper proceeded. "You +may have had to postpone an important engagement. I understand that you +had planned to take the train this morning." + +"When one has been in the desert for a long time," Jack answered, "a few +days more or less hardly matter in the time of his departure. In a week +Dr. Patterson says that I may go. Meanwhile, I shall have the pleasure +of getting acquainted with Little Rivers, which, otherwise, I should +have missed." + +"I am glad!" Jasper Ewold exclaimed with dramatic quickness. "Glad that +your wound is so slight--glad that you need not be shut up long when you +are due elsewhere." + +What books should he bring to the invalid to while away the time? "The +Three Musketeers" or "Cyrano"? Jack seemed to know his "Cyrano" so well +that a copy could be only a prompt. He settled deeper in his chair and, +more to the sky than to Jasper Ewold, repeated Cyrano's address to his +cadets, set to a tune of his own. His body might be in the chair, with a +bandaged leg, but clearly his mind was away on the trail. + +"Yes, let me see," he said, coming back to earth. "I should like the +'Road to Rome,' something of Charles Lamb, Aldrich's 'Story of a Bad +Boy,' Heine---but no! What am I saying? Bring me any solid book on +economics. I ought to be reading economics. Economics and Charles Lamb, +that will do. Do you think they could travel together?" + +"All printed things can, if you choose. I'll include Lamb." + +"And any Daudet lying loose," Jack added. + +"And Omar?" + +"I carry Omar in my head, thank you, O Doge!" + +"Sir Chaps of the enormous spurs, you have a broad taste for one who +rides over the pass of Galeria after five years in Arizona," said the +Doge as he rose. He was covertly surveying that soft, winning, dreamy +profile which had turned so hard when the devil that was within came to +the surface. + +"I was fed on books and galleries in my boyhood," Jack said; but +with a reticence that indicated that this was all he cared to tell +about his past. + + + + +XII + +MARY BRINGS TRIBUTE + + +Every resident except the cronies of Pete Leddy considered it a duty, +once a day at least, to look over the Galway hedge and ask how Señor +Don't Care was doing. That is, everyone with a single exception, which +was Mary. Jack had never seen her even pass the house. It was as if his +very existence had dropped out of her ken. The town remarked the anomaly. + +"You have not been in lately," Mrs. Galway reminded her. + +"My flowers have required a lot of attention; also, I have been riding +out to the pass a good deal," she answered, and changed the subject to +geraniums, for the very good reason that she had just been weeding her +geranium bed. + +Mrs. Galway looked at her strangely and Mary caught the glance. She +guessed what Mrs. Galway was thinking: that she had been a little +inconsiderate of a man who had been wounded in her service. + +"Probably it is time I bore tribute, too," she said to herself. + +That afternoon she took down a glass of jelly from the pantry shelves and +set forth in the line of duty, frowning and rehearsing a presentation +speech as she went. With every step toward the Galway cottage she was +increasingly confused and exasperated with herself for even thinking of a +speech. As she drew near she heard a treble chorus of "ohs!" and "ahs!" +and saw Jack on the porch surrounded by children. + +"It's dinosaur foolishness again!" she thought, pungently. + +He was in the full fettle of nonsense, his head a little to one side and +lowered, while he looked through his eyebrows at his hearers, measuring +the effect of his words. She thought of that face when he called to +Leddy, "I am going to kill you!" and felt the pulse of inquiry beat over +all that lay in this man's repertory between the two moods. + +"Then, counting each one in his big, deep, bass voice, like this," he was +saying, "that funny little dwarf kept dropping oranges out of the tree on +the big giant, who could not wiggle and was squeaking in protest in his +little, old woman's voice. Every orange hit him right on the bridge of +his nose, and he was saying: 'You know I never could bear yellow! It +fusses me so.'" + +"He doesn't need any jelly! I am going on!" Mary thought. + +Then Jack saw a slim, pliant form hastening by and a brown profile under +hair bare of a hat, with eyes straight ahead. Mary might have been a unit +of marching infantry. The story stopped abruptly. + +"Yes--and--and--go on!" cried the children. + +Jack held up his hand for silence. + +"How do you do?" he called, and she caught in his tone and in her first +glimpse of his face a certain mischievousness, as if he, who missed no +points for idle enjoyment of any situation, had a satisfaction in taking +her by surprise with his greeting. This put her on her mettle with the +quickness of a summons to fence. She was as nonchalant as he. + +"And you are doing well, I learn," she answered. + +"Oh, come in and hear it, Miss Ewold! It's the best one yet!" cried +Belvedere Smith. "And--and--" + +"And--and--" began the chorus. + +Mary went to the hedge. She dropped the glass of jelly on the thick +carpet of the privet. + +"I have just brought my gift. I'll leave it here. Belvy will bring it +when the story is over. I am glad you are recovering so rapidly." + +"And--and--" insisted the chorus. + +"You oughtn't to miss this story. It's a regular Jim dandy!" +Belvedere shouted. + +"Yes, won't you come in?" Jack begged in serious urgency. "I pride +myself that it is almost intellectual toward the close." + +"I have no doubt," she said, looking fairly at him from under her hand, +which she held up to shade her face, so he saw only the snap of her eyes +in the shadow. "But I am in a hurry." + +And he was looking at a shoulder and a quarter profile as she +turned away. + +"Did you make the jelly yourself?" he called. + +"Yes, I am not afraid of the truth--I did!" she answered with a backward +glance and not stopping. + +"Oh, bully!" he exclaimed with great enthusiasm, in which she detected a +strain of what she classified as impudence. + +"But all the time the giant was fumbling in his pocket for his green +handkerchief. You know the dwarf did not like green. It fussed him just +as much as yellow fussed the giant. But it was a narrow pocket, so narrow +that he could only get his big thumb in, and very deep. So, you see--" +and she heard the tale proceeding as she walked on to the end of the +street, where she turned around and came back across the desert and +through the garden. + +On the way she found it amusing to consider Jack judicially as a human +exhibit, stripped of all the chimera of romance with which Little Rivers +had clothed his personality. If he had not happened to meet her on the +pass, the townspeople would have regarded this stranger as an invasion of +real life by a character out of a comic opera. She viewed the specimen +under a magnifying glass in all angles, turning it around as if it were a +bronze or an ivory statuette. + +1. In his favor: Firstly, children were fond of him; but his extravagance +of phrase and love of applause accounted for that. Secondly, Firio was +devoted to him. Such worshipful attachment on the part of a native Indian +to any Saxon was remarkable. Yet this was explained by his love of color, +his foible for the picturesque, his vagabond irresponsibility, and, +mostly, by his latent savagery--which she would hardly have been willing +to apply to Ignacio's worshipful attachment to herself. + +2. Against him: Everything of any importance, except in the eyes of +children and savages; everything in logic. He would not stand analysis at +all. He was without definite character. He was posing, affected, pleased +with himself, superficial, and theatrical, and interested in people only +so long as they amused him or gratified his personal vanity. + +"I had the best of the argument in leaving the jelly on the hedge, and +that is the last I shall hear of it," she concluded. + +Not so. Mrs. Galway came that evening, a bearer of messages. + +"He says it is the most wonderful jelly that ever was," said Mrs. Galway. +"He ate half the glass for dinner and is saving the rest for +breakfast--I'm using his own words and you know what a killing way he has +of putting things--saving it for breakfast so that he will have something +to live through the night for and in the morning the joy of it will not +be all a memory. He wants to know if you have any more of the same kind." + +"Yes, a dozen glasses," Mary returned. "Tell him we are glad of the +opportunity of finishing last year's stock, and I send it provided he +eats half a glass with every meal." + +"I don't know what his answer will be to that," said Mrs. Galway, +contracting her brow studiously at Mary. "But he would have one quick. He +always has. He's so poetic and all that, we're planning to go to the +station to see him off and pelt him with flowers; and Dr. Patterson is +going to fashion a white cat out of white carnations, with deep red ones +for the black stripes, for the children to present." + +"Hurrah!" exclaimed Mary blithely, and went for the jelly. + +She was spared further bulletins on the state of health of the wounded +until her father returned from his daily call the next morning. She was +in the living-room and she knew by his step on the porch, vigorous yet +light, that he was uplifted by good news or by the anticipation of the +exploitation of some new idea--a pleasure second only to that of the +idea's birth. Such was his elation that he broke one of his own rules by +tossing some of the books loaned to Jack onto the broad top of the table +of the living-room, which was sacred to the isolation of the ivory +paper-knife. + +"He has named the date!" shouted the Doge. "He goes by to-morrow's train! +It will be a gala affair, almost an historical moment in the early +history of this community. I am to make a speech presenting him with the +freedom of the whole world. Between us we have hit on a proper modern +symbol of the gift. He slips me his Pullman ticket and I formally offer +it to him as the key to the hospitality of the seven seas, the two +hemispheres, and the teeming cities that lie beyond the range. It will be +great fun, with plenty of persiflage. And, Mary, they suggest that you +write some verses--ridiculous verses, in keeping with the whole +nonsensical business." + +"You mean that I am to stand on the platform and read poetry dedicated to +him?" she demanded. + +"Poetry, Mary? You grow ambitious. Not poetry--foolish doggerel. Or +someone will read it for you." + +He had not failed to watch the play of her expression. She had received +all his nonsense, announced in his best style of simulated forensic +grandeur, with a certain unchanging serenity which was unamused: which +was, indeed, barely interested. + +"And someone else shall write it, for I don't think of any verses," +she said, with a slight shrug of the shoulder. "Besides, I shall not +be there." + +"Not be there! People will remark your absence!" + +"Will they?" she asked, thoughtfully, as if that had not occurred to her. +"No, they will be too occupied with the persiflage. I am going to ride +out to the pass in the morning very early--before daybreak." + +"But"--he was positively frolicsome as he caught her hands and waved +them back and forth, while he rocked his shoulders--"when you are +stubborn, Mary, have your way. I will make your excuses. And I to work +now. It is the hour of the hoe," as he called all hours except those of +darkness and the hot midday. + +For Jasper Ewold was no idler in the affairs of his ranch or of the town. +Few city men were so busy. His everlasting talk was incidental, like the +babbling of a brook which, however, keeps steadily flowing on; and the +stored scholarship of his mind was supplemented by long evenings with no +other relaxation but reading. Now as he went down the path he broke into +song; and when the Doge sang it was something awful, excusable only by +the sheer happiness that brought on the attack. + +Mary had important sewing, which this morning she chose to do in her room +rather than in her favorite spot in the garden. She closed the shutters +on the sunny side and sat down by the window nearest the garden, +peculiarly sensible of the soft light and cool spaciousness of an inner +world. The occasional buzz of a bee, the flutter of the leaves of the +poplar, might have been the voice of the outer world in Southern Spain or +Southern Italy, or anywhere else where the air is balmy. + +And to-morrow! Out to Galeria in the fervor of a pilgrim to some shrine, +with the easy movement of her pony and the rigid lines of the pass +gradually drawing nearer and the sky ever distant! She would be mistress +of her thoughts in all the silent glamour of morning on the desert. She +would hear the train stop at the station, its heavy effort as it pulled +out, and watch it winding over the flashing steel threads in a clamor of +stridency and harshness, which grew fainter and fainter. And she would +smile as it disappeared around a bend in the range. She would smile at +him, at the incident, just as carelessly as he had smiled when he told of +the dinosaur. + + + + +XIII + +A JOURNEY ON CRUTCHES + + +The sun became benign in its afternoon slant. Little Rivers was beginning +to move after its siesta, with the stretching of muscles that would grow +more vigorous as evening approached and freshened life came into the air +with the sprinkle of sunset brilliance. + +To Jack the hour palpably brought a reminder of the misery of the moment +when a thing long postponed must at last be performed. The softness of +speculative fancy faded from his face. His lips tightened in a way that +seemed to bring his chin into prominence in mastery of his being. As he +called Firio, his voice unusually high-pitched, he did not look out at +P.D. and Wrath of God and Jag Ear. + +Firio came with the eagerness of one who is restless for action. He +leaned on the windowsill, his elbows spread, his chin cupped in his +hands, his Indian blankness of countenance enlivened by the glow of his +eyes, as jewels enliven dull brown velvet. + +"Firio, I have something to tell you." + +"_Sí_!" + +There was a laboring of Jack's throat muscles, and then he forced out the +truth in a few words. + +"Firio," he said, "this is my trail end. I am going back to New York +to-morrow." + +"_Sí_!" answered Firio, without a tremor of emotion; but his eyes glowed +confidently, fixedly, into Jack's. + +"There will be money for you, and--" + +"_Sí_!" said Firio mechanically, as if repeating the lines of a lesson. + +Was this Indian boy prepared for the news? Or did he not care? Was he +simply clay that served without feeling? The thought made Jack wince. He +paused, and the dark eyes, as in a spell, kept staring into his. + +"And you get P.D. and Wrath of God and Jag Ear and, yes, the big spurs +and the chaps, too, to keep to remember me by." + +Firio did not answer. + +"You are not pleased? You--" + +"_Sí_! I will keep them for you. You will want them; you will come back +to all this;" and suddenly Firio was galvanized into the life of a single +gesture. He swept his arm toward the sky, indicating infinite distance. + +"No, I shall never come back! I can't!" Jack said; and his face had set +hard, as if it were a wall about to be driven at a wall. "I must go and I +must stay." + +"_Sí_!" said Firio, resuming his impassiveness, and slipped around the +corner of the house. + +"He does care!" Jack cried with a smile, which, however, was not the +smile of gardens, of running brooks, and of song. "I am glad--glad!" + +He picked up his crutches and went out to the three steeds of +trail memory: + +"And _you_ care--_you_ care!" he repeated to them. + +He drew a lugubrious grimace in mockery at Wrath of God. He tickled the +sliver of the donkey's ear, whereat Jag Ear wiggled the sliver in +blissful unconsciousness that he had lost any of the ornamental equipment +of his tribe. + +"You are like most of us; we don't see our deformities, Jag Ear," Jack +told him. "And if others were also blind to them, why, we should all be +good-looking!" + +His arm slipped around P.D.'s neck and he ran a finger up and down P.D.'s +nose with a tickling caress. + +"You old plodder!" he said. "You know a lot. It's good to have the love +of any living thing that has been near me as long as you have." + +This preposterous being was preposterously sentimental over a pair of +ponies and an earless donkey. When Mrs. Galway, who had watched him from +the window, came out on the porch she saw that he was on his way through +the gate in the hedge to the street. + +"Look here! Did the doctor say you might?" she called. + +"No, my leg says it!" Jack answered, gaily. "Just a little walk! +Back soon." + +It was his first enterprise in locomotion outside the limits of Jim +Galway's yard since he had been wounded. He turned blissful traveller +again. Having come to know the faces of the citizens, now he was to look +into the faces of their habitations. The broad main street, with its rows +of trees, narrowed with perspective until it became a gray spot of desert +sand. Under the trees leisurely flowed those arteries of ranch and +garden-life, the irrigation ditches. Continuity of line in the +hedge-fences was evidently a municipal requirement; but over the hedges +individualism expressed itself freely, yet with a harmony which had been +set by public fashion. + +The houses were of cement in simple design. They had no architectural +message except that of a background for ornamentation by the genius of +the soil's productivity. They waited on vines to cover their sides and +trees to cast shade across their doorways. One need not remain long to +know the old families in this community, where the criterion of local +aristocracy was the size of your plums or the number of crops of alfalfa +you could grow in a year. + +Already Jack felt at home. It was as if he were friends with a whole +world, lacking the social distinctions which only begin when someone +acquires sufficient worldly possessions to give exclusive, formal +dinners. He knew every passer-by well enough to address him or her by the +Christian name. Women called to him from porches with a dozen invitations +to visit gardens. + +"Just a saunter, just a try-out before I take the train. Not going far," +he always answered; yet there was something in his bearing that suggested +a definite mission. + +"We hate to lose you!" called Mrs. Smith. + +"I hate to be lost!" Jack called back; "but that is just my +natural luck." + +"I suppose you've got your work cut out for you back East, same's +everybody else, somewhere or other, 'less they're millionaires, who all +stay in the city and try to run from microbes in their automobiles." + +"Yes, I have work--lots of it," said Jack, ruefully. He shifted his +weight on the crutches, paused and looked at the sky. The Eternal Painter +was dipping his brush lightly and sweeping soft, silvery films, as a kind +of glorified finger-exercise, over an intangible blue. + +"Why care? Why care?" His Majesty was asking. "Why not leave all the +problems of earthly existence to your lungs? Why not lie back and look on +at things and breathe my air? That is enough to keep your whole being in +tune with the Infinite." + +It was his afternoon mood. At sunset he would have another. Then he would +be crying out against the folly of wasting one precious moment in the +eons, because that moment could never return to be lived over. + +Jack kept on until he recognized the cement bridge where he had stopped +when he came from the post-office with Mary. Left bare of its +surroundings, the first habitation in Little Rivers, with the ell which +had been added later, would have appeared a barracks. But Jasper Ewold +had the oldest trees and the most luxuriant hedge and vines as the reward +of his pioneerdom. + +When Jack crossed the bridge and stood in the opening of the hedge there +was no one on the porch in the inviting shade of the prodigal +bougainvillea vines. So he hitched his way up the steps. Feeling that it +was a formal occasion, he searched for the door-bell. There was none. He +rapped on the casing and waited, while he looked at the cool, quiet +interior, with the portrait of David facing him from the wall. + +"David, you seem to be the only one at home," he remarked, for there had +been no answer to his raps; "and you are too busy getting a bead on +Goliath to answer the immaterial questions of a wayfarer." + +Accepting the freedom of the Little Rivers custom on such occasions, he +followed the path to the rear. His head knocked off the dead petals of a +rambler rose blossom, scattering them at his feet. Rounding the corner of +the house, he saw the arbor where he had dined the night of his arrival, +and beyond this an old-fashioned flower garden separated by a path from +a garden of roses. There was a sound of activity from the kitchen behind +a trellis screen, but he did not call out for guidance. He would trust to +finding his own way. + +When he came to the broad path, its stretch lay under a crochet-work of +shadows from the ragged leaves of two rows of palms which ran to the edge +of an orange grove, and the centre of this path was in a straight line +with the bottom of the V of Galeria. + +Jasper Ewold had laid out his little domain according to a set plan +before the water was first let go in laughing triumph over the parched +earth, and this plan, as one might see on every hand, was expressive of +the training of older civilizations in landscape gardening, which ages of +men striving for harmonious forms of beauty in green and growing things +had tested, and which the Doge, in all his unconventionalism of +personality, was as little inclined to amend as he was to amend the +classic authors. An avenue of palms is the epic of the desert; a +bougainvillea vine its sonnet. + +Between the palms to the right and left Jack had glimpses of a vegetable +garden; of rows of berry bushes; of a grove of young fig-trees; of rows +of the sword-bundles of pineapple tops. Everything except the +old-fashioned flower-bed, with its border of mignonette, and the generous +beds of roses and other flowers of the bountiful sisterhood of petals of +artificial cultivation, spoke of utility which must make the ground pay +as well as please. + +Jack took each step as if he were apprehensive of disturbing the quiet +Midway of the avenue of palms ran a cross avenue, and at the +meeting-point was a circle, which evidently waited till the oranges and +the olives should pay for a statue and surrounding benches. Over the +breadth of the cross avenue lay the glossy canopy of the outstretched +branches of umbrella-trees. A table of roughly planed boards painted +green and green rattan chairs were in keeping with the restful effect, +while the world without was aglare with light. + +Here Mary had brought her sewing for the afternoon. She was working so +intently that she had not heard his approach. He had paused just as his +line of vision came flush with the trunks of the umbrella-trees. For the +first time he saw his companion in adventure in repose, her head bent, +leaving clear the line of her neck from the roots of her hair to the +collar, and the soft light bringing out the delicate brown of her skin. + +There seemed no movement anywhere in the world at the moment, except the +flash of her needle in and out. + + + + +XIV + +"HOW FAST YOU SEW!" + + +And she had not seen him! He was touched with a sense of guilt for +having looked so long; for not having at once called to her; and rather +than give her the shock of calling now, he moved toward her, the scuff +of his limp, pendent foot attracting her attention. Her start at the +sound was followed, when she saw him, with amazement and a flush and a +movement as if she would rise. But she controlled the movement, if not +the flush, and fell back into her chair, picking up her sewing, which +had dropped on the table. + +It was like him, she might well think, to come unexpectedly, without +invitation or announcement. She was alert, ready to take the offensive as +the best means of defence, and wishing, in devout futility, that he had +stayed away. He was smiling happily at everything in cosmos and at her as +a part of it. + +"Good afternoon!" + +"Good afternoon!" + +"That last lot of jelly was better than the first," he said softly. + +"Was it? You must favor vintage jelly!" + +"I came to call--my p.p.c. call--and to see your garden," he added. + +"Is there any particular feature that interests you?" she asked. "The +date-trees? The aviary? The nursery?" + +"No," he answered, "not just yet. It is very cool here under the +umbrella-trees, isn't it? I have walked all the way from the Galways and +I'll rest a while, if I may." + +He was no longer the play cavalier in overornamented _chaparejos_ and +cart-wheel spurs, but a lame fellow in overalls, who was hitching toward +her on crutches, his cowpuncher hat held by the brim and flopping with +every step. But he wore the silk shirt and the string tie, and somehow he +made even the overalls seem "dressy." + +"Pray sit down," she said politely. + +Standing his crutches against the table, he accepted the invitation. She +resumed her sewing, eyes on the needle, lips pressed into a straight line +and head bending low. He might have been a stranger on a bench in a +public park for all the attention she was paying to him. She realized +that she was rude and took satisfaction in it as the only way of +expressing her determination not to reopen a closed incident. + +"It's wonderful--wonderful!" he observed, in a voice of contemplative +awe. + +"What is?" she asked. + +"Why, how fast you sew!" + +"Yes?" she said, as automatically as she stitched. "Your wound is quite +all right? No danger of infection?" + +"I don't blame you!" he burst out. His tone had turned sad and urgent. + +She looked up quickly, with the flare of a frown. His remark had brought +her out of her pose and she became vivid and real. + +"Blame me!" she demanded, sharply, as one who flies to arms. + +But she met a new phase--neither banter, nor fancy, nor unvarying +coolness in the face of fire. He was all contrition and apology. Must she +be the audience to some fresh exhibition of his versatility? + +"I do not blame you for feeling the way that you do," he said. + +"How do you know how I feel?" she asked; and as far as he could see into +her eyes there was nothing but the flash of sword-points. + +"I don't. I only know how I think you feel--how you might well feel," he +answered delicately. "After Pete let his gun drop in the store I should +not have named terms for an encounter. I should have turned to the law +for protection for the few hours that I had to remain in town." + +"But to you that would have been avoiding battle!" she exclaimed. + +"Which may take courage," he rejoined. "What I did was selfish. It was +bravado, with no thought of your position." + +"It is late to worry about that now. What does it matter? I did not want +anyone killed on my account, and no one was," she insisted. "Besides, you +should not be blue," this with a ripple of satire; "it is not quite all +bravado to face Pete Leddy's gun at twenty yards." + +"And it is not courage. Courage is a force of will driving you into +danger for some high purpose. I want you to realize that I am not such a +barbarian that I do not know that I could have kept you out of it all if +I had had proper self-control. Though probably, on the impulse, I would +do the fool thing over again! Yes, that's the worst of it!" + +"There is a devil in him!" Ignacio's words were sounding in her ears. To +how many men had he said, "I am going to kill you?" What other quarrels +had he known in his wanderings from Colorado to Chihuahua? + +"If you really want my opinion, I am glad, so far as I am concerned, that +you did fight," she said lightly. "Aren't you a hero? Isn't the town free +of Leddy? And you take the train in the morning!" + +"Yes." + +The monosyllable was drawn out rather faintly. For the first time since +they had met on the pass she felt she was mistress of the situation. +This time she had not to plead with him in fear for his life. She could +regard him without any sense of obligation, this invader of her garden +retreat who had to put in one more afternoon in a dull desert town +before he was away to that outside world which she might know only +through books and memory. + +She rose exultantly, disregarding any formality that she would owe to the +average guest; for an average guest he was not. Her attitude meant that +she was having the last word; that she was showing her mettle. + +He did not rise. He was staring into the sunlight, as if it were darkness +alive with flitting spectres which baffled identification. + +"Yes, back--back to armies of Leddys!" he said slowly. + +But this she saw as still another pose. It did not make her pause in +gathering up her sewing. She was convinced that there was nothing more +for her to say, except to give their parting an appearance of ease and +unconcern. + +"Is it work you mean? You are not used to that, I take it?" she inquired +a little sarcastically. + +"Yes, call it work," he answered, looking away from the spectres and +back to her. + +"And you have never done any work!" she added. + +"Not much," he admitted, with his old, airy carelessness. He was smiling +at the spectres now, as he had at the dinosaur. + +"As there is nothing particular about the garden that I can show you--" +she was moving away. + +"No, I will be walking back to the house," he said after she had taken a +few steps. "Will you wait on my slow pace?" + +He reached for his crutches, lifted himself to his feet and swung to +her side. She who wished that the interview were over saw that it must +be prolonged. Then suddenly she realized the weakness as well as the +brusqueness of her attitude. She had been about to fly from him as +from something that she feared. It was not necessary. It was foolish, +even cowardly. + +"I thought perhaps you preferred to be alone, you seemed so abstracted," +she said, lamely; and then, as they came out into the sunlight in the +circle, she began talking of the garden as she would to any visitor; of +its beginnings, its growth, and its future, when her father's plans +should have been fulfilled. + +"And in all these years you have never been back East?" he asked. + +"No. We are always planning a trip, but the money which we save for it +goes into more plantings." + +They had been moving slowly toward the house, but now he stopped and his +glance swept the sky and rested on Galeria. + +"It is the best valley of all! I knew it as soon as I saw it from the +pass!" and the rapture of the scene was sounding in every syllable like +chimes out of the distance. She knew that he was far away from the +garden, and delaying, still delaying. If she spoke she felt that he would +not hear what she said. If she went on it seemed certain that she would +leave him standing there like a statue. + +"And there is more land here to make gardens like this?" he asked +slowly, absorbed. + +"Yes, with water and labor and time." + +Though his face was in the full light of the sun, it seemed at times in +shadow; then it glowed, as if between two passions. For an instant it was +grim, the chin coming forward, the brows contracting; then it was +transformed with something that was as a complete surrender to the +transport of irresistible temptation. He looked down at her quickly and +she saw him in the mood of story-telling to the children, suffused with +the radiance of a decision. + +"I prefer the Leddys of Little Rivers to the Leddys of New York," he +said. "I am not going to-morrow! I am going to have land and a home under +the aegis of the Eternal Painter and in sight of Galeria, and worship at +the shrine of fecund peace. Will you and the Doge help me?" he asked with +an enthusiasm that was infectious. "May I go to his school of +agriculture, horticulture, and floriculture?" + +Dumfounded, she bent her head and stared at the ground to hide her +astonishment. + +"You want citizens, industrious young citizens, don't you?" he persisted. + +"Yes, yes!" she said hastily and confusedly. + +"Do you know a good piece of land?" he continued. + +"Yes, several parcels," she answered, recovering her poise and smiling +in mockery. + +"Come on!" he cried. + +He was taking long, jumping steps on his crutches as they went up the +path. + +"You will take me to look at the land, won't you, please--now? I want to +get acquainted with my future estate. I mean to beat the Smiths at plums, +Jim Galway at alfalfa, even rival Bob Worther at pumpkins and peonies. +And you will help me lay out the flower garden, won't you? You see, I +shall have to call in the experts in every line to start with, before I +begin to improve on them and make them all jealous. I may find a kind of +plum that will grow on alfalfa stalks," he hazarded. "What a +horticultural sensation!" + +"And a spineless cactus called the Leddy!" + +His eyes were laughing into hers and hers irresistibly laughed back. She +guessed that he was only joking. He had acted so well in the latest rôle +that she had actually believed in his sincerity for a moment. He meant to +take the train, of course, but his resourceful capriciousness had +supplied him with a less awkward exit from the garden than she had +provided. He would yet have the last word if she did not watch out--a +last mischievous word at her expense. + +"First, you will have to plow the ground, in the broiling hot sun," she +said tauntingly, when they had passed around to the porch. She was +starting into the house with nervous, precipitate triumph. The last word +was hers, after all. + +"But you are going to show me the land now!" + +His tone was so serious and so hurt that she paused. + +"And"--with the seriousness electrified by a glance that sought for +mutual understanding--"and we are to forget about that duel and the whole +hero-desperado business. I am a prospective settler who just arrived this +afternoon. I came direct to headquarters to inquire about property. The +Doge not being at home, won't you show me around?" + +Again he had said the right thing at the right time, with a delightful +impersonality precluding sentiment. + +"I couldn't be unaccommodating," she admitted. "It is against all Little +Rivers ethics." + +"I feel like a butterfly about to come out of his miserable chrysalis! +Haven't you a walking-stick? I am going to shed the crutches!" + +She became femininely solicitous at once. + +"Are you sure you ought? Did the doctor say you might? Is the +wound healed?" + +"There isn't any wound!" he answered. "That is one of the things which we +are to forget." + +She brought a stick and he laid the crutches on the porch. + +He favored the lame leg, yet he kept up a clipping pace, talking the +while as fast as the Doge himself as they passed through one of the side +streets out onto the cactus-spotted, baking, cracked levels. + +"This is it!" she said finally. "This is all that father and I had to +begin with." + +"Enough!" he answered, and held out his hands, palms open. "With +callouses I will win luxuriance!" + +She showed him the irrigation ditch from which he should draw his water; +she told him of the first steps; She painted all the difficulties in the +darkest colors, without once lessening the glow of his optimism. He was +so overwhelmingly, boyishly happy that she had to be happy with him in +making believe that he was about to be a real rancher. But he should not +have the sport all on his side. He must not think that she accepted this +latest departure of his imagination incarnated by his Thespian gift in +anything but his own spirit. + +"You plowing! You spraying trees for the scale! You digging up weeds! You +stacking alfalfa! You settling down in one place as a unit of co-ordinate +industry! You earning bread by the sweat of your brow! You with +callouses!" Thus she laughed at him. + +Very seriously he held out his hands and ran a finger around a palm and +across the finger-joints: + +"That is where I shall get them," he said. "But not on the thumb. I +believe you get them on the thumb only by playing golf." + +He asked about carpenters and laborers; he chose the site for his house; +he plotted the walks and orchards. She could not refuse her advice. Who +can about the planning of new houses and gardens? He had everything +quite settled except the land grant from the Doge when they started +back; while the sun, with the swift passage of time in such fascinating +diversion, had swung low in its ellipse. When they reached the main +street the Doge was on the porch passing his opinion on the Eternal +Painter's evening work. + +"Some very remarkable purples to-night, I admit, Your Majesty, without +any intention of giving you too good an opinion of yourself; but +otherwise, you are not up to your mark. There must have been a downpour +in the rainy world on the other side of the Sierras that moistened your +pigments. Next thing we know you will be turning water-colorist!" he was +saying, when he heard Jack's voice. + +"Here's a new settler!" Jack called. "I am going to stay in Little Rivers +and win all the prizes." + +"You are joking!" gasped the Doge. + +"Not joking," said Jack. "I want to close the bargain to-night." + +"You bring color and adventure--yes! I did not expect the honor--the +town will be delighted! I am overwhelmed! Will you plow with Pete +Leddy's gun drawn by Wrath of God, sir, and harrow with your spurs drawn +by Jag Ear? Shall you make a specialty of olives? Do you dare to aspire +as high as dates?" + +The Doge's speech had begun incoherently, but steadied into rallying +humor at the close. + +"I haven't seen the date-tree yet," said Jack. "Not until I have can I +judge whether or not I shall dare to rival the lord of the manor in his +own specialty. And there are business details which I must settle with +you, O Doge of this city of slender canals!" + +"O youth, will you tarry with peace between wars?" answered the Doge, in +quick response to the spirit of nonsense as a basis for their new +relations. "Come, and I will show you our noblest product of peace, the +Date-Tree Wonderful!" he said, leading the way to the garden, while Mary +hurried rather precipitately into the house. + +Jasper Ewold was at his best, a glowing husbandman, when he pointed aloft +to the clusters of fruit pendent from the crotches of the stiff +branches, enclosed in cloth bags to keep them free of insects. + +"Do you see strange lettering on the cloth?" he asked. + +"Yes, it looks like Arabic." + +"So it is! Among other futile diversions in a past incarnation I studied +Arabic a little, and I still have my lexicon. Perhaps my construction +might not please the grammarians of classic Bagdad, but the sentiment is +there safe enough in the language of the mother romance world of the +date: 'All hail, first-born of our Western desert fecundity!' It is +calling out to the pass and the range from the wastes where the +sagebrush has had its own way since the great stir that there was in the +world at genesis." + +"With the unlimited authority I have in bestowing titles," said Jack, "I +have a mind to make you an Emir. But it's a pity that you haven't a camel +squatting under your date-tree and placidly chewing his cud." + +"A tempting thought!" declared the Doge unctuously. + +"Bob Worther could ride him on the tours of inspection. I think the +jounce would be almost as good a flesh-reducer as pedestrianism." + +"There you go! You would have the camel wearing bells, with reins of red +leather and a purple saddle-cloth hung with spangles, and Bob--our +excellent Bob--in a turban! Persiflage, sir! A very demoralization of +the faculties with cataracts of verbiage, sir!" declared the Doge as he +started back to the house. "Little Rivers is a practical town," he +proceeded seriously. "We indulge in nonsense only after sunset and when a +stranger appears riding a horse with a profane name. Yes, a practical +town; and I am surprised at your disloyalty to your own burro by +mentioning camels." + +"It rests with you, I believe, to let me have the land and also the +water," said Jack. + +"We grow businesslike!" returned the Doge with a change of manner. + +"Very!" declared Jack. + +"The requirement is that you become a member of the water users' +association and pay your quota of taxes per acre foot; and the price you +pay for your land also goes to the association. But I decide on the +eligibility of the applicant." + +They were in front of the house by this time, and again the Doge gave +Jack that sharp, quick, knowing glance of scrutiny through his heavy, +tufted eyebrows, before he proceeded: + +"The concession for the use of the river for irrigation is mine, +administered by the water users' association as if it were theirs, under +the condition that no one who has not my approval can have membership. +That is, it is practically mine, owing to my arrangement with old Mr. +Lefferts, who lives upstream. He is an eccentric, a hermit. He came here +many years ago to get as far away from civilization as he could, I judge. +That gives him an underlying right. Originally he had two partners, squaw +men. Both are dead. He had made no improvements beyond drawing enough +water for a garden and for his horse and cow. When I came to make a +bargain with him he named an annual sum which should keep him for the +rest of his life; and thus he waived his rights. First, Jim Galway, then +other settlers drifted in. I formed the water users' association. All +taxes and sums for the sale of land go into keeping the dam and ditches +in condition." + +"You take nothing for yourself!" + +"A great deal. The working out of an idea--an idea in moulding a little +community in my old age in a fashion that pleases me; while my own +property, of course, increases in value. At my death the rights go to the +community. But no Utopia; Sir Chaps! Just hard-working, cheerful men and +women in a safe refuge!" + +"And I am young!" exclaimed Jack, with a hopeful smile. "I have good +health. I mean to work. I try to be cheerful. Am I eligible?" + +"Sir Chaps, you--you have done us a great favor. Everybody likes you. Sir +Chaps"--the Doge hesitated for an instant, with a baffling, unspoken +inquiry in his eyes--"Sir Chaps, I like your companionship and your +mastery of persiflage. Jim Galway, who is secretary of the association, +will look after details of the permit and Bob Worther will turn the water +on your land, and the whole town will assist you with advice! Luck, Sir +Chaps, in your new vocation!" + +That evening, while the Doge took down the David and set a fragment from +the frieze of the Parthenon in its place, Little Rivers talked of the +delightful news that it was not to lose its strange story-teller and +duelist. Little Rivers was puzzled. Not once had Jack intimated a thought +of staying. By his own account, so far as he had given any, his wound had +merely delayed his departure to New York, where he had pressing business. +He had his reservation on the Pullman made for the morning express; he +had paid a farewell call at the Ewolds, and apparently then had changed +his mind and his career. These were the only clues to work on, except the +one suggested by Mrs. Galway, who was the wise woman of the community, +while Mrs. Smith was the propagandist. + +"I guess he likes the way Mary Ewold snubs him!" said Mrs. Galway. + +But there was one person in town who was not surprised at Jack's +decision. When Jack sang out as he entered the Galway yard on returning +from the Doge's, "We stay, Firio, we stay!" Firio said: "_Sí_, Señor +Jack!" with no change of expression except a brighter gleam than usual in +his velvety eyes. + + + + +XV + +WHEN THE DESERT BLOOMS + + +Perhaps we may best describe this as a chapter of Incidents; or, to use a +simile, a broad, eddying bend in a river on a plateau, with cataracts and +canyons awaiting it on its route to the sea. Or, discarding the simile +and speaking in literal terms, in a search for a theme on which to hang +the incidents, we revert to Mary's raillery at the announcement of an +easy traveller that he was going to turn sober rancher. + +"You plowing! You blistering your hands! You earning your bread by the +sweat of your brow!" + +But there he was in blue overalls, sinking his spade deep for settings, +digging ditches and driving furrows through the virgin soil, while the +masons and carpenters built his ranch house. + +"They are straight furrows, too!" Jack declared. + +"Passably so!" answered Mary. + +"And look at the blisters!" he continued, exhibiting his puffy palms. + +"You seem to think blisters a remarkable human phenomenon, a sensational +novelty to a laboring population!" + +"Now, would you advise pricking?" he asked, with deference to her +judgment. + +"It is so critical in your case that you ought to consult a doctor rather +than take lay advice." + +"Jim Galway says that the thorough way, I mulched my soil before +putting in my first crop of alfalfa is a model for all future settlers," +he ventured. + +She remarked that Jim was always encouraging to new-comers, and remarked +this in a way that implied that some new-comers possibly needed hazing. + +"And I am up at dawn and hard at it for six hours before midday." + +"Yes, it is wonderful!" she admitted, with a mock show of being +overwhelmingly impressed. "Nobody in the world ever worked ten hours a +day before!" + +"I'm doing more than any man that I pay two-fifty. I do perspire, and if +you don't call that earning your bread with the sweat of your brow, why +this is an astoundingly illogical world!" + +"There is a great difference between sporadic display and that continuity +which is the final proof of efficiency," she corrected him. + +"Long, involved sentences often indicate the loss of an argument!" +declared Jack. + +"There isn't any argument!" said Mary with superior disinterestedness. + +By common inspiration they had established a truce of nonsense. She still +called him Jack; he still called her Mary. It was the only point of tacit +admission that they had ever met before he asked her to show a +prospective settler a parcel of land. + +Their new relations were as the house of cards of fellowship: cards of +glass, iridescent and brittle, mocking the idea that there could be +oblivion of the scene in Lang's store, the crack of Leddy's pistol in the +_arroyo_, or the pulse of Jack's artery under her thumb! She was sure +that he could forget these experiences, even if she could not. That was +his character, as she saw it, free of clinging roots of yesterday's +events, living some new part every day. + +In the house of cards she set up a barrier, which he saw as a veil over +her eyes. Not once had he a glimpse of their depths. There was only the +surface gleam of sunbeams and sometimes of rapier-points, merry but +significant. She frequently rode out to the pass and occasionally, when +his day's work was done, he would ride to the foot of the range to meet +her, and as they came back he often sang, but never whistled. Indeed, he +had ceased to whistle altogether. Perhaps he regarded the omission as an +insurance against duels. + +Aside from nonsense they had common interests in cultural and daily life, +from the Eternal Painter's brushwork to how to dress a salad. She did +extend her approval for the generous space which he was allowing for +flower-beds, and advised him in the practical construction of his +kitchen; while the Doge decorated the living-room with Delia Robbias, +which, however, never arrived at the express office. He was a neighbor +always at home in the Ewold house. The Doge revelled in their +disputations, yet never was really intimate or affectionate as he was +with Jim Galway, who knew not the Pitti, the Prado, nor the Louvre, and +could not understand the intoning of Dante in the original as Jack could, +thanks to his having been brought up in libraries and galleries. + +The town, which was not supposed to ask about pasts, could not help +puzzling about his. What was the story of this teller of stories? The +secluded little community was in a poor way to find out, even if the +conscientious feeling about a custom had not been a restraint that kept +wonder free from inquiring hints. They took him for what he was in all +their personal relations; that was the delightful way of Little Rivers, +which inner curiosity might not alloy. His broader experience of that +world over the pass which stretched around the globe and back to the +other range-wall of the valley, seemed only to make him fall more easily +into the simple ways of the fellow-ranchers of the Doge's selection, who +were genuine, hall-marked people, whatever the origin from which the +individual sprang. He knew the fatigue of productive labor as something +far sweeter than the fatigue that comes from mere exercise, and the +neophyte's enthusiasm was his. + +"I'm sitting at the outer edge of the circle," he told Jim Galway. +"But when my first crop is harvested I shall be on the inside--a +real rancher!" + +"You've already got one foot over the circle," said Jim. + +"And with my first crop of dates I'll be in the holy of holies of +pastoral bliss!" + +"Yes, I should say so!" Jim responded, but in a way that indicated +surprise at the thought of Jack's remaining in Little Rivers long enough +for such a consummation. + +When his alfalfa covered the earth with a green carpet Jack was under a +spell of something more than the never-ending marvel of dry seeds +springing into succulent abundance without the waving of any magic wand. + +"I made it out of the desert!" he cried. "It laughs in triumph at the +bare stretches around it, waiting on water!" + +"That is it," said Jim; "waiting on water!" + +"The promise of what might come!" + +"It will come! Some day, Jack, you and I will ride up into the river +canyon and I will show you a place where you can see the blue sky between +precipitous walls two hundred feet high. The abyss is so narrow you can +throw a stone across it." + +"What lies beyond?" asked Jack, his eyes lighting vividly. + +"A great basin which was the bed of an ancient lake before the water wore +its way through." + +"A dam between those walls--and you have another lake!" + +"Yes, and the spring freshets from the northern water-shed all held in a +reservoir--none going to waste! And, Jack, as population spreads the dam +must come." + +"Why, the Doge has a kingdom!" + +"Yes, that's the best of it, the rights being in his hands. He shares +up with everybody and we get it when he dies. That's why we are ready +to accept the Doge's sentiments as kind of gospel. If ornamental hedges +waste water and bring bugs and are contrary to practical ranching +ideas, why--well, why not? It's our Little Rivers to enjoy as we +please. We aren't growing so fast, but we're growing in a clean, +beautiful way, as Jasper Ewold says. What if that river was owned by +one man! What if we had to pay the price he set for what takes the +place of rain, as they do in some places in California? We're going to +say who shall build that dam!" + +"Think of it! Think of it!" Jack half whispered, his imagination in play. +"Plot after plot being added to this little oasis until it extends from +range to range, one sea of green! Many little towns, with Little Rivers +the mother town, spreading its ideas! Yes, think of being in at the +making of a new world, seeing visions develop into reality as, stone by +stone, an edifice rises! I--I--" Jack paused, a cloud sweeping over his +features, his eyes seeming to stare at a wall. His body alone seemed in +Little Rivers, his mind on the other side of the pass. He was in one of +those moods of abstraction that ever made his fellow-ranchers feel that +he would not be with them permanently. + +Indeed, he had whole days when his smile had a sad turn; when, though he +spoke pleasantly, the inspiration of talk was not in him and when Belvy +Smith could not rouse any action in the cat with two black stripes down +its back. But many Little Riversites, including the Doge, had their sad +days, when they looked away at the pass oftener than usual, as if seeing +a life-story framed in the V. His came usually, as Mrs. Smith observed, +when he had a letter from the East. And it was then that he would pretend +to cough to Firio. These mock coughing spells were one of the few +manifestations that made the impassive Firio laugh. + +"Now you know I am not well, don't you, Firio?" he would ask, waggishly, +the very thought seeming to take him out of the doldrums. "I could never +live out of this climate. Why, even now I have a cough, kuh-er!" + +Firio had turned a stove cook. He accepted the humiliation in a spirit of +loyalty. But often he would go out among the sagebrush and return with a +feathery tribute, which he would broil on a spit in a fire made in the +yard. Always when Jack rode out to meet Mary at the foot of the range, +Firio would follow; and always he had his rifle. For it was part of +Jack's seeming inconsistency, emphasizing his inscrutability, that he +would never wear his revolver. It hung beside Pete's on the wall of the +living-room as a second relic. Far from being a quarrel-maker, he was +peaceful to the point of Quakerish predilection. + +"Nobody ever hears anything of Leddy," said Jim; "but he will never +forget or forgive, and one day he will show up unexpectedly." + +"Not armed!" said Jack. + +"Do you think he will keep his word?" + +"I know he will. I asked him and he said he would." + +"You're very simple, Jack. But mind, he can keep his word and still use +a gun outside the town!" + +"So he might!" admitted Jack, laughing in a way that indicated that the +subject was distasteful to him; for he would never talk of the duel. + +Now we come to that little affair of Pedro Nogales. Pedro was a +half-breed, whose God among men was Pete Leddy no less than Jack was +Firio's and the Doge was Ignacio's. In his shanty back of Bill Lang's the +Mexicans and Indians lost their remaining wages in gambling after he had +filled them with _mescal_. It happened that Gonzalez, head man of the +laborers under Bob Worther, who had saved quite a sum, came away +penniless after taking but one drink. Every ounce of Bob's avoirdupois +was in a rage. + +"It's time we cleaned out Pedro's place, seh!" he told Jack; "and you and +Jim Galway have got to help me do it!" + +"I don't like to get into a row," said Jack very soberly. + +"Then I'll undertake the job alone," Bob retorted. "That will be a good +deal worse, for when I get going I lose my temper and I tell you, seh, +I've got a lot to lose! And, Jack, are you going to stand by and see +robbery done by the meanest, most worthless greaser in the valley--and a +good Indian the victim?" + +"Yes, Jack," said Jim, "you've got such a formidable reputation since +your set-to with Leddy that the Indians think you are a regular master of +magic. You're just the one to make Pedro come to terms." + +"A formidable reputation without firing a shot!" admitted Jack +quizzically, and consented. + +"You'll surely want your gun this time!" Bob warned him. + +"No," said Jack. + +"But--" + +"I have hung up my gun!" Jack said decisively. "We'll try to handle this +peacefully. Come on!" + +"Well, we've got our guns, anyway!" Jim put in. + +It was mid-afternoon, a slack hour for Pedro's kind of trade, and the +shanty was empty of customers when the impromptu vigilance committee +entered. Pedro himself was half dozing in the faro dealer's chair. His +small, ferret eyes flashed a spark at the visitors as he rose, but he was +politeness itself. + +"Señores! It is great honor! Be seated, señores!" he said with eloquent +deference. + +The very sight of him set all the ounces in Bob quivering in an outburst: + +"No chairs for us! You fork over Gonzalez's money that you tricked +out of him!" + +"I take Gonzalez's money! I? Señores?" + +"It's a hundred and twenty dollars that he earned honestly, and the +quicker you lay your hands on it the better for you!" Bob roared back. + +Pedro was quite impassive. + +"Señores, if Gonzalez need money--señores, I honest man! Señores, sit +down! We talk!" Pedro dropped back into his chair and his hand, with +cat-like quickness, shot under the faro table. + +Jack had come through the door after Jim and Bob. He was standing a +little behind them, and while they had been watching Pedro's face he had +watched Pedro's movements. + +"Pedro, take your hand out from under the table and without your gun!" +said Jack; and Jim Galway caught a thrill in Jack's voice that he had +heard in the _arroyo_. + +Pedro looked into Señor Don't Care's eyes and saw a bead, though they +were not looking along the glint of a revolver barrel. + +"_Sí_, señor!" said Pedro, settling back in the chair with palms out in +intimation of his pacific intentions. + +"Now, Pedro, you have Gonzalez's money, haven't you?" Jack went on, in +the reasoning fashion that he had adopted to Leddy in the store. "And +you aren't going to make yourself or Bob trouble. You are going to +give it back!" + +"_Sí_, señor!" said Pedro wincing. + +While he was producing the money and counting it, his furtive glance kept +watch of Jack. Then, as the committee turned to go, he suddenly exclaimed +with angry surprise and disillusion: + +"You got no gun!" + +While Jim and Bob waited for Jack to precede them out of the door Jim had +time to note Pedro's baleful, piercing look at Jack's back. + +"Just as I told you, Jack--and I reckon you saved a big row. You just +put a scare into that hellion with a word, like you had a thousand devils +in you!" said Jim. + +"It's all over!" Jack answered, looking more hurt than pleased over the +congratulations. "Very fortunately over." + +"But," Jim observed, tensely, "Pedro is not only Leddy's bitter +partisan and ready to do his bidding, Pedro's a bit loco, besides--the +kind that hesitates at nothing when he gets a grudge. You've got to +look out for him." + +"Oh, no!" said Jack, in the full swing of a Señor Don't Care mood. + +Jim and Bob began to entertain the feelings of Mary on the pass, when she +thought of Jack as walking over precipices regardless of danger signs. +After all, did he really know how to shoot? If he would not look after +himself, it was their duty to look after him. Jim suggested that the rule +which Jack had made for Leddy should have universal application. No one +whosoever should wear arms in Little Rivers without a permit. The new +ordinance had the Doge's approval; and Jim and Bob, both of whom had +permits, kept watch that it was enforced, particularly in the case of +Pedro Nogales. + +Meanwhile, Jack kept the ten-hour-a-day law. His alfalfa was growing +with prolific rapidity, but Firio had the air of one who waits +between journeys. + +"Never the trail again?" he asked temptingly, one day. + +"Never the trail again!" Jack declared firmly. + +"_Sí, sí, sí_--the trail again!" + +"You think so? Then why do you ask?" + +"To make a question," answered Firio. "The big sadness will be too +strong. It will make you move--_sí_!" + +"The big sadness!" Jack exclaimed. He seized Firio by the shoulders and +looked narrowly at him, and Firio met the gaze with soft, puzzling lights +in his eyes. "Ho! ho! A big sadness! How do you know?" he laughed. + +"I learn on the trail when I watch you look at the stars. And Señorita +Ewold, she know; but she think the big sadness a devil. She--" and he +paused. + +"She--yes?" Jack asked. + +"She--" Firio started again. + +Jack suddenly raised his hands from Firio's shoulders in a gesture of +interruption. It was not exactly Firio's place to hazard opinions about +Mary Ewold. + +"Never mind!" he said, rather sharply. + +But Firio proceeded fixedly to finish what he had to say. + +"She has a big sadness, which makes her ride to the pass. She rides out +so she can ride back smiling." + +"Firio, don't mistake your imagination for divination!" Jack warned him. + +As Firio did not understand the meaning of this he said nothing. Probably +he would have said nothing even if he had understood. + +"I'll show you the nature of the big sadness and that the devil is a joy +devil when we harvest our first crop of alfalfa," Jack concluded. "Then I +shall make a holiday! Then I shall be a real rancher and something is +going to happen!" + +"The trail!" exclaimed Firio, and the soft light in his eyes flashed. +"_Sí_! The trail and the big spurs and the revolver in the holster!" + +"No!" + +But Firio said "_Sí_"! with the supreme confidence of one who holds that +belief in fulfilment will make any wish come true. + + + + +XVI + +A CHANGE OF MIND + + +It was Sunday afternoon; or, to date it by an epochal event, the day +after Jack's alfalfa crop had fallen before the mower. Mary was seated on +the bench under the avenue of umbrella-trees reading a thin edition of +Marcus Aurelius bound in flexible leather. Of late she had developed a +fondness for the more austere philosophers. Jack, whose mood was entirely +to the sonneteers, came softly singing down the avenue of palms and +presented himself before her in a romping spirit of interruption. + +"O expert in floriculture!" he said, "the humble pupil acting as a +Committee of One has failed utterly to agree with himself as to the form +of his new flowerbed. There must be a Committee of Two. Will you come?" + +"Good! I am weary of Marcus. I can't help thinking that he too far +antedates the Bordeaux mixture!" she answered, springing to her feet with +positive enthusiasm. + +He rarely met positive enthusiasm in her and everything in him called for +it at the moment. He found it so inspiring that the problem of the bed +was settled easily by his consent to all her suggestions--a too-ready +consent, she told herself. + +"After all, it is your flower garden," she reminded him. + +"No, every flower garden in Little Rivers is yours!" he declared. + +The way he said this made her frown. She saw him taking a step on the +other side of that barrier over which she mounted guard. + +"Never make your hyperboles felonious!" she warned him. "Besides, if +you are going to be a real Little Riversite you should have opinions of +your own." + +"I haven't any to-day--none except victory!" and he held out his palms, +exhibiting their yellowish plates. "Look! Even corns on the joints!" + +"Yes, they look quite real," she admitted, censoriously. + +"Haven't I made good? Do you remember how you stood here on the very site +of my house and lectured me? I would not work! I would not--" + +"You have worked a little--a little!" she said grudgingly, and showed him +as much of the wondrous sparkle in her eyes as he could see out of the +corners between the lashes. She never allowed him to look into her eyes +if she apprehended any attempt to cross the barrier. But she could see +well enough out of the corners to know that his glances had a kind of +hungry joy and a promise of some new demonstration in his attitude toward +her. She must watch that barrier very shrewdly. + +"Look at my hedge!" he went on. "It is knee-high already, and my +umbrella-trees cast enough shade for anybody, if he will wrap himself +around the trunk. But such things are ornamental. I have a more practical +appeal. Come on!" + +His elation was insistent, superior to any prickling gibes of banter, as +they walked on the mealy earth between rows of young orange settings, +and the sweet odor of drying alfalfa came to their nostrils, borne by a +vagrant breeze. He swept his hand toward the field in a gesture of pride, +his shoulders thrown back in a deep breath of exultation. + +"The callouses win!" And he exhibited them again. + +But she refused even to glance at them this time. + +"You seem to think callouses phenomenal. Most people in Little Rivers +accept them as they do the noses on their faces." + +"They certainly are phenomenal on me. So is my first crop! My first crop! +I'll be up at dawn to stack it--and then I'm no longer a neophyte. I am +an initiate! I'm a real rancher! A holiday is due! I celebrate!" + +He was rhapsodic and he was serious, too. She was provokingly flippant as +an antidote for Marcus Aurelius, whom she was still carrying in the +little flexible leather volume. + +"How celebrate?" she inquired. "By walking through the town with a wisp +of alfalfa in one hand and exhibiting the callouses on the other? or will +you be drawn on a float by Jag Ear--a float labeled, 'The Idler Enjoying +His Own Reform?' We'll all turn out and cheer." + +"Amusing, but not dignified and not to my taste. No! I shall celebrate by +a terrific spree--a ride to the pass!" + +He turned his face toward the range, earnest in its transfixion and +suffused with the spirit of restlessness and the call of the mighty rock +masses, gray in their great ribs and purple in their abysses. She felt +that same call as something fluid and electric running through the air +from sky to earth, and set her lips in readiness for whatever folly he +was about to suggest. + +"A ride to the pass and a view of the sunset from the very top!" he +cried. He looked down at her quickly, and all the force of the call he +had transformed into a sunny, personal appeal, which made her avert her +glance. "My day in the country--my holiday, if you will go with me! Will +you, and gaze out over that spot of green in the glare of the desert, +knowing that a little of it is mine?" + +"Your orange-trees are too young. It's so far away they will hardly +show," she ventured, surveying the distance to the pass judicially. + +"Will you?" + +"Why, to me a ride to the pass is not a thing to be planned a day +beforehand," she said deliberately, still studiously observing Galeria. +"It is a matter of momentary inspiration. Make it a set engagement and it +is but a plodding journey. I can best tell in the morning," she +concluded. "And, by the way, I see you haven't yet tried grafting plums +on the alfalfa stalks." + +"No. I have learned better. It is not consistent. You see, you mow +alfalfa and you pick plums." + +This return to drollery, in keeping with the prescribed order of their +relations, made her look up in candid amusement over the barrier which +for a moment he had been endangering. + +"Honestly, Jack, you do improve," she said, with mock encouragement. "You +seem to have mastered a number of the simple truths of age-old +agricultural experience." + +"But will you? Will you ride to the pass?" + +He had the question launched fairly into her eyes. She could not escape +it. He saw one bright flash, whether of real anger or simply vexation at +his reversion to the theme he could not tell, and her lashes dropped; +she ran the leaf edges of the austere Marcus back and forth in her +fingers, thip-thip-thip. That was the only sound for some seconds, very +long seconds. + +"As I've already tried to make clear to you, it's such a businesslike +thing to ride to the pass unless you have the inspiration," she remarked +thoughtfully to Marcus. "Perhaps I shall get the inspiration on the way +back to the house;" which was a signal that she was going. "And, by the +way, Jack, to return to the object of my coming, if you have ideas of +your own about flowers incorporate them; that is the way to develop your +floricultural talent." + +She turned away, but he followed. He was at her side and proceeding with +her, his head bent toward her, boyishly, eagerly. + +"You see, I have never been out to the pass," he remarked urgently. + +"What! You--" she started in surprise and checked herself. + +"Didn't I come by train?" he asked reprovingly. + +"No!" she answered. Her eyes were level with the road, her voice was a +little unnatural. "No! You came over the pass, Jack." + +It was the first time in the months of his citizenship of Little Rivers +that she had ever hinted anything but belief in the fiction that they had +first met when he asked her to show him a parcel of land. She seemed to +be calling a truth out of the past and grappling with it, while her lips +tightened and she drew in her chin. + +"Then I did come over the pass," he agreed; and after a pause added: +"But there was no Pete Leddy." + +"Yes, oh, yes--there was a Pete Leddy!" + +"But he will not be there this time!" + +And now his voice, in a transport that seemed to touch the cloud heights, +was neither like the voice of the easy traveller on the pass, nor the +voice of his sharp call to Leddy to disarm, nor the voice of the +storyteller. It had a new note, a note startling to her. + +"We shall be on the pass without Leddy and smiling over Leddy and +thanking him for his unwitting service in making me stop in Little +Rivers," he concluded. + +"Yes, he did that," she admitted stoically, as if it were some oppressive +fact for which she could offer no thanks. + +"I want to see our ponies with their bridles hanging loose! I want the +great silence! I want company, with imagination speaking from the sky +and reality speaking from the patch of green out on the sea of gray! +Will you?" + +Their steps ran rhythmically together. His look was eager in +anticipation, while she kept on running the leaves of the austere Marcus +through her fingers. Her lips were half open, as if about to speak, but +were without words; the thin, delicate nostrils trembled. + +"Will you? Will you, because I kept the faith of callouses? Will you go +forth and dream for a day? We'll tell fairy stories! We'll get a pole and +prod the dinosaur through the narrow part of the pass and hear him roar +his awfullest. Will you?" + +Her fingers paused in the pages as if they had found a helpful passage. +The chin tilted upward resolutely and he had a full view of her eyes, +dancing with challenging lights. She was augustly, gloriously +mischievous. + +"Will you go in costume? Will you wear your spurs and the chaps and the +silk shirt?" + +The question said that it was not a time to be serious. It sprinkled the +crest of the barrier with gleaming slivers of glass, which might give +zest to words spoken across it, but would be most sharp to the touch. + +"I will wear my spurs around my wrists, if you say, tie roses in the +fringe of my chaps, bind my hat with a big red silk bandanna, and put +streamers on P.D.'s bits!" + +"That is too enticing for refusal," she answered, playfully. "I +particularly want to hear the dinosaur roar." + +They had come to the opening of the Ewold hedge, and they paused to +consider arrangements. There was no one in sight on the street except Jim +Galway, who was approaching at some distance. + +"Shall we start in the morning and have luncheon at the foot of the +range?" suggested Jack. + +She favored an early afternoon start; he argued for his point of view, +and in their preoccupation with the passage of arms they did not notice +Pedro Nogales slipping along beside the hedge with soft steps, his hand +under his jacket. A gleam out of the bosom of Pedro's jacket, a cry from +Mary, and a knife flashed upward and drove toward Jack's neck. + +Jack had seemed oblivious of his surroundings, his gaze centered on Mary. +Yet he was able to duck backward so that the blade only slit open his +shirt as Pedro, with the misdirected force of his blow, lunged past its +object. Mary saw that face which had been laughing into hers, which had +been so close to hers in its persistent smile of persuasion, struck white +and rigid and a glint like that of the blade itself in the eyes. In a +breath Jack had become another being of incarnate, unthinking physical +power and swiftness. One hand seized Pedro's wrist, the other his upper +arm, and Mary heard the metallic click of the knife as it struck the +earth and the sickening sound of the bone of Pedro's forearm cracking. +She saw Pedro's eyes bursting from their sockets in pain and fear; she +saw Jack's still profile of unyielding will and the set muscles of his +neck and the knitting muscles of his forearm driving Pedro over against +the hedge, as if bent on breaking the Mexican's back in two, and she +waited in frozen apprehension to hear another bone crack, even expecting +Pedro's death cry. + +"The devil is out of Señor Don't Care!" It was the voice of Ignacio, who +had come around the house in time to witness the scene. + +"What fearful strength! You will kill him!" It was the voice of the Doge, +from the porch. + +"Yes, please stop!" Mary pleaded. + +Suddenly, at the sound of her cry, Jack released his hold. The strong +column of his neck became apparently too weak to hold the weight of his +head. Inert, he fell against the hedge for support, his hands hanging +limp at his side, while he stared dazedly into space. It seemed then that +Pedro might have picked up the knife and carried out his plan of murder +without defence by the victim. + +"Yes, yes, yes!" Jack repeated. + +Pedro had not moved from the hollow in the hedge which the impress of his +body had made. He was trembling, his lips had fallen away from his +teeth, and he watched Jack in stricken horror, a beaten creature waiting +on some judgment from which there was no appeal. + +"We'll tell fairy stories"--Jack's soft tones of persuasion repeated +themselves in Mary's ears in contrast to the effect of what she had just +witnessed. Her hand slipped along the crest of the hedge, as if to +steady herself. + +"I'll change my mind about going to the pass, Jack," she said. + +"Yes, Mary," he answered in a faint tone. + +He looked around to see her back as she turned away from him; then, with +an effort, he stepped free of the hedge. + +"Come, we will go to the doctor!" he said to the Mexican. + +He touched Pedro's shoulder softly and softly ran his hand down the +sleeve in which the arm hung limp. Pedro had not moved; he still leaned +against the hedge inanimate as a mannikin. + +"Come! Your legs are not broken! You can walk!" said Jim Galway, who had +come up in a hurry when he saw what was happening. + +"Pedro, you will learn not to play with the devil in Señor Don't Care!" +whispered Ignacio, while Mary had disappeared in the house and the Doge +stood watching. + +Jack had stroked Pedro's head while the bone was being set. He had +arranged for Pedro's care. And now he was in his own yard with Jag Ear +and the ponies, rubbing their muzzles alternately in silent +impartiality, his head bowed reflectively as Firio came around the +corner of the house. At first he half stared at Firio, then he surveyed +the steeds of his long journeyings in questioning uncertainty, and then +looked back at Firio, smiling wanly. + +"Firio," he said, "I feel that I am a pretty big coward. Firio, I am full +up--full to overflowing. My mind is stuffed with cobwebs. I--I must think +things out. I must have the solitudes." + +"The trail!" prescribed Doctor Firio. + +After Jack had given his ranch in charge to Galway, he rode away in +the dusk, not by the main street, but straight across the levels +toward the pass. + + + + +XVII + +THE DOGE SNAPS A RUBBER BAND + + +Jasper Ewold was a disciple of an old-fashioned custom that has fallen +into disuse since the multiplicity of typewriters made writing for one's +own pleasure too arduous; or, if you will have another reason, since our +existence and feelings have become so complex that we can no longer +express them with the simple directness of our ancestors. He kept a +diary with what he called a perfect regularity of intermittency. A week +might pass without his writing a single word, and again he might indulge +freely for a dozen nights running. He wrote as much or as little as he +pleased. He wrote when he had something to tell and when he was in the +mood to tell it. + +"It is facing yourself in your own ink," he said. "It is confessing that +you are an egoist and providing an antidote for your egoism. Firstly, you +will never be bored by your own past if you can appreciate your errors +and inconsistencies. Secondly, you will never be tempted to bore others +with your past as long as you wish to pose as a wise man." + +He must have found, as you would find if you had left youth behind and +could see yourself in your own ink, that the first tracery of any +controlling factor in your life was faint and inconsequential to you at +the time, without presage of its importance until you saw other lines, +also faint and inconsequential in their beginnings, drawing in toward it +to form a powerful current. + +On the evening that Jack took to the trail again, Jasper Ewold had a +number of thick notebooks out of the box in the library which he always +kept locked, and placed them on the living-room table beside his easy +chair, in which he settled himself. Mary was sewing while he pored over +his life in review as written by his own hand. Her knowledge of the +secrets of that chronicle from wandering student days to desert exile was +limited to glimpses of the close lines of fine-written pages across the +breadth of the circle of the lamp's reflection. He surrounded his diary +with a line of mystery which she never attempted to cross. On occasions +he would read to her certain portions which struck his recollection +happily; but these were invariably limited to his impressions of some +city or some work of art that he was seeing for the first time in the +geniality of the unadulterated joy of living in what she guessed was the +period of youth before she was born; and never did they throw any light +on his story except that of his views as a traveller and a personality. +But he did not break out into a single quotation to-night. It seemed as +if he were following the thread of some reference from year to year; for +he ran his fingers through the leaves of certain parts hastily and became +studiously intense at other parts as he gloomily pondered over them. + +Neither she nor her father had mentioned Jack since the scene by the +hedge. This was entirely in keeping with custom. It seemed a matter of +instinct with both that they never talked to each other of him. Yet she +was conscious that he had been in her father's mind all through the +evening meal, and she was equally certain that her father realized that +he was in her mind. + +It was late when the Doge finished his reading, and he finished it with +the page of the last book, where the fine handwriting stopped at the edge +of the blank white space of the future. An old desire, ever strong with +Mary, which she had never quite had the temerity to express, had become +impelling under the influence of her father's unusually long and silent +preoccupation. + +"Am I never to have a glimpse of that treasure? Am I never, never to read +your diary?" she asked. + +The Doge drew his tufted eyebrows together in utter astonishment. + +"What! What, Mary! Why, Mary, I might preach a lesson on the folly of +feminine curiosity. Do you think I would ask to see your diary?" + +"But I don't keep one." + +"Hoo-hoo-hoo!" The Doge was blowing out his lips in an ado of deprecatory +nonsense. "Don't keep one? Have you lost your memory?" + +"I had it a minute ago--yes," after an instant's playful consideration, +"I am sure that I have it now." + +"Then, everybody with a memory certainly keeps a diary. Would you want +me to read all the foolish things you had ever thought? Do you think I +would want to?" + +"No," she answered. + +"There you are, then!" declared the Doge victoriously, as he rose, +slipping a rubber band with a forbidding snap over the last book. "And +this is all stupid personal stuff--but mine own!" + +There was an unconscious sigh of weariness as he took up the thumbed +leather volumes. He was haggard. "Mine own" had given him no pleasure +that evening. All the years of his life seemed to rest heavily upon him +for a silent moment. Mary feared that she had hurt him by her request. + +"You have read so much you will scarcely do any writing to-night," +she ventured. + +"Yes, I will add a few more lines--the spirit is in me--a few more days +to the long record," he said, absently, then, after a pause, suddenly, +with a kind of suppressed force vibrating in his voice: "Well, our Sir +Chaps has gone." + +"As unceremoniously as he came," she answered. + +"It was terrible the way he broke Nogales's wrist!" remarked the +Doge narrowly. + +"Terrible!" she assented as she folded her work, her head bent. + +"Gone, and doubtless for good!" he continued, still watching her sharply. + +"Very likely!" she answered carelessly without looking up. "His vagarious +playtime for this section is over." + +"Just it! Just it!" the Doge exclaimed happily. + +"And if Leddy overtakes him now, it's his own affair!" + +"Yes, yes! He and his Wrath of God and Jag Ear are away to other worlds!" + +"And other Leddys!" + +"No doubt! No doubt!" concluded the Doge, in high good humor, all the +vexation of his diary seemingly forgotten as he left the room. + +But, as the Doge and Mary were to find, they were alone among Little +Riversites in thinking that the breaking of Pedro Nogales's wrist was +horrible. Jim Galway, who had witnessed the affair, took a radically +contrary view, which everyone else not of the Leddy partisanship readily +accepted. Despite the frequency of Jack's visits to the Ewold garden and +all the happy exchange of pleasantries with his hosts, the community +could not escape the thought of a certain latent hostility toward Jack on +the part of the Doge, the more noticeable because it was so out of +keeping with his nature. + +"Doge, sometimes I think you are almost prejudiced against Jack Wingfield +because he didn't let Leddy have his way," said Jim, with an outright +frankness that was unprecedented in speaking to Jasper Ewold. "You're +such a regular old Quaker!" + +"But that little Mexican panting in abject fear against the hedge!" +persisted the Doge. + +"A nice, peaceful little Mexican with a knife, sneaking up to plant it in +Jack's neck!" + +"But Jack is so powerful! And his look! I was so near I could see it well +as he towered over Nogales!" + +"Yes, no mistaking the look. I saw it in the _arroyo_. It made me think +of what the look of one of those old sea-fighters might have been like +when they lashed alongside and boarded the enemy." + +"And the crack of the bone!" continued the Doge. + +"Would you have a man turn cherub when he has escaped having his +jugular slashed by a margin of two or three inches? Would you have him +say, 'Please, naughty boy, give me your knife? You mustn't play with +such things!'" + +"No! That's hyperbole!" the Doge returned with a lame attempt at a laugh. + +"Mebbe it is, whatever hyperbole is," said Jim; "but if so, hyperbole is +a darned poor means of self-defence. Yes, the trouble is you are against +Jack Wingfield!" + +"Yes, I am!" said the Doge suddenly, as if inward anger had got the +better of him. + +"And the rest of us are for him!" Jim declared sturdily. + +"Naturally! naturally!" said the Doge, passing his hand over his brow. +"Yes, youth and color and bravery!" He shook his head moodily, as if +Jim's statement brought up some vital, unpleasant, but inevitable fact +to his mind. + +"It's beyond me how anybody can help liking him!" concluded Galway +stubbornly. + +"I like him--yes, I do like him! I cannot help it!" the Doge admitted +rather grudgingly as he turned away. + +"So we weren't so far apart, after all!" Galway hastened to call after +the Doge in apology for his testiness. "We like him for what he has been +to us and will always be to us. That's the only criterion of character in +Little Rivers according to your own code, isn't it, Jasper Ewold?" + +"Exactly!" answered the Doge over his shoulder. + +The community entered into a committee of the whole on Jack Wingfield. +With every citizen contributing a quota of personal experience, his story +was rehearsed from the day of his arrival to the day of his departure. +Argument fluctuated on the question of whether or not he would ever +return, with now the noes and now the ayes having it. On this point Jim +had the only first-hand evidence. + +"He said to let things grow until he showed up or I heard from +him," said Jim. + +"Not what I would call enlightening," said Bob Worther. + +"That was his way of expressing it; but to do him justice, he showed what +a good rancher he was by his attention to the details that had to be +cared for," Jim added. + +"He's like the spirit of the winds, I guess," put in Mrs. Galway. +"Something comes a-calling him or a-driving him, I don't know which. +Indeed, I'm not altogether certain that it isn't a case of Mary Ewold +this time!" + +"Yes," agreed Jim. "The fighting look went out of his face when she +spoke, and when he saw how horrified she was, why, I never saw such a +change come over a man! It was just like a piece of steel wilting." + +However, the children, who had no part in the august discussions of the +committee of the whole, were certain that their story-teller would come +back. Their ideas about Jack were based on a simple, self-convincing +faith of the same order as Firio's. Lonely as they were, they were hardly +more lonely than their elders, who were supposed to have the philosophy +of adults. + +No Jack singing out "Hello!" on the main street! No Jack looking up from +work to ask boyishly: "Am I learning? Oh, I'll be the boss rancher yet!" +No Jack springing all sorts of conceits, not of broad humor, but the kind +that sort of set a "twinkling in your insides," as Bob Worther expressed +it! No Jack inspiring a feeling deeper than twinkles on his sad days! He +had been an improvement in town life that became indispensable once it +was absent. Little Rivers was fairly homesick for him. + +"How did we ever get along without him before he came, anyway?" Bob +Worther demanded. + +Then another new-comer, as distinctive from the average settler as Jack +was, diverted talk into another channel, without, however, reconciling +the people to their loss. + + + + +XVIII + +ANOTHER STRANGER ARRIVES + + +If the history of Little Rivers were to be written in chapter headings +the first would be, "Jasper Ewold Founded the Town"; the second, "Jack +Wingfield Arrived"; and the third, "John Prather Arrived." + +While Jack came in chaps and spurs, bearing an argosy of fancy, Prather +came by rail, carrying a suitcase in a conventional and businesslike +fashion. Bill Deering, as the representative of a spring wagon that did +the local omnibus and express business, was on the platform of the +station when the 11:15 rolled in, and sang out, in a burst of joy, as the +stranger, a man in the early twenties, stepped off the Pullman: + +"What's this, Jack? Back by train--and in store clothes? Well, of +all--" and saw his mistake when the stranger's full face was turned +toward him. + +"Yes, I am sometimes called Jack," said the stranger pleasantly. "Now, +where have we met before? Perhaps in Goldfield? No matter. It is time we +got acquainted. My name is Prather, and yours?" + +As he surveyed the man before him, Bill was as fussed as the giant of the +fairy story had been by a display of yellow. He was uncertain whether he +was giving his own baptismal name or somebody's else. + +"By Jing! No, I don't know you, but you sure are the dead spit of a +fellow I do know!" said Bill. + +"Well, he has done me the favor of introducing me to you, anyway," said +Prather, who had a remarkably ingratiating smile. "I would like a place +to stop while I take a look around. Is there a hotel?" + +"Rooms over the store and grub at Mrs. Smith's--none better!" + +"That will do." + +As they rode into town more than one passer-by called out a ringing +"Hello, Jack!" or, "Back, eh, Jack? Hurrah for you!" and then uttered an +exclamation of disillusion when Prather turned his head. + +"The others see it, too," said Bill. + +"They seem to. Who is this double of mine?" + +"Jack Wingfield." + +"Jack Wingfield? It seems that our first names are the same, too. He +lives here, I take it." + +"Yes. But he's away now." + +"Well, when he comes back"--with a pause of slight irritation--"there +will be no difficulty in telling us apart." + +He put his finger to a triangular patch of mole on his cheek. His +irritation passed and a sense of appreciative amusement at the +distinction took its place. + +"Now, where shall I find Jasper Ewold?" he asked, as Bill drew up before +the Smiths. + +A few minutes later the Doge, busy among his orange-trees, hearing a +step, looked up with a signal of recognition which changed to blank +inquiry when the cheek with the mole was turned toward him. + +"Upon my word, sir, I--I thought that you were--" he began. + +"Mr. Wingfield! Yes, everybody in town seems to think so at first glance, +so I am quite used to the comparison by this time," Prather put in, +easily. "It is very interesting to meet the founder of a town, and I +have come to you to find out about conditions here." + +Prather did not appear as if he had ever done manual labor. He was too +young to have turned from ill health or failure in the city to the refuge +of the land. Indeed, his quiet gray suit of good material indicated +unostentatious prosperity. Evidently he was well-bred and evidently he +was not an agent for a new style of seeding harrow or weed killer. + +"You think of settling?" asked the Doge. + +"Yes. From all I have heard of Little Rivers, it's a community where I +should feel at home." + +"Then, sir, we will talk of it at luncheon; it is knocking-off time for +the morning. Yes, I'll talk as much as you please. Come on, Mr. Prather!" +They started along the avenue of palms, the Doge still studying the face +at his side. "Pardon me for staring at you, but the resemblance to Jack +Wingfield at first sight is most striking," he added. + +"Has he travelled much in the West?" asked Prather. + +"Yes, much--leading an aimless life." + +"Then he must be the one that I was taken for in Salt Lake City one day. +The man who called out to me saw his mistake, just as you did, when he +saw my full face;" and again Prather made a gesture of understanding +amusement to the mole. + +"When you consider what confusion there must be in the workrooms, with +the storks flapping and screeching like newsboys outside the delivery +room," mused the Doge, "and when you consider the multitudinous +population of the earth, it's surprising that the good Lord is able to +furnish such a variety of faces as he does. But they do say that every +one of us has a few doubles. In the case of famous public men they get +their pictures in the papers." + +"Yes, very few of us but have been mistaken for a friend by a stranger +passing in the street!" Prather suggested. + +"Only to have the stranger see his mistake at a second glance; and on +second glance you do not look very much like Jack Wingfield," the Doge +concluded. "Just a coincidence in physiognomy!" + +And Prather was very frank about his past. + +"I have led rather a hard life," he said. "Though I was well brought up +my father left mother and me quite penniless. I had to fend for myself at +the age of sixteen. A friend gave me an opportunity to go to Goldfield at +the outbreak of the excitement there. The rough experience of a +mining-camp was not exactly to my taste, but it meant a livelihood. My +real interest has always been in irrigation farming. I would rather grow +a good crop than mine for gold. Well, I saved a little money at +Goldfield--saved it to buy land. But land is not the only consideration. +The surroundings, the people with whom you have to live count for a great +deal when you mean to settle permanently." + +"Excellent!" declared the Doge. "A good citizen in full fellowship with +your neighbors! Exactly what we want in Little Rivers." + +Prather had a complexion of that velvety whiteness that never tans. +His eyes were calm, yet attractive, with a peculiar insinuating charm +when he talked that made it seem easy and natural to respond to his +wishes. In listening he had an ingratiating manner that was +flattering to the speaker. + +"A practical man!" the Doge said to Mary that evening. "The kind we need +here. He and I had a grand afternoon of it together. Every one of his +questions about soils and cultivation was to the point." + +"Not one argument?" she asked. + +"No, Mary; no time for argument." + +"You do like people to agree with you, after all!" she hazarded. For she +did not like Prather. + +"Pooh! Not a matter of agreement! No persiflage! No altitudinous +conversation of the kind that grows no crops. Prather wants to learn, and +he's got good, clean ideas, with a trained and accurate mind--the best +possible combination. I hope he will stay for the very reason that he is +not the kind that takes up a plot of land for life on an impulse, which +usually results in turning on the water and getting discouraged because +nature will not do the rest. But he is very favorably impressed. He said +that after Goldfield Little Rivers was like Paradise--practical Paradise. +Good phrase, practical Paradise!" + +In two or three days the new-comer knew everyone in town; but though he +addressed the men by their first names they always addressed him as "Mr. +Prather." In another respect besides his features he was like Jack: he +was much given to smiling. + +"The difference between his smile and Jack's," said Mrs. Galway, who was +at one with Mary in not liking him, "is that his is sort of a drawing-in +kind of smile and Jack's sort of radiates." + +The children developed no interest in him. It was evident that he could +not tell stories, except with an effort. In his goings and comings, ever +asking pleasant questions and passing compliments, he was usually +accompanied by the Doge, and his attitude toward the old man was the +admiring deference of disciple for master. + +"I am sorry I don't understand that," he would say when the Doge fell +into a scholastic allusion to explain a point. "I was hard at work when +lots of my friends were in college." + +"Learning may be ruination," responded the Doge, "though it wouldn't have +been in your case. It's the man that counts. See what you have made of +yourself!" + +"Ah, yes, but I feel that I have missed something. When I am settled here +I shall be able to make up for lost time, with your help, sir." + +"Every pigeonhole in my mind will be open at your call!" said the Doge, +glowing at the prospect. + +The favor that Prather found in the eyes of Jasper Ewold partly accounted +for what favor he found in Little Rivers' eyes. + +"Prather has certainly made a hit with the Doge!" quoth Bob Worther. +"As the Doge gets older I reckon he will like compliments better than +persiflage. But Jack could pay a compliment, too--only he never used +the ladle." + +It was Bob, as inspector of ditches and dams, who provided a horse for +Prather to inspect the source of the water supply. In keeping with a +characteristic thoroughness, Prather wanted to go up the river into the +canyon. He made himself a very enjoyable companion on the way, drawing +out all of Bob's best stories. When they stopped in sight of the streak +of blue sky through the breach in the mighty wall that had once +imprisoned the ancient lake, he was silent for some time, while he +surveyed this grandeur of the heights with smiling contemplation, at +intervals rubbing the palms of his hands together in a manner habitual +with him when he was particularly pleased. + +"I guess the same idea has struck you that strikes everybody at sight of +that, seh!" said Bob. + +"Yes, a dam might be practical," Prather answered. "But it would take a +lot of capital--a lot of capital!" + +On the way back they stopped before a dilapidated shanty near the +foothills. In the midst of a littered yard old man Lefferts, half dozing, +occupied a broken chair. + +"Since the Doge came old man Lefferts has had to do no work at all. A +Mexican looks after him. But it hasn't made him any happier," Bob +explained as they approached. + +"Howdy yourself?" growled Lefferts in answer to Bob's greeting. + +"He seems to be a character!" whispered Prather to Bob, as he smiled at +the prospect. "To confess the truth, I am a little saddle sore and tired. +I didn't get much riding in Goldfield. I think I'll stop and rest and get +acquainted." + +"You won't get much satisfaction but growls." + +"That will be all the more fun for me," rejoined Prather. "But don't let +me keep you." + +"No. I must be going on. I've got some things to look after before +nightfall," said Bob, while Prather, in a humor proof against any hermit +cantankerousness, rode into the yard. + +When he returned after dark he said, laughingly, that he had enjoyed +himself, though the conversation was all on one side. The next morning he +decided to take up the plot of land adjoining Jack's. + +"But I shall not be able to begin work for a few weeks," he said. "I must +go to Goldfield to settle up my affairs before I begin my new career." + +"If Jack ever comes back I wonder what he will say to his new neighbor!" +Little Rivers wondered. + + + + +XIX + +LOOKING OVER PRECIPICES + + +To Mary Ewold the pass was a dividing line between two appeals. The +Little Rivers side, with the green patch of oasis in the distance, had a +message of peaceful enjoyment of what fortune had provided for her. Under +its spell she saw herself content to live within garden walls forever in +the land that had given her life, grateful for the trickles of +intelligence that came by mail from the outside world. + +The other side aroused a mighty restlessness. Therefore, she rarely made +that short journey which spread another panorama of space before her. But +this was one of the afternoons when she welcomed a tumult of any kind as +a relief from her depression; and she went on through the V as soon as +she reached the summit. + +Seated on a flat-topped rock, oblivious of the passage of time, of the +dream cities of the Eternal Painter, she was staring far away where the +narrowing gray line between the mountain rims met the sky. She was seeing +beyond the horizon. She was seeing cities of memory and reality. A great +yearning was in her heart. All the monotonous level lap of the heights +which seemed without end was a symbol that separated her from her desire. + +She imagined herself in a Pullman, flashing by farms and villages; in a +shop selecting gowns; viewing from a high window the human stream of +Fifth Avenue; taking passage on a steamer; hearing again foreign tongues +long ago familiar to her ears; sensing the rustle of great audiences +before a curtain rose; glimpsing the Mediterranean from a car window; +feeling herself a unit in the throbbing promenade of the life of many +streets while her hunger took its fill of a busy world. + +"It is hard to do it all in imagination!" she said to herself. "Even +imagination needs an occasional nest-egg of reality by way of +encouragement." + +An hour on the far side of the pass played the emotional part for her of +a storm of tears for many another woman. She rejoiced in being utterly +alone; rejoiced in the grandeur of the very wastes around her as mounting +guard over the freedom of her thoughts. There was no living speck on the +trail, which she knew lay across the expanse of parched earth to the edge +of the blue dome; there was not even a bird in the air. Undisturbed, she +might think anything, pray for anything; she might feed the flame of +revolt till the fuel of many weeks' accumulation had burned itself out +and left her calm in the wisdom and understanding that reconciled her to +her portion and freshened to return through Galeria to the quiet routine +of her daily existence. + +Her mind paused in its travels from capital to capital and she was +conscious solely of the stark majesty of her surroundings. She listened. +There was no sound. The spacious stillness was soothing to her nerves; a +specific when all the Eternal Painter's art failed. She closed her eyes, +trying to realize that great silence as one would try to realize the +Infinite. Then faintly she heard a man's voice singing. It seemed at +first a trick of the imagination. But nearer and nearer it came, in the +fellowship of life joyfully invading the solitude; and with a +readjustment of her faculties to the expected event, she watched the +point where the trail dipped on a sharp turn of grade. + +Above it rose a cowpuncher hat, then a silk shirt with a string tie, and +after that a sage baggage burro with clipped ears, a solemn-faced pony, +and an Indian. Jack was watching his steps in the uneven path, and not +until the full length of him had appeared and he was flush on the level +with her did he look up. + +She was leaning back, her weight partly poised on the flat of her hand +on the rock, revealing the full curve of throat and the soft sweep of +the lines of her slim figure, erect, her head thrown back, her face in +shadow with the sun behind playing in her hair, in half-defiant +readiness. She saw him as the spirit of travel--its ease, mystery, +unattachedness--which had spanned the distances between her and the +horizon, in the freedom of his wandering choice. His low-pitched +exclamation of surprise was vibrant with appreciation of the picture she +made, and he stood quite still in a second's wistful silence, waiting on +her first word after the lapse of the many days since he had brought a +look of horror into her eyes. + +"Hello, Jack!" she said in the old tone of comradeship. It struck a spark +electrifying him with all his old, happy manner. + +He swept off his hat with a grand bow, blinking in the blaze of the sun +which turned his tan to a bronze and touched the smile, which was born as +an inspiration from her greeting, with radiance. + +"Hello to you, Mary, guarding the pass to Little Rivers!" he said +exultantly. "You are just the person I wanted to see. I have been in +a hurry to tell you about a certain thing ever since it came to me +this morning." + +She guessed that he was about to make up a new story. He must have had +time for many inventions in the ten days of his absence. But she welcomed +any tangent of nonsense that set the right key for the coincidence of +their meeting. She had refused to ride to the pass with him and here they +were alone together on the pass. Three or four steps, so light that they +seemed to be irresistibly winning permission from her, and he had sat +down on another flat-topped rock close by. Firio and the baggage train +moved on up the trail methodically and stopped well in the background. + +"You know how when you meet a person you are sometimes haunted by a +conviction that you have met him before!" he began. "How exasperated you +are not to be able to recall the time and place!" + +"Had you forgotten where you met the dinosaur?" she asked. "He must have +thought you very impolite after all the trouble he had taken to make you +remember him the last time you went through the pass." + +"Oh, the dinosaur and I have patched up a truce, because it seems, after +all, that I had mistaken his identity and he was a pleosaur. But"--he did +not take the pains to parry her interruption with more foolery, and +proceeded as if she had not spoken--"it has never been out of my mind +that your father gave me a glance at our first meeting which asked the +question that has kept recurring to me: Where had he and I seen each +other before?" + +"Well?" she said curiously, recalling her father's repeated allusions to +"this Wingfield," his strange depression after Jack had left the night +before the duel, his reticence and animadversions. + +"I said nothing about it, nor did he. I wonder if it has not been a kind +of contest between us as to which should be the first to say 'Tag!'" + +She smiled at this and leaned farther back, but with the curtain of her +eyelashes widening in tremulous intensity. + +"I knew it would come!" he went on, with dramatic fervor. "Such things do +come unexpectedly in a flash when there is a sudden electric connection +with some dusty pigeonhole in the mind. It was in Florence that he and I +met! In Florence, on the road to Fiesole!" + +"Florence! The road to Fiesole!" Mary repeated; and the names seemed to +rouse in her a rapturous recollection. She leaned forward now, her lips +apart, her eyes glowing. In place of wastes she was seeing brown roofs +and the sweep of the Tuscan Valley. + +"And _we_ met--_you_ and _I_!" + +"We?" Her glance came sharply back from the distances in the astonishment +of dilating pupils that drew together in inquiry as she saw that he was +in earnest. + +"Yes. I was at the extremely mature age of six and you must have been +about a year younger. Do you remember it at all?" + +"No!" She was silent, concentrated, groping. "No, no!" she repeated. +"Five is very immature compared to six!" + +"Your father had a beard then, a great blond beard that excited my +emulation. When I grew up I was going to have one like it and just such +bushy eyebrows. You came up the Fiesole road at his side, holding fast +to his thumb. I was playing at our villa gate. You went up the path with +him to see my mother--I can see just how you looked holding so fast to +that thumb! After a while you came straying out alone. Now don't you +remember? Don't you? Something quite sensational happened." + +"No!" + +"Well, I showed off what a great boy I was. I walked on the parapet of +the villa wall. I bowed to my audience aged five with the grandeur of a +tight-rope performer who has just done his best thriller as a climax to +his turn." + +"Yes--yes!" she breathed, with quick-running emphasis. Out of the mists +of fifteen years had come a signal. She bent nearer to him in the wonder +of a thing found in the darkness of memory, which always has the +fascination of a communication from another world. "You wanted me to come +up on the wall," she said, taking up the thread of the story. "You said +it was so easy, and you helped me up, and when I looked down at the road +I was overcome and fell down all in a heap on the parapet." + +"And heavens!" he gasped, living the scene over again, "wasn't I +frightened for fear you would tumble off!" + +"But I remember that you helped me down very nicely--and--and that is all +I do remember. What then?" + +She had come to a blind alley and perplexity was in her face, though she +tried to put the question nonchalantly. What then? How deep ran the +current of this past association? + +"Why, there wasn't much else. Your father came down the path and his big +thumb took you in tow. I did not see you again. A week later mother and I +had gone to Switzerland--we were always on the move." + +The candor of his glance told her that this was all. As boy and girl they +had met under an Italian sky. As man and woman they had met under an +Arizona sky. + +Now the charm of the Florence of their affections held them with a magic +touch. They were not in a savage setting, looking out over savage +distances, but on the Piazzale Michelangelo, looking out over the city of +Renaissance genius which slumbers on the refulgent bosom of its past; +they were oblivious of the Eternal Painter's canvasses and enjoying +Raphael's, Botticelli's, and Andrea del Sarto's. Possibly the Eternal +Painter, in the leniency of philosophic appreciation of their oblivion to +his art, hazarded a guess about the destiny of this pair. He could not +really have known their destiny. No, it is impossible to grant him the +power of divination; for if he had it he might not be so young of heart. + +Their talk flitted here and there in exclamations, each bringing an +entail of recollection of some familiar, enjoyed thing; and when at last +it returned to their immediate surroundings the shadow of the range was +creeping out onto the plain, cut by the brilliance of the sun through the +V. Mary rose with a quick, self-accusing cry about the lateness of the +hour. To him it was a call on his resources to delay their departure. + +"Do you see where that shelf breaks abruptly?" he asked. "It must be the +side of a canyon. Have you ever looked down?" + +"I started to once." + +"I should not like to go over the pass again without seeing if this +is really a canyon of any account. I feel myself quite an authority +on canyons." + +"It will be dark before we reach Little Rivers!" she protested. + +"Ten minutes--only a step!" and he was appealing in his boyish fashion to +have his way. + +"Nonsense! Besides, I do not care for canyons." + +"You still fear, then, to look down from walls? You--" + +And this decided her. On another occasion she had gone to the precipice +edge and faltered. She would master her dizziness for once and all; he +should not know from her any confession of a weakness which was purely of +the imagination. + +The point to which he had alluded was an immense overhanging slab of +granite stratum deep set in the mountain side. As they approached, a +thrill of lightness and uncertainty was setting her limbs a-quiver. Her +elbow was touching his, her will driving her feet forward desperately. +Suddenly she was gazing down, down, down, into black depths which +seemed calling irresistibly and melting her power of muscular volition, +while he with another step was on the very edge, leaning over and +smiling. She dropped back convulsively. He was all happy absorption in +the face of that abyss. How easy for him to topple over and go hurtling +into the chasm! + +"Don't!" she gasped, and blindly tugged at his arm to draw him back. + +As he looked around in surprise and inquiry, she withdrew her hand in a +reaction against her familiarity, yet did not lower it, holding it out +with fingers spread in expression of her horror. Serenely he regarded +her for a moment in her confusion and distress, and then, smiling, while +the still light of confidence was in his eyes, he locked his arm in hers. +Before she could protest or resist he had drawn her to his side. + +"It is just as safe as looking off the roof of a porch on to a flower +garden," he said. + +And why she knew not, but the fact had come as something definite and +settled: she was no longer dizzy or uncertain. Calmly, in the triumph of +mind over fear, in the glory of a new sensation of power, she looked down +into that gulf of shadows--looked down for a thousand feet, where the +narrowing, sheer walls merged into darkness. + +From this pit to the blue above there was only infinite silence, with no +movement but his pulse-beat which she could feel in his wrist +distinctly. He had her fast, a pawn of one of his impulses. A shiver of +revolt ran through her. He had taken this liberty because she had shown +weakness. And she was not weak. She had come to the precipice to prove +that she was not. + +"Thank you. My little tremor of horror has passed," she told him. "I can +stand without help, now." + +He released his hold and she stood quite free of him, a glance flashing +her independence. Smilingly she looked down and smilingly and +triumphantly back at him. + +"You need not keep your arm up in that fashion ready to assist me. It +is tiring," she said, with a touch of her old fire of banter over the +barrier. "I am all right, now. I don't know what gave me that giddy +turn--probably sitting still so long and looking out at the blaze of +the desert." + +He swept her with a look of admiration; and their eyes meeting, she +looked back into the abyss. + +"I wish I had such courage," he said with sudden, tense earnestness; +"courage to master my revulsion against shadows." + +"Perhaps it will come like an inspiration," she answered +uncomprehendingly. + +Then both were silent until she spoke of a stunted little pine three or +four hundred feet down, in the crotch of an outcropping. Its sinking +roots had split a rock, over which the other roots sprawled in gnarly +persistence. Some passing bird had dropped the seed which had found a bed +in a pocket of dust from the erosions of time. So it had grown and set up +housekeeping in its isolation, even as the community of Little Rivers had +in a desert basin beside a water-course. + +"The little pine has courage--the courage of the dwarf," she said. "It is +worth more than a whole forest of its majestic cousins in Maine. How +green it is--greener than they!" + +"But they rise straight to heaven in their majesty!" he returned, to make +controversy. + +"Yes, out of the ease of their rich beds!" + +"In a crowd and waiting for the axe!" + +"And this one, in its isolation, creating something where there was +nothing! Every one of its needles is counted in its cost of birth out of +the stubborn soil! And waiting all its life down there for the reward of +a look and a word of praise!" + +"But," he went on, in the delight of hearing her voice in rebuttal, "the +big pines give us the masts of ships and they build houses and furnish +the kindling for the hardwood logs of the hearth!" + +"The little pine makes no pretensions. It has done more. It has given us +something without which houses are empty: It has given us a thought!" + +"True!" he exclaimed soberly, yielding. And now all the lively signals of +the impulse of action played on his face. "For your glance and your word +of praise it shall pay you tribute!" he cried. "I am going down to bring +you one of its clusters of spines." + +"But, Jack, it is a dangerous climb--it is late! No! no!" + +"No climb at all. It is easy if I work my way around by that ledge +yonder. I see stepping-places all the way." + +How like him! While she thought only of the pine, he had been thinking +how to make a descent; how to conquer some physical difficulty. Already +he had started despite her protest. + +"I don't want to rob the little pine!" she called, testily. + +"I'll bring a needle, then!" + +"Even every needle is precious!" + +"I'll bring a dead one, then!" + +There was no combatting him, she knew, when he was headstrong; and when +he was particularly headstrong he would laugh in his soft way. He was +laughing now as he took off his spurs and tossed them aside. + +"No climbing in these cart-wheels, and I shall have to roll up my chaps!" + +She went back to the precipice edge to prove to him, to prove to herself, +that she could stand there alone, without the moral support of anyone at +her side, and found that she could. She had mastered her weakness. It was +as if a new force had been born in her. She felt its stiffening in every +fibre as she saw him pass around the ledge and start down toward the +little pine; felt it as something which could build barriers and mount +them with an invulnerable guard. + +How would he get past that steep shoulder? The worst obstacle confronted +him at the very beginning of the descent. He was hugging a rock face, +feeling his way, with nothing but a few inches of a projecting seam +between him and the darkness far below. His foot slipped, his body turned +half around, and she had a second of the horror that she had felt when +waiting for the sound of Leddy's shot in Bill Lang's store. She saw his +outspread hands clutching the seam above; watched for them to let go. But +they held; the foot groped and got its footing again, and he worked his +way out on a shelf. + +He was safe and she dropped on her knees weakly, still looking down at +him. It was the old story of their relations. Was this man ever to be +subjecting her to spasms of fear on his account? And there he was beaming +up at her reassuringly, while she felt the blood which had gone from her +face return in a hot flood. It brought with it anger in place of fear. + +"I don't want it! I don't want it!" she cried down. + +"And I want to get it for you! I want to get it for you--for you!" His +voice was a tumult of emotion in the abandon of passionate declaration. +So long had she held him back that now when the flood came it had the +power of conserved strength bursting a dam in wild havoc. "There is +nothing I would not like to do for you, Mary!" he cried. "I'd like to +pull that pine up for you, even if it bled and suffered! I'd like to go +on doing things for you forever!" + +There was not even a movement of her lips in answer. It seemed to her +now that there on the precipice edge, while he held her arm in his, +the iridescent house of glass had fallen about them in a confused, +dazzling shower of wreckage. He had found an opening. He had broken +through the barrier. + +Half unconscious of his progress, of the chasm itself, she waited in a +daze and came out of it to see him sweeping his hat upward from beside +the pine before he reached as far as he could among the branches and, +with what seemed to her the refinement of effrontery and disregard of her +wishes, broke off a tawny young branch. He waved it to her--this garland +of conquest won out of the jaws of danger, which he was ready to throw at +her feet from the lists. + +"No, no, no!" she said, half aloud. + +She saw him start back with his sure steps, his shoulders swinging with +the lithe, adaptable movement of his body; and every step was drawing him +nearer to a meeting which would be like no other between them. Soon he +would be crunching the glass of the house under that confident tread; in +the ecstasy of a new part he would be before the opening he had broken in +the barrier with the jauntiness of one who expected admission. His +pulse-beat under the touch of her fingers at the precipice edge, his +artery-beat in the _arroyo_, was hammering in her temples, hammering out +a decision which, when it came, brought her to her feet. + +Now the shadows were deep; all the glory of the sunset in the Eternal +Painter's chaotic last moments of his day's work overspread the western +sky, and from the furnace in which he dipped his brush came a blade of +rich, blazing gold through the pass and lay across the trail. It +enveloped her as, half running, mindless of her footing, slipping as she +went, she hurried toward the other side of Galeria. + +When Jack Wingfield came up over the ledge, a pine tassel in his hand, +his languor of other days transformed into high-strung, triumphant +intensity, the sparkle of a splendid hope in his eyes, only Firio was +there to welcome him. + +"Señorita Ewold said she no could wait," Firio explained. "It was very +late, she said." + +Jack stopped as if struck and his features became a lifeless mask, as +lifeless as the walls of the canyon. He looked down at the trophy of his +climb and ran his fingers over the needles slowly, again and again, in +abstraction. + +"I understand!" he said, half to himself; and then aloud: "Firio, we will +not go into town to-night. We will camp on the other side by the river." + +"_Sí_! I shot enough quail this afternoon for dinner." + +But Jack did not have much appetite, and after dinner he did not amuse +Firio with inventions of his fancy. He lay long awake, his head on his +clasped hands, looking at the stars. + + + + +XX + +A PUZZLED AMBASSADOR + + +A faint aureole of light crept up back of the pass. + +"Dawn at last!" Jack breathed, in relief. "Firio! Firio! Up with you!" + +"Oh-yuh!" yawned Firio. "_Sí, sí_!" he said, rising numbly to his feet +and rubbing his eyes with his fists, while he tried to comprehend an +astonishing reversal of custom. Usually he awakened his camp-mate; but +this morning his camp-mate had awakened him. A half shadow in the +semi-darkness, Jack was already throwing the saddle over P.D.'s back. + +"We will get away at once," he said. + +Firio knew that something strange had come over Señor Jack after he had +met Señorita Ewold on the pass, and now he was convinced that this thing +had been working in Señor Jack's mind all night. + +"Coffee before we start?" he inquired ingratiatingly. + +"Coffee at the ranch," Jack answered. + +In their expeditious preparations for departure he hummed no snatches of +song as a paean of stretching muscles and the expansion of his being with +the full tide of the conscious life of day; and this, too, was contrary +to custom. + +Before it was fairly light they were on the road, with Jack urging P.D. +forward at a trot. The silence was soft with the shimmer of dawn; all +glistening and still the roofs and trees of Little Rivers took form. The +moist sweetness of its gardens perfumed the fresh morning air in greeting +to the easy traveller, while the makers of gardens were yet asleep. + +It was the same hour that Mary had hurried forth after her wakeful night +to stop the duel in the _arroyo_. As Jack approached the Ewold home he +had a glimpse of something white, a woman's gown he thought, that +disappeared behind the vines. He concluded that Mary must have risen +early to watch the sunrise, and drew rein opposite the porch; but through +the lace-work of the vines he saw that it was empty. Yet he was positive +that he had seen her and that she must have seen him coming. She was +missing the very glorious moment which she had risen to see. A rim of +molten gold was showing in the defile and all the summits of the range +were topped with flowing fire. + +"Mary!" he called. + +There was no answer. Had he been mistaken? Had mental suggestion played +him a trick? Had his eyes personified a wish when they saw a figure on +the steps? + +"Mary!" he called again, and his voice was loud enough for her to have +heard if she were awake and near. Still there was no answer. + +The pass had now become a flaming vortex which bathed him in its +far-spreading radiance. But he had lost interest in sunrises. A last +backward, hungry glance over his shoulder as he started gave him a +glimpse through the open door of the living-room, and he saw Mary leaning +against the table looking down at her hands, which were half clasped in +her lap, as if she were waiting for him to get out of the way. + +Thus he understood that he had ended their comradeship when he had broken +through the barrier on the previous afternoon, and the only thing that +could bring it back was the birth of a feeling in her greater than +comradeship. His shoulders fell together, the reins loosened, while P.D., +masterless if not riderless, proceeded homeward. + +"Hello, Jack!" + +It was the greeting of Bob Worther, the inspector of ditches, who was the +only man abroad at that hour. Jack looked up with an effort to be genial +and found Bob closely studying his features in a stare. + +"What's the matter, Bob?" he asked. "Has my complexion turned green over +night or my nose slipped around to my ear?" + +"I was trying to make out if you do look like him!" Bob declared. + +"Like whom? What the deuce is the mystery?" + +"What--why, of course you're the most interested party and the only +Little Riversite that don't know about it, seh!" + +After all, there was some compensation for early rising. Bob expanded +with the privilege of being the first to break the news. + +"If you'd come yesterday you'd have seen him. He went by the noon train," +he said, and proceeded with the story of Prather. + +Jack had never heard of the man before and was obviously uninterested. He +did not seem to care if a dozen doubles came to town. + +"Oh, yes, there's another thing concerning you," Bob continued. "I was so +interested in telling you about Prather that I near forgot it. A +swell-looking fellow--says he's a doctor and he's got New York written +all over him--came in yesterday particularly to see you." + +Though it was a saying in Little Rivers that nobody ever found Jack at a +loss, he started perceptibly now. His fingers worked nervously on the +reins and he bit his lips in irritation. + +"He was asking a lot of questions about you," Bob added. + +By this time Jack had summoned back his smile. He did not seem to mind if +a dozen doctors came to town at the same time as a dozen doubles. + +"Did you tell him that I had a cough--kuh-er?" he asked, casually. + +"Why, no! I said you could thrash your weight in wildcats and he says, +'Well, he'll have to, yet!' and then shut up as if he'd overspoke +himself--and I judge that he ain't the kind that does that often. But +say, Jack," Bob demanded, in the alarm of local partisanship which +apprehends that it may unwittingly have served an outside interest, "did +you want us to dope it out that you were an invalid? We ain't been +getting you in wrong, I hope?" + +"Not a bit!" answered Jack with a reassuring slap on Bob's shoulder. "Was +his name Bennington?" + +"Yes, that's it." + +"Well," said Jack thoughtfully and with a return of his annoyance, "he +will find me at home when he calls." And P.D. knew that the reins were +still held in listless hands as he turned down the side street toward the +new ranch. + +Firio was feeling like an astrologer who had lost faith in his crystal +ball. An interrogation had taken the place of his confident "_Sí, sí_" +of desert understanding of the mind of his patron. Jack had broken camp +with the precipitancy of one who was eager to be quit of the trail and +back at the ranch; yet he gave his young trees only a passing glance +before entering the house. He had not wanted coffee on the road, yet +coffee served with the crisp odor of bacon accompanying its aroma, after +his bath and return to ranch clothes, found no appetite. He was as a man +whose mind cannot hold fast to anything that he is doing. Firio, +restless, worried, his eyes flicking covert glances, was frequently in +and out of the living-room on one excuse or another. + +"What work to-day?" he asked, as he cleared away the breakfast dishes. +"What has Señor Jack planned for us to do?" + +"The work to-day? The work to-day?" Jack repeated absently. "First the +mail." He nodded toward a pile on the table. + +"And I shall make ready to stay a long time?" Firio insinuated softly. + +"No!" Jack answered to space. + +The pyramid of mail might have been a week's batch for the Doge himself. +At the bottom were a number of books and above them magazines which Jack +had subscribed for when he found that they were not on the Doge's list. +There was only one letter as a first-class postage symbol of the exile's +intimacy with the outside world, and out of this tumbled a check and a +blank receipt to be filled in. He tore off the wrappers of the magazines +as a means of some sort of physical occupation and rolled them into +balls, which he cast at the waste-basket; but neither the contents of the +magazines nor those of the newspapers seemed to interest him. His +aspect was that of one waiting in a lobby to keep an appointment. + +When he heard steps on the porch he sang out cheerily, "Come in!" but, +contrary to the habit of Little Rivers hospitality, he did not hasten to +meet his caller, and any keenness of anticipation which he may have felt +was well masked. + +There entered a man of middle age, with close-cropped gray beard, clad in +soft flannels, the trousers bottoms turned up in New York fashion for +negligee business suits for that spring. To the simple interior of a +western ranch house he brought the atmosphere of complex civilization as +a thing ineradicably bred into his being. It was evident, too, that he +had been used to having his arrival in any room a moment of importance +which summoned the rapt attention of everybody, whether nurses, fellow +physicians, or the members of the patient's family. But this time that +was lacking. The young man leaning against the table was not visibly +impressed. + +"Hello, doctor!" said Jack, as unconcernedly as he would have passed the +time of day with Jim Galway in the street. + +"Hello, Jack!" said the doctor. + +Jack went just half-way across the room to shake hands. Then he dropped +back to his easy position, with the table as a rest, after he had set a +chair for the visitor. + +"How do you like Little Rivers?" Jack asked. + +"I have been here only thirty-six hours," answered the doctor, avoiding a +direct answer. He was pulling off his silk summer gloves, making the +operation a trifle elaborate, one which seemed to require much +attention. "I came pretty near mistaking another man for you, but his +mole patch saved me. I didn't think you could have grown one out here. +Wonderfully like you! Have you met him?" + +He glanced up as he asked this question, which seemed the first to occur +to him as a warming-up topic of conversation before he came to the +business in hand. + +"No. I have just heard of him," Jack answered. + +The doctor smiled at his gloves, which he now folded and put in his +pocket. Don't the lecturers to young medical students say, "Divert your +patient's mind to some topic other than himself as you get your first +impression"? Now Dr. Bennington drew forward in his chair, rested the +tips of the long fingers of a soft, capable hand on the edge of the +table, and looked up to Jack in professional candor, sweeping him with +the knowing eye of the modern confessor of the secrets of all manner of +mankind. With the other hand he drew a stethoscope from his side +coat-pocket. + +"Well, Jack, you can guess what brought me all the way from New +York--just five minutes' work!" and he gave the symbol of examination a +flourish in emphasis. + +"I don't think I have forgotten the etiquette of the patient on +such occasions," Jack returned. "It is an easy function in this +Arizona climate." + +He drew his shirt up from a compact loin and lean middle, revealing the +arch of his deep chest, the flesh of which was healthy pink under neck +and face plated with Indian tan. The doctor's eyes lighted with the bliss +of a critic used to searching for flaws at sight of a masterpiece. While +he conducted the initial plottings with the rubber cup which carried +sounds to one of the most expensive senses of hearing in America, Jack +was gazing out of the window, as if his mind were far away across the +cactus-spotted levels. + +"Breathe deep!" commanded the doctor. + +Jack's nostrils quivered with the indrawing of a great gust of air and +his diaphragm swelled until his ribs were like taut bowstrings. + +"And you were the pasty-faced weakling that left my office five years +ago--and you, you husky giant, have brought me two thousand miles to see +if you were really convalescent!" + +"I hope the trip will do you good!" said Jack, sweetly. + +"But it is great news that I take back, great news!" said the doctor, as +he put the stethoscope in his pocket. + +"Yes?" returned Jack, slipping his head through his shirt. "You don't +find even a speck?" + +"Not a speck! No sign of the lesion! There is no reason why you should +not have gone home long ago." + +"No?" Jack was fastening his string tie and doing this with something of +the urban nicety with which the doctor had folded his gloves. That tie +was one of the few inheritances from complex civilization which still had +Jack's favor. + +"What have you found to do all these years?" + +Jack was surprised at the question. + +"I have just wandered about and read and thought," he explained. + +"Without developing any sense of responsibility?" demanded the doctor in +exasperation. + +"I have tried to be good to my horses, and of late I have taken to +ranching. There is a lot of responsibility in that and care, too. Take +the scale, for instance!" + +"A confounded little ranch out in this God-forsaken place, that a Swede +immigrant might run!" + +"No, the Swedes aren't particularly good at irrigation, though better +than the Dutch. You see, the Hollanders are used to having so much +water that--" + +Jack was leaning idly against the table again. The fashionable +practitioner, accustomed to having his words accepted at their cost price +in gold, broke in hotly: + +"It is past all understanding! You, the heir to twenty millions!" + +"Is it twenty now?" Jack asked softly and sadly. + +"Nearer thirty, probably! And shirking your duty! Shirking and for +what--for what?" + +Jack faced around. The doctor, meeting a calm eye that was quizzically +challenging, paused abruptly, feeling that in some way he had been caught +at a professional disadvantage in his outburst of emotion. + +"Don't you like Little Rivers?" asked Jack. + +"I should be bored to death!" the doctor admitted, honestly. + +"Well, you see this air never healed a lesion for you! You never +uttered a prayer to it for strength with every breath! And, doctor," +Jack hesitated, while his lips were half open, showing his even teeth +slightly apart in the manner of a break in a story to the children +where he expected them to be very attentive to what was coming, "you +can take a piece of tissue and analyze it, yes, a piece of brain tissue +and find all the blood-vessels, but not what a man was thinking, can +you? Until you can take a precipitate of his thoughts--the very +thoughts he is unconscious of himself--and put them under a microscope, +why, there must be a lot of guesswork about the source of all +unconventional human actions." + +Jack laughed over his invasion of psychology; and when he laughed in a +certain way the impulse to join him was strong, as Mary first found on +the pass. So the doctor laughed, partly in relief, perhaps, that this +uncertain element which he was finding in Jack had not yet proved +explosive. + +"That would make a capital excuse for a student flunking in +examinations!" he said. + +"It might be a worthy one--not that I say it ought to pass him." + +"Now, Jack," the doctor began afresh, the reassuring force of his +personality again in play. + +He took a step and raised his hands as if he would put them on Jack's +shoulders. One could imagine him driving hypochondria out of many a +patient's mind by thus making his own vigorous optimism flow down from +his fingertips, while he looked into the patient's eye. But his hands +remained in the air, though Jack had been only smiling at him. This was +not the way to handle this patient, something told his trained, sensitive +instinct in time, and he let his hands fall in semblance of a gesture of +protest, gave a shrug and came directly to the point very genuinely. + +"Well, Jack--your father!" + +"Yes." And Jack's face was still and blank, while shadows played over +it in a war among themselves. "He did not even tell me you were +coming," he added. + +"Perhaps he feared that it would give you time to develop a cough or you +would start overland to Chihuahua so I should miss you. Jack, he needs +you! All that fortune waits for you!" + +"Now that I am strong, yes! He did not come out to see me even during +the first year when I had not the health to go to him, nor did he think +to come with you." + +"He--he is a very busy man!" explained the doctor, in ready championship. +And yet he looked away from Jack, and when he looked back it was with an +appeal to conscience rather than to filial affection. "Is it right to +remain, however much you like this desert life? Have you any excuse?" + +"Yes, an overwhelming one!" exclaimed Jack in a voice that was +high-pitched and determined, while his eyes burned and no trace of humor +remained on lips that were as firm as the outline of his chin. "Yes, one +that thrills me from head to foot with the steady ardor of the soldier +who makes a siege!" + +"I--I--you are beyond me! Then you will stay? You are not coming home?" + +"Yes," Jack answered, in another mood, but one equally rigid. "I am +coming at once. That was all settled last night under the stars. I have +found the courage!" + +"The courage to go to twenty millions!" gasped the doctor. "But--good! +You will go! That is enough! Why shouldn't we take the same train back?" +he went on enthusiastically. "I shall be coming through here in less than +a week. You see, I am so near California that I simply had to steal a few +days with my sister, who can't come East on account of her health. I have +been so tied down to practice that I have not seen her for fifteen years. +That will give you time to arrange your affairs. How about it?" + +"It would be delightful, but--" Jack was hesitating. "No, I will refuse. +You see, I rode horseback when I entered this valley for the first time +and I should like to ride out in the way I came. Just sentiment!" + +"Jack!" exclaimed the doctor. + +He was casting about how to express his suspicion when something electric +checked him--a current that began in Jack's measured glance. Jack was not +mentioning that his word was being questioned, but something still and +effective that came from far away out on the untrod desert was in the +room. It fell on the nerves of the ambassador from the court of complex +civilization like a sudden hush on a city's traffic. Jack broke the +silence by asking, in a tone of lively hospitality: + +"You will join me at luncheon?" + +"I should like to," answered the doctor, "but I can catch a train on the +other trunk line that will give me a few more hours with my sister. And +what shall I wire your father? Have you any suggestion?" + +"Why, that he will be able to judge for himself in a few days how near +cured I am." + +"You will wire him the date of your arrival?" + +"Yes." + +"Jack," said the doctor at the door, "that remark of yours about the +analysis of brain tissue and of thought put a truth very happily. Come +and see me and let me know how you get on. Good-by!" + +He took his departure thoughtfully, rather than with a sense of +triumph over the success of a two-thousand-mile mission in the name of +twenty millions. + + + + +XXI + +"GOOD-BY, LITTLE RIVERS!" + + +It was the thing thrilling him with the ardor of a soldier preparing for +a siege that sent Jack to the Ewolds' later in the morning. He had come +determined to finish the speech that he had called up to Mary from the +canyon. As he crossed the cement bridge, Ignacio appeared on the path and +took his position there obdurately, instead of standing to one side with +a nod, as usual, to let the caller pass. + +"Señorita Ewold is not at home!" he announced, before Jack had spoken. + +"Not even in the garden?" + +"No, señor." + +"But she will be back soon?" + +"I do not think so." + +Ignacio's face was as blank as a wall, but knowingly, authoritatively +blank. His brown eyes glistened with cold assurance. He seemed to have +become the interpreter of a message in keeping with Mary's flight from +the pass and her withdrawal from the porch when she had seen Jack +approaching. Here was a new barrier which did not permit even banter +across the crest. She must know that he was going, for the news of his +approaching departure had already spread through the town. She had chosen +not to see him again, even for a farewell. + +For a little time he stood in thought, while Ignacio remained steadfast +on the path, watchful, perhaps, for the devil in Señor Don't Care to +appear. Suddenly Jack's features glowed with action; he took a step as if +he would sweep by Ignacio on into the garden. But the impulse instantly +passed. He stopped, his face drawn as it had been when he fell limp +against the hedge stricken by the horror of his seeming brutality to +Pedro Nogales, and turned away into the street with a mask of smiles for +the greetings and regrets of the friends whom he met. + +Worth twenty millions or twenty cents, he was still Jack to Little +Rivers; still the knight who had come over the range to vanquish Pete +Leddy; still a fellow-rancher in the full freemasonry of calloused +hands; still the joyous teller of stories. The thought of losing him set +tendrils in the ranchers' hearts twitching in sympathy with tendrils in +his own, which he found rooted very deep now that he must tear them out. + +That afternoon at the appointed hour for his departure every man, woman, +and child had assembled at the end of the main street, where it broke +into the desert trail. The principal found an excuse for dismissing +school an hour earlier than usual. That is, everyone was present except +Mary. The Doge came, if a little late, to fulfil his function as chosen +spokesman for all in bidding Jack Godspeed on his journey. + +"Señor Don't Care, you are a part of the history of Little Rivers!" he +said, airily. "You have brought us something which we lacked in our +singularly peaceful beginning. Without romance, sir, no community is +complete. I have found you a felicitous disputant whom I shall miss; for +you leave me to provide the arguments on both sides of a subject on the +same evening. Our people have found you a neighbor of infinite resources +of humor and cheer. We wish you a pleasant trail. We wish you warm +sunshine when the weather is chill and shade when the weather is hot, and +that you shall ever travel with a singing heart, while old age never +overtakes the fancy of youth." + +Every one of the familiar faces grouped around the fine, cultured old +face of the Doge expressed the thoughts to which he had given form. + +"May your arguments be as thick as fireflies, O Doge!" Jack answered, +"everyone bearing a torch to illumine the outer darkness of ignorance! +May every happy thought I have for Little Rivers spring up in a +date-tree wonderful! Then, before the year is out, you will have a +forest of date-trees stretching from foothills to foothills, across the +whole valley." + +"And one more about the giant with the little voice and the dwarf with +the big voice and the cat with the stripes down her back!" cried Belvy +Smith, spokeswoman for the children. "Are they just going on forever +having adventures and us never knowing about them?" + +"No. I have been holding back the last story," Jack said. "Both the giant +and the dwarf were getting old, as you all know, and they were pretty +badly battered up from their continual warfare. Why, the scar which the +giant got on his forehead in their last battle was so big that if the +dwarf had had it there would have been no top left to his head. After the +cat had lost that precious black tip to her tail she became more and more +thoughtful. She made up her mind to retire and reform and have a +permanent home. And you know what a gift she had for planning out things +and how clever she was about getting her own way. Now she sat in a hedge +corner thinking and thinking and looking at the stubby end of her tail, +and suddenly she cried, 'Eureka!' And what do you think she did? She went +to a paint shop and had her left ear painted yellow and her right ear +painted green. So, now you can see her any day sunning herself on the +steps of the cottage where the giant and the dwarf live in peace. +Whenever they have an inclination to quarrel she jumps between them and +wiggles the yellow ear at the giant and the green ear at the dwarf, which +fusses them both so that they promise to be good and rush off to get her +a saucer of milk." + +"A green ear and a yellow ear! What a funny looking cat she must be!" +exclaimed Belvy. + +"So she says to herself between purrs," concluded Jack. "But she is a +philosopher and knows that she would look still funnier if she had lost +her ears as Jag Ear has. Good-by, children! Good-by, everybody! Good-by, +Little Rivers!" + +Jack gave P.D. a signal and the crowd broke into a cheer, which was +punctuated by the music of Jag Ear's bells as his burrohood got in +motion. The Doge, who had brought his horse, mounted. + +"I will ride a little distance with you," he said. + +He appeared like a man who had a great deal on his mind and yet was at a +loss for words. There was the unprecedented situation of silence between +the two exponents of persiflage in Little Rivers. + +"I--" he began, and paused as if the subject were too big for him and it +were better not to begin at all. Then he drew rein. + +"Luck, Jack!" he said, simply, and there was something like pity +in his tone. + +"And Mary--you will say good-by to her and thank her!" said Jack. + +"I think you may meet her," answered the Doge. "She went away early +taking her luncheon, before she knew that you were going." + +So Ignacio had been acting on his own authority! The thrill of the news +singing in Jack's veins was too overwhelming for him to notice the +challenge and apprehension in the Doge's glance. The Doge saw the glow of +a thousand happy, eager thoughts in Jack's face. He hesitated again on +the brink of speech, before, with a toss of his leonine head as if he +were veritably leaving fate's affairs to fate, he turned to go; and Jack +mechanically touched P.D.'s rein, while he gazed toward the pass. P.D. +had not gone many steps when Jack heard the same sonorous call that had +greeted him that first night when he stopped before the door of the +Ewolds; the call of a great, infectious fellowship between men: + +"Luck, Sir Chaps! I defy you to wear your spurs up the Avenue! Give my +love to that new Campanile in Babylon, the Metropolitan tower! Get it in +the mist! Get it under the sun! Kiss your hand to golden Diana, huntress +of Manhattan's winds! Say ahoy to old Farragut! And on gray days have a +look for me at the new Sorollas in the Museum! Luck, Sir Chaps!" + +"Good crops and a generous mail, O Doge!" + +Jack rode fast, in the gladness of a hope this side of the pass and in +the face of shadows on the other side which he did not attempt to define. +To Firio he seemed to have grown taller and older. + + + + +XXII + +"LUCK, JACK, LUCK!" + + +Apprehensively he watched the end of the ribbon running under P.D.'s +hoofs for the sight of a horsewoman breaking free of the foothills. The +momentary fear which rode with him was that Mary might be returning +earlier than usual. If they met on the road--why, the road was without +imagination and, in keeping with her new attitude toward him, she might +pass him by with a nod. But at the top of the pass imagination would be +supreme. There they had first met; there they had found their first +thought in common in the ozone which had meant life to them both. + +He did not look up at the sky changes. As he climbed the winding path +worn by moccasined feet before the Persians marched to Thermopylae, his +mind was too occupied making pictures of its own in glowing anticipation +to have any interest in outside pictures. This path was narrow. Here, at +least, she must pause; and she must listen. Every turn which showed +another empty stretch ahead sent his spirits soaring. Then he saw a pony +with an empty side-saddle on the shelf. A few steps more and he saw Mary. + +She was seated with the defile at her back, her hands clasped over her +knee. In this position, as in every position which she naturally took, +she had a pliant and personal grace. The welter of light of the low sun +was ablaze in her face. Her profile had a luminous wistfulness. Her +lashes were half closed, at once retaining the vision of the panorama at +her feet as a thing of atmospheric enjoyment and shutting it out from the +intimacy of her thoughts. And more enveloping than the light was the +silence which held her in a spell as still as the rocks themselves, +waiting on time's dispensation where time was nothing. Yet the soft +movement of her bosom with her even breaths triumphed in a life supreme +and palpitant over all that dead world. + +Thus he drank her in before the crunch of a stone under his heel warned +her of his presence and set her breaths going and coming in quick gusts +as she wheeled around, half rising and then dropping back to a position +as still as before, with a trace of new dignity in her grace, while her +starkness of inquiry gradually changed to stoicism. + +"Mary, I came upon you very suddenly," he said. + +"Yes"--a bare, echoing monosyllable. + +He stepped to one side to let Firio and his little cavalcade pass. All +the while she continued to look at him through the screen of her +half-closed lashes in a way that set her repose and charm apart as +something precious and cold and baffling. Now he realized that he had +made a breach in the barrier of their old relations only to find himself +in a garden whose flowers fell to ashes at his touch. He saw the light +that enveloped her as an armor far less vulnerable than any wall, and the +splendor of her was growing in his eyes. + +Jag Ear's bells with their warm and merry notes became a faint tinkle +that was lost in the depths of the defile. The two were alone on the spot +where the Eternal Painter had introduced them so simply as Jack and +Mary, and where he, as the easy traveller, had listened to her plead for +his own life. It was his turn to plead. She was not to be won by fighting +Leddys or tearing up pine-trees by their roots. That armor was without a +joint; a lance would bend like so much tin against its plates, and yet +there must be some alchemy that would make it melt as a mist before the +sun. It was tenanted by a being all sentiency, which saw him through her +visor as a passer-by in a gallery. But one in armor does not fly from +passers-by as she had flown while he was climbing up the canyon wall with +his pine-tree branch. + +"I have learned now to look over any kind of a precipice without getting +dizzy," she announced, quietly. + +He was not the Jack who had come over the ledge in the energy of his +passion yesterday to find her gone. He had turned gentle and was smiling +with craved permission for a respite from her evident severity as he +dropped to a half-lying posture near her. Overhead, the Eternal Painter +was throwing in the smoky purple of a false thunderhead, sweeping it away +with the promise of a downpour, rolling in piles of silver clouds and +drawing them out into filmy fingers melting into a luminous blue. + +"One can never tire of this," he said, tentatively. + +"To me it is all!" she answered, in an absorption with the scene that +made him as inconsequential as the rocks around her. + +"And you never long for cities, with their swift currents and busy +eddies?" he asked. + +"Cities are life, the life of humanity, and I am human. I--" The +unfinished sentence sank into the silence of things inexpressible or +which it was purposeless to express. + +Her voice suggested the tinkle of Jag Ear's bells floating away into +space. If a precipitate were taken from her forehead, in keeping with +Jack's suggestion to Dr. Bennington, it would have been mercury, which is +so tangible to the eye and intangible to the touch. Press it and it +breaks into little globules, only to be shaken together in a coherent +whole. If there is joy or pain in the breaking, either one must be +glittering and immeasurable. + +"But Little Rivers is best," she added after a time, speaking not to him, +but devoutly to the oasis of green. + +In the crystal air Little Rivers seemed so near that one could touch the +roofs of the houses with the fingertips of an extended arm, and yet so +diminutive in the spacious bosom of the plateau that it might be set in +the palm of the hand. + +Jack was as one afraid of his own power of speech. A misplaced word might +send her away as oblivious of him as a globule of mercury rolling free +from the grasp. Here was a Mary unfathomed of all his hazards of study, +undreamed of in all his flights of fancy. + +"It is my last view," he began. "I have said all my good-bys in town. I +am going." + +Covertly, fearfully, he watched the effect of the news. At least now +she would look around at him. He would no longer have to talk to a +profile and to the golden mist of the horizon about the greatest thing +of his life. But there was no sign of surprise; not even an inclination +of her head. + +"Yes," she told the horizon; and after a little silence added: "The time +has come to play another part?" + +She asked the question of the horizon, without any trace of the old +banter over the wall. She asked it in confirmation of a commonplace. + +"I know that you have always thought of me as playing a part. But I am +not my own master. I must go. I--" + +"Back to your millions!" She finished the sentence for him. + +"Then you--you knew! You knew!" But his exclamation of astonishment did +not move her to a glance in his direction or even a tremor. + +"Yes," she went on. "Father told me about your millions last night. He +has known from the first who you were." + +"And he told no one else in Little Rivers? He never mentioned it to me or +even to you before!" + +"Why should he when you did not mention it yourself? His omission was +natural delicacy, in keeping with your own attitude. Isn't it part of the +custom of Little Rivers that pasts melt into the desert? There is no +standard except the conduct of the present!" + +And all this speech was in a monotone of quiet explanation. + +"He did not even tell you until last night! Until after our meeting on +the other side of the pass! It is strange! strange!" he repeated in the +insistence of wonder. + +He saw the lashes part a little, then quiver and close as she lifted +her gaze from the horizon rim to the vortex of the sun. Then she +smiled wearily. + +"He likes a joke," she said. "Probably he enjoyed his knowledge of your +secret and wanted to see if I would guess the truth before you were +through playing your part." + +"But the part was not a part!" he said, with the emphasis of fire +creeping along a fuse. "It was real. I do not want to leave Little +Rivers!" + +"Not in your present enthusiasm," she returned with a warning inflection +of literalness, when he would have welcomed satire, anger, or any +reprisal of words as something live and warm; something on which his mind +could lay definite hold. + +In her impersonal calm she was subjecting him to an exquisite torture. He +was a man flayed past all endurance, flayed by a love that fed on the +revelation of a mystery in her being superbly in control. The riot of all +the colors of the sky spoke from his eyes as he sprang to his feet. He +became as intense as in the supreme moment in the _arroyo_; as reckless +as when he walked across the store toward a gun-muzzle. Only hers were +this time the set, still features. His were lighted with all the strength +of him and all the faith of him. + +"A part!" he cried. "Yes, a part--a sovereign and true part which I shall +ever play! I was going that day we first met, going before the legate of +the millions came to me. Why did I stay? Because I could not go when I +saw that you wanted to turn me out of the garden!" + +His quivering words were spoken to a profile of bronze, over which +flickered a smile as she answered with a prompting and disinterested +analysis. + +"You said it was to make callouses on your hands. But that must have been +persiflage. The truth is that you imagined a challenger. You wanted to +win a victory!" she answered. + +"It was for you that I calloused my hands!" + +"Time will make them soft!" + +She was half teasing now, but teasing through the visor, not over the +wall. + +"And if I sought victory I saw that I was being beaten while I made a +profession of you, not of gardening! Yes, of you! I could confess it to +all the world and its ridicule!" + +"Jack, you are dramatic!" + +If she would only once look at him! If he could only speak into her eyes! +If her breaths did not come and go so regularly! + +"Why did I take to the trail after Pedro Nogales struck at me with his +knife? Because I saw the look on your face when you saw that I had broken +his arm. I had not meant to break his arm--yet I know that I might have +done worse but for you! I did not mean to kill Leddy--yet there was +something in me which might have killed him but for you!" + +"I am glad to have prevented murder!" she answered almost harshly. + +A shadow of horror, as if in recollection of the scene in the _arroyo_ +and beside the hedge, passed over her face. + +"Yes, I understand! I understand!" he said. "And you must hear why this +terrible impulse rose in me." + +"I know." + +"You know? You know?" he repeated. + +"About the millions," she corrected herself, hastily. "Go on, Jack, if +you wish!" Urgency crept into her tone, the urgency of wishing to have +done with a scene which she was bearing with the fortitude of +tightened nerves. + +"It was the millions that sent me out here with a message, when I did +not much care about anything, and their message was: 'We do not want to +see you again if you are to be forever a weakling. Get strong, for our +power is to the strong! Get strong, or do not come back!'" + +"Yes?" + +For the first time since he had begun his story she looked fairly at him. +It was as if the armor had melted with sympathy and pity and she, in the +pride of the poverty of Little Rivers, was armed with a Samaritan +kindliness. For a second only he saw her thus, before she looked away to +the horizon and he saw that she was again in armor. + +"And I craved strength! It was my one way to make good. I rode the +solitudes, following the seasons, getting strength. I rejoiced in the tan +of my arm and the movement of my own muscles. I learned to love the feel +of a rifle-stock against my shoulder, the touch of the trigger to my +finger's end. I would shoot at the cactus in the moonlight--oh, that is +difficult, shooting by moonlight!--and I gloried in my increasing +accuracy--I, the weakling of libraries and galleries and sunny verandas +of tourist resorts! Afraid at first of a precipice's edge, I came to +enjoy looking over into abysses and in spending a whole day climbing down +into their depths, while Firio waited in camp. And at times I would cry +out: 'Millions, I am strong! I am not afraid of you! I am not afraid of +anything!' In the days when I knew I could never be acceptable as their +master I knew I was in no danger of ever having to face them. When I had +grown strong, less than ever did I want to face them. I know not why, but +I saw shadows; I looked into another kind of depths--mental +depths--which held a message that I feared. So I procrastinated, staying +on in the air which had given me red blood. But that was cowardly, and +that day I came over the pass I was making my last ride in the kingdom of +irresponsibility. I was going home! + +"When you asked me not to face Leddy I simply had to refuse. I had just +as soon as not that Leddy would shoot at me, because I wanted to see if +he would. Yes, I was strong. I had conquered. And if Leddy hit me, why, I +did not have to go back to battle with the shadows--the obsession of +shadows which had grown in my mind as my strength grew. When I was +smiling in Leddy's muzzle, as they say I did, I was just smiling +exultantly at the millions that had called me a weakling, and saying, +like some boaster, 'Could you do this, millions?' I--I--well, Mary, I--I +have told you what I never was quite able to tell myself before." + +"Thank you, Jack!" she answered, and all the particles of sunlight that +bathed her seemed to reflect her quiet gladness as something detached, +permeating, and transcendent. + +"When Leddy challenged me I wanted to fight," he went on. "I wanted to +see how cool I, the weakling whom the millions scorned, could be in +battle. After Leddy's shot in the _arroyo_ I found that strength had +discovered something else in me--something that had lain dormant in +boyhood and had not awakened to any consciousness of itself in the five +years on the desert--something of which all my boyhood training made me +no less afraid than of the shadows, born of the blood, born of the very +strength I had won. It seemed to run counter to books and gardens and +peace itself--a lawless, devil-like creature! Yes, I gloried in the fact +that I could kill Leddy. It was an intoxication to hold a steady bead on +him. And you saw and felt that in me--yes, I tell you everything as a man +must when he comes to a woman offering himself, his all, with his angels, +his devils, and his dreams!" + +He paused trembling, as before a judge. She turned quickly, with a +sudden, winsome vivacity, the glow of a great satisfaction in her eyes +and smiling a comradeship which made her old attitude over the wall a +thing of dross and yet far more intimate. Her hand went out to meet his. + +"Jack, we have had good times together," she said. "We were never +mawkish; we were just good citizens of Little Rivers, weren't we? And, +Jack, every mortal of us is partly what he is born and the rest is what +he can do to bend inheritance to his will. But we can never quite +transform our inheritance and if we stifle it, some day it will break +loose. The first thing is to face what seems born in us, and you have +made a good beginning." + +She gave his hands a nervous, earnest clasp and withdrew hers as she +rose. So they stood facing each other, she in the panoply of good will, +he with his heart on his sleeve. The swiftly changing pictures of the +Eternal Painter in his evening orgy seemed to fill the air with the music +of a symphony in its last measures, and her very breaths and smiles to be +keeping time with its irresistible movement toward the finale. + +"I must be starting back, Jack," she said. + +"And, Mary, I must learn how to master the millions. Oh, I have not the +courage of the little dwarf pine in the canyon! Mary, Mary, I calloused +my hands for you! I want to master the millions for you! I would give you +the freedom of Little Rivers and all the cities of the world!" + +"No, Jack! This is my side of the pass. I shall be very happy here." + +"Then I will stay in Little Rivers! I will leave the millions to the +shadows! I will stay on ranch-making, fortune-making. Mary, I love you! I +love you!" + +There was no staying the flame of his feeling. He seized her hands; he +drew her to him. But her hands were cold; they were shivering. + +"Jack! No, no! It is not in the blood!" she cried in the face of some +mocking phantom, her calmness gone and her words rocking with the tumult +of emotion. + +"In the blood, Mary? What do you mean? What do you know that I don't +know? Do you know those shadows that I cannot understand better than +I?" he pleaded; and he was thinking of the Doge's look of pity and +challenge and of the meeting long ago in Florence as the hazy filaments +of a mystery. + +"No, I should not have said that. What do I know? Little--nothing that +will help! I know what is in me, as I know what is in you. I am afraid of +myself--afraid of you!" + +"Mary, I will fight all the shadows!" He drew her close to him +resistlessly in his might. + +"Jack, you will not use your strength against me! Jack!" + +He saw her eyes in a mist of pain and reproach as he released her. And +now she threw back her head; she was smiling in the philosophy of garden +nonsense as she cried: + +"Good-by, Jack! Luck against the dinosaur! Don't press him too hard +when he is turning a sharp corner. Remember he has a long reach with +his old paleozoic tail. Luck!" with a laugh through her tears; a laugh +with tremulous cheer in it and yet with the ring of a key in the lock +of a gate. + +Unsteadily he bent over and taking her hands in his pressed his +lips to them. + +"Yes, luck!" he repeated, and half staggering turned toward the defile. + +"Luck!" she called after him when he was out of sight. "Luck!" she called +to the silence of the pass. + +Three days with the trail and the Eternal Painter mocking him, when the +singing of Spanish verses that go click with the beat of horse-hoofs in +the sand sounded hollow as the refrain of vain memories, and from the +steps of a Pullman he had a final glimpse of Firio's mournful face, with +its dark eyes shining in the light of the station lamp. Firio had in his +hand a paper, a sort of will and testament given him at the last minute, +which made him master in fee simple of the ranch where he had been +servant, with the provision that the Doge of Little Rivers might store +his overflow of books there forever. + + + + +PART II + +HE FINDS HIMSELF + + + + +XXIII + +LABELLED AND SHIPPED + + +Behold Jack clad in the habiliments of conventional civilization taken +from the stock of ready-made suitings in an El Paso store! They were of +the Moscowitz and Guggenheim type, the very latest and nattiest, as +advertised in popular prints. The dealer said that no gentleman could be +well dressed without them. He wanted to complete the transformation with +a cream-colored Fedora or a brown derby. + +"I'll wait on the thirty-third degree a little longer," said Jack, +fondling the flat-brimmed cowpuncher model of affectionate predilection. +Swinging on a hook on the sleeper with the sway of the train, its company +was soothing to him all the way across the continent. + +The time was March, that season of the northern year when winter growing +stale has a gritty, sticky taste and the relief of spring seems yet far +away. After the desert air the steam heat was stifling and nauseating. +Jack's head was a barrel about to burst its hoops; his skin drying like a +mummy's; his muscles in a starchy misery from lack of exercise. He felt +boxed up, an express package labelled and shipped. When he crawled into +his berth at night it was with a sense of giving himself up to +asphyxiation at the whim of strange gods. + +If you have ever come back to town after six months in the woods, six +months far from the hysteria of tittering electric bells, the brassy +honk-honk of automobiles, the clang of surface cars and the screech of +their wheels on the rails, multiply your period of absence by ten, add a +certain amount of desert temperament, and you will vaguely understand how +the red corpuscles were raising rebellion in Jack's artery walls on the +morning of his journey's end. From the ferryboat on the dull-green bosom +of the river he first renewed his memory of the spectral and forbidding +abysses and pinnacles of New York. Here time is everything; here man has +done his mightiest in contriving masses to imitate the architectural +chaos of genesis. A mantle of chill, smoky mist formed the dome of +heaven, in which a pale, suffused, yellowish spot alone bespoke the +existence of a sun in the universe. + +In keeping with his promise to Dr. Bennington he had wired to his father, +naming his train; and in a few minutes Wingfield, Sr. and Wingfield, Jr. +would meet for the first time in five years. Jack was conscious of a +faster beating of his heart and a feeling of awesome expectancy as the +crowd debouched from the ferryboat. At the exit to the street a big +limousine was waiting. The gilt initials on the door left no doubt for +whom it had been sent. But there was no one to meet him, no one after his +long absence except a chauffeur and a footman, who glanced at Jack +sharply. After the exchange of a corroborative nod between them the +footman advanced. + +"If you please, Mr. Wingfield," he said, taking Jack's suit case. + +"What would Jim Galway think of me now!" thought Jack. He put his head +inside the car cautiously. "Another box!" he thought, this time aloud. + +"You have the check for it, sir?" asked the footman, thinking that Jack +was using the English of the mother island for trunk. + +"No. That's all my baggage." + +In the tapering, cut-glass vase between the two front window-panels of +the "box" was a rose--a symbol of the luxury of the twenty millions, +evidently put there regularly every morning by direction of their master. +Its freshness and color appealed to Jack. He took it out and pressed it +to his nostrils. + +"Just needs the morning sun and the dew to be perfect," he said to the +amazed attendants; "and I will walk if you will take the suit case to +the house." + +He kept the rose, which he twirled in his fingers as he sauntered across +town, now pausing at curb corners to glance back in thoughtful survey, +now looking aloft at the peaks of Broadway which lay beyond the foothills +of the river-front avenues. + +"All to me what the desert is to other folks!" he mused; "desert, without +any cacti or mesquite! All the trails cross one another in a maze. A +boxed-up desert--boxes and boxes piled on top of one another! Everybody +in harness and attached by an invisible, unbreakable, inelastic leash to +a box, whither he bears his honey or goes to nurse his broken wings!--so +it seems to me and very headachy!" + +At Madison Square he was at the base of the range itself; and halting on +the corner of Twenty-third Street and the Avenue he was a statue as aloof +as the statue of Farragut from his surroundings. Salt sea spray ever +whispers in the atmosphere around the old sailor. How St. Gaudens +created it and keeps it there in the heart of New York is his secret. +Possibly the sculptor put some of his soul into it as young Michael +Angelo did into his young David. + +It is a great thing to put some of your soul into a thing, whether it is +driving a nail or moulding a piece of clay into life. There are men who +pause before the old Admiral and see the cutwater of men-of-war's bows +and hear the singing of the signal halyards as they rise with the command +to close in. Perhaps the Eternal Painter had put a little of his soul +into the heart of Jack; for some busy marchers of the Avenue trail as +they glanced at him saw the free desert and heard hoof-beats in the sand. +Others seeing a tanned Westerner kissing his hand to Diana of Madison +Square Garden probably thought him mad. Next, performing another +sentimental errand for the Doge of Little Rivers, his gaze rose along the +column of the Metropolitan tower. Its heights were half shrouded in mist, +through which glowed the gold of the lantern. + +"Oh, bully! bully!" he thought. "The only sun in sight a manufactured +one, shining on top of a manufactured mountain! It is a big business +building a mountain; only, when God Almighty scattered so many ready-made +ones about, why take the trouble?" he concluded. "Or so it seems to me," +he added, sadly, in due appreciation of the utterly reactionary mood of a +man who has been boxed up for a week. + +Now he turned toward a quarter which he had, thus far, kept out of the +compass of observation. He looked up the jagged range of Broadway where, +over a terra-cotta pile, floated a crimson flag with "John Wingfield" in +big, white letters. + +"My mountain! My box! My millions!" he breathed half audibly. + +How the people whom he passed, their faces speaking city keenness of +ambition, must envy his position! How little reason they had to envy him, +he thought, as he walked around the great building and saw his name +glaring at him in gilt letters over the plate-glass windows and on all +the delivery wagons, open-mouthed for the packages being wheeled out +under the long glass awning. + +"A whole block now! Yes, the doctor was right. It must be thirty instead +of twenty millions!" he concluded, as his vision swept the straight-line, +window-checkered mass of the twelve stories. "And I do wish we had a +tower! If one could go up on top of a tower and look out over the range +now and then and breathe deep, it would help." + +When he entered the main door he paused in a maze, gazing at the acreage +of counters manned by clerks and the aisles swarming with shoppers under +the glare of the big, electric globes, and listening to the babble of +shrill talk, the calls of the elevator boys, the coughing of the +pneumatic tubes and the clang of the elevator doors. It was all like some +devilishly complicated dream from which he would never awake. He must +have a little time in order to orient himself before he could think +rationally. The roar of the train still obsessed him; the air in the +store seemed more stifling than that of the sleeper. + +So he decided that, rather than be shot up into The Presence by the +elevator, he would gradually scale the heights. Ascending stairway after +stairway, he ranged back and forth over the floors, a stranger in his +own wonderland. When he reached the eleventh floor, with only one more to +the offices, the whole atmosphere seemed suddenly to turn rare with +expectancy; a rustle to run through all the goods on the counters; the +very Paris gowns among which he was standing to be called to martial +attention. + +"The boss!" he heard one of the model girls say. + +Turning to follow her nod toward the stairway, Jack saw, two-thirds of +the way up the broad flight, a man past middle age, in dark gray suit and +neutral tie, rubbing his palms together as he surveyed a stratum of his +principality. The sight of him to Jack was like the touch of a myriad +electric needles that pricked sharply, without exhilaration. + +"The boss is likely to run up that way any time of the day," said the +model girl to a customer; "and what he don't see don't count!" + +"Not much older; not much changed!" thought Jack; and his realization of +the disinterestedness of his observation tipped the needles with acid. + +In the sharpness of the master's button-counting survey there was swift +finality; and his impressions completed, analyzed, docketed for +reference, he ran on up the flight with light step, still rubbing the +palms of his hands in the unctuously well-contained and appreciative +sense of his power. To Jack he was a fascinating, grand, distant figure, +this of his own father, yet mortally near. + +If the model girl had had the same keenness of observation for what is +borne in the face as for what is worn on the back, she could not have +failed to note the strong family resemblance between the young man +standing near her and the man who had paused on the stairway. This +glimpse of his father's mastery of every detail of that organization +which he had built, this glimpse of cool, self-centered authority, only +reminded Jack of his own ignorance and flightiness in view of all that +would be expected of him. He knew less than one of the cash girls about +how to run the store. A duel with Leddy was a simple matter beside this +battle he had to wage. + +He mounted the last flight of stairs into an area of glass-paneled doors, +behind which the creative business of the great concern was conducted. +Out of one marked "Private," closing it softly and stepping softly, came +a round-shouldered, stooping man of middle age, with the apprehensive and +palliating manner of a long-service private secretary who has many things +to remember and many persons to appease with explanations. It was evident +that Peter Mortimer had just come from The Presence. At sight of Jack he +drew back in a surprise that broke into a beaming delight which played +over his tired and wrinkled features in ecstasy. + +"Jack! Jack! You did it! You did it!" he cried. + +"Peter!" Jack seized the secretary's hands and swung them back and forth. + +"You've got a grip of iron! And tanned--my, how you're tanned! You did +it, Jack, you did it! It hardly seems credible, when I think of the last +time I saw you." + +It was then that the secretary had seen a Jack with his eyes moist; a +Jack pasty-faced, hollow-cheeked; and, in what was a revolutionary +outburst for a unit in the offices, Peter Mortimer had put his arm around +the boy in a cry for the success of the Odyssey for health which the +heir was about to begin. And Mortimer's words were sweet, while the words +of the farewell from the other side of the glass-paneled door marked +"Private" were acrid with the disappointed hopes of the speaker. + +"You have always been a weakling, Jack, and I have had little to say +about your rearing. Go out to the desert and stay--stay till you are +strong!" declared the voice of strength, as if glad to be freed of the +sight of weakness in its own image. + +"Father did not come to meet me?" Jack observed questioningly now +to Mortimer. + +"He was very busy--he did not feel certain about the nature of your +telegram--he--" and Mortimer's impulses withdrew into the shell of the +professional private secretary. + +"I wired that he should see for himself if I were well. So he shall!" +said Jack, turning toward the door. + +"Yes--that will be all right--yes, there is no one with him!" + +Mortimer, in the very instinct of long practice, was about to go in to +announce the visitor, but paused. As Jack entered, whatever else may have +been in his eyes, there was no moisture. + + + + +XXIV + +IN THE CITADEL OF THE MILLIONS + + +John Wingfield, Sr. sat at a mahogany table without a single drawer, in +the centre of a large room with bare, green-tinted walls. His oculist had +said that green was the best color for the eyes. Beside the green +blotting-pad in front of him was a pile of papers. These would either be +disposed of in the course of the day or, if any waited on the morrow's +decision, would be taken away by Peter Mortimer overnight. When he rose +to go home it was always with a clear desk; a habit, a belief of his +singularly well-ordered mind in the mastery of the teeming detail that +throbbed under the thin soles of his soft kid shoes. On the other side of +the pad was the telephone, and beyond it the supreme implements of his +will, a row of pearl-topped push-buttons. + +The story of John Wingfield, Sr.'s rise and career, as the lieutenants of +the offices and the battalions of the shopping floors knew it, was not +the story, perhaps, as Dr. Bennington or Peter Mortimer knew it; but, +then, doctors and private secretaries are supposed to hold their secrets. +There was little out of the commonplace in the world's accepted version. +You may hear its like from the moneyed host at his dinner table in New +York or as he shows you over the acres of his country estate, enthusing +with a personal narrative of conquest which is to him unique. John +Wingfield, Sr. makes history for us in the type of woman whom he +married and the type of son she bore him. + +He was the son of a New England country clergyman, to whom working his +way through college in order to practise a profession made no appeal. +Birth and boyhood in poverty had taught him, from want of money, the +power of money. He sought the centre of the market-place. At sixteen he +was a clerk, marked by his industry not less than by his engaging +manners, on six dollars a week in the little store that was the site of +his present triumph. Of course he became a partner and then owner. It was +his frequent remark, when he turned reminiscent, that if he could only +get as good clerks as he was in his day he would soon have a monopoly of +supplying New York and its environs with all it ate and wore and needed +to furnish its houses; which raises the point that possibly such an +equality of high standards in efficiency might make all clerks employers. + +The steady flame of his egoism was fanned with his Successes. Without +real intimates or friends, he had an effective magnetism in making others +do his bidding. It had hardly occurred to him that his discovery of the +principle of never doing anything yourself that you can win others to do +for you and never failing, when you have a minute to spare, to do a thing +yourself when you can do it better than any assistant, was already a +practice with leaders in trade and industry before the Pharaohs. + +Life had been to him a ladder which he ascended without any glances to +right or left or at the rung that he had left behind. The adaptable +processes of his mind kept pace with his rise. He made himself at home +in each higher stratum of atmosphere. His marriage, delayed until he was +forty and already a man of power, was still another upward step. Alice +Jamison brought him capital and position. The world was puzzled why she +should have accepted him; but this stroke of success he now considered as +the vital error of a career which, otherwise, had been flawlessly +planned. Yet he could flatter his egoism with the thought that it was +less a fault of judgment than of the uncertainty of feminine temperament, +which could not be measured by logic. + +New York saw little of Mrs. Wingfield after Jack's birth. Her friends +knew her as a creature all life and light before her marriage; they +realized that the life and light had passed out of her soon after the boy +came; and thenceforth they saw and heard little of her. She had given +herself up to the insistent possessorship and company of her son. Those +who met her when travelling reported how frail she was and how +constrained. + +Jack was fourteen when his mother died. He was brought home and sent to +school in America; and two-years later Dr. Bennington announced that the +slender youngster, who had been so completely estranged from the affairs +of the store, must matriculate in the ozone of high altitudes instead of +in college, if his life were to be saved. Whether Jack were riding over +the _mesas_ of Arizona or playing in a villa garden in Florence, John +Wingfield, Sr.'s outlook on life was the same. It was the obsession of +self in his affairs. After the eclipse of his egoism the deluge. The very +thought that anyone should succeed him was a shock reminding him of +growing age in the midst of the full possession of his faculties, while +he felt no diminution of his ambition. + +"I am getting better," came the occasional message from that stranger +son. And the father kept on playing the tune of accruing millions on the +push-buttons. His decision to send Dr. Bennington to Arizona came +suddenly, just after he had turned sixty-three. He had had an attack of +grip at the same time that his attention had been acutely called to the +demoralization of another great business institution whose head had died +without issue, leaving his affairs in the hands of trustees. + +Two days of confinement in his room with a high pulse had brought +reflection and the development of atavism. What if the institution built +as a monument to himself should also pass! What if the name of Wingfield, +his name, should no longer float twelve stories high over his building! +He foresaw the promise of companionship of a restless and ghastly +apparition in the future. + +But he recovered rapidly from his illness and his mental processes were +as keen and prehensile as ever. Checking off one against the other, with +customary shrewdness, he had a number of doctors go over him, and all +agreed that he was good for twenty years yet. Twenty years! Why, Jack +would be middle-aged by that time! Twenty years was the difference +between forty-three and sixty-three. Since he was forty-three he had +quintupled his fortune. He would at least double it again. He was not +old; he was young; he was an exceptional man who had taken good care of +himself. The threescore and ten heresy could not apply to him. + +Bennington's telegram irritated him with its lack of precision. Fifteen +hundred dollars and expenses to send an expert to Arizona and in +return this unbusinesslike report: "You will see Jack for yourself. He +is coming." + +In the full enjoyment of health, observing every nice rule for +longevity, his slumber sweet, his appetite good, John Wingfield, Sr. +had less interest in John Wingfield, Jr. than he had when his bones +were aching with the grip. Jack's telegram from Chicago announcing the +train by which he would arrive aroused an old resentment, which dated +far back to Jack's childhood and to a frail woman who had been proof +against her husband's will. + +Did this home-coming mean a son who could learn the business; a strong, +shrewd, cool-headed son? A son who could be such an adjutant as only one +who is of your own flesh and blood can be in the full pursuit of the same +family interest as yourself? If Jack were well, would not Bennington have +said so? Would he not have emphasized it? This was human nature as John +Wingfield, Sr. knew it; human nature which never missed a chance to +ingratiate itself by announcing success in the service of a man of power. + +The spirit of his farewell message to Jack, which said that strength +might return but bade weakness to remain away, and the injured pride of +seeing a presentment of wounded egoism in the features of a sickly boy, +which had kept him from going to Arizona, were again dominant. Yet that +morning he had a pressing sense of distraction. Even Mortimer noticed it +as something unusual and amazing. He kept reverting to Jack's history +between flashes of apprehension and he was angry with himself over his +inability to concentrate his mind. Concentration was his god. He could +turn from lace-buyer to floor-walker with the quickness of the swing of +an electric switch. Concentrate and he was oblivious to everything but +the subject in hand. He was in one of the moments of apprehension, half +staring at the buttons on the desk rather than at the papers, when he +heard the door open without warning and looked up to see a lean, sturdy +height filling the doorway and the light from the window full on a +bronzed and serene face. + +More than ever was Jack like David come over the hills in his incarnation +of sleeping energy. Instead of a sling he carried the rose. Into the +abode of the nicely governed rules of longevity came the atmosphere of +some invasive spirit that would make the stake of life the foam on the +crest of a charge in a splendid moment; the spirit of Señor Don't Care +pausing inquiringly, almost apologetically, as some soldier in dusty +khaki might if he had marched into a study unawares. + +Jack was waiting, waiting and smiling, for his father to speak. In a +swift survey, his features transfixed at first with astonishment, then +glowing with pride, the father half rose from his chair, as if in an +impulse to embrace the prodigal. But he paused. He felt that something +under his control was getting out of his control. He felt that he had +been tricked. The boy must have been well for a long time. Yes! But he +was well! That was the vital point. He was well, and magnificent in +his vigor. + +The father made another movement; and still Jack was waiting, inquiring +yet not advancing. And John Wingfield, Sr. wished that he had gone to +the station; he wished that he had paid a visit to Arizona. This thought +working in his mind supplied Jack's attitude with an aspect which made +the father hesitate and then drop back into his chair, confused and +uncertain for the first time in his own office. + +"Well, Jack, you--you surely do look cured!" he said awkwardly. "You see, +I--I was a little surprised to see you at the office. I sent the +limousine for you, thinking you would want to go straight to the house +and wash off the dust of travel. Didn't you connect?" + +"Yes, thank you, father--and when you didn't meet me--" + +"I--I was very busy. I meant to, but something interrupted--I--" The +father stopped, confounded by his own hesitation. + +"Of course," said Jack. He spoke deferentially, understandingly. "I know +how busy you always are." + +Yet the tone was such to John Wingfield, Sr.'s ears that he eyed Jack +cautiously, sharply, in the expectancy that almost any kind of +undisciplined force might break loose from this muscular giant whom he +was trying to reconcile with the Jack whom he had last seen. + +"I thought I'd stretch my legs, so I came over to the store to see how it +had grown," said Jack. "I don't interrupt--for a moment?" + +He sat down on the chair opposite his father's and laid his faded +cowpuncher hat and the rose on the desk. They looked odd in the company +of the pushbuttons and the pile of papers in that neutral-toned room +which was chilling in its monotony of color. And though Jack was almost +boyishly penitent, in the manner of one who comes before parental +authority after he has been in mischief, still John Wingfield, Sr. +could not escape the dead weight of an impression that he was speaking to +a stranger and not to his own flesh and blood. He wished now that he had +shown affection on Jack's entrance. He had a desire to grip the brown +hand that was on the edge of the desk fingering the rose stem; but the +lateness of the demonstration, its futility in making up for his previous +neglect, and some subtle influence radiating from Jack's person, +restrained him. It was apparent that Jack might sit on in silence +indefinitely; in a desert silence. + +"Well, Jack, I hear you had a ranch," said the father, with a faint +effort at jocularity. + +"Yes, and a great crop of alfalfa," answered Jack, happily. + +"And it seems that all the time you were away you have never used your +allowance, so it has just been piling up for you." + +"I didn't need it. I had quite sufficient from the income of my +mother's estate." + +"Yes--your mother--I had forgotten!" + +"Naturally, I preferred to use that, when I was of so little service to +you unless I got strong, as you said," Jack said, very quietly. + +Now came another silence, the silence of luminous, unsounded depths +concealing that in the mind which has never been spoken or even taken +form. Jack's garden of words had dried up, as his ranch would dry up for +want of water. He rose to go, groping for something that should express +proper contrition for wasted years, but it refused to come. He picked up +the rose and the hat, while the father regarded him with stony wonder +which said: "Are you mine, or are you not? What is the nature of this +new strength? On what will it turn?" + +For Jack's features had set with a strange firmness and his eyes, looking +into his father's, had a steady light. It seemed as if he might stalk out +of the office forever, and nothing could stop him. But suddenly he +flashed his smile; he had looked about searching for a talisman and found +it in the rose, which set his garden of words abloom again. + +"This room is so bare it must be lonely for you," he said. "Wouldn't it +be a good idea to cheer it up a bit? To have this rose in a vase on your +table where you could see it, instead of riding about in an empty +automobile box?" + +"Why, there is a whole cold storage booth full of them down on the first +floor!" said the father. + +"Yes, I saw them in their icy prison under the electric light bulbs. The +beads of water on them were like tears of longing to get out for the joy +of their swan song under a woman's smiles or beside a sick bed," said +Jack, in the glow of real enthusiasm. + +"Good line for the ad writer!" his father exclaimed, instinctively. "You +always did have fanciful ideas, Jack." + +"Yes, I suppose I have!" he said, with some surprise and very +thoughtfully. "I suppose that I was born with them and never weeded +them out." + +"No doubt!" and the father frowned. + +Surveying the broad shoulders before him, he was thinking how nothing but +aimlessness and fantasies and everything out of harmony with the career +to come had been encouraged in the son. But he saw soberness coming into +Jack's eyes and with it the pressure of a certain resoluteness of +purpose. And now Jack spoke again, a trifle sadly, as if guessing his +father's thoughts. + +"It will be a case of weeding for me in the future, won't it?" he asked +wanly, as he rose. "I am full of foolish ideas that are just bound to run +away with me." + +"Jack! Jack!" John Wingfield, Sr. put his hands out to the shoulders +of his son and gripped them strongly, and for a second let his own +weight half rest on that sturdy column which he sensed under the grip. +His pale face, the paleness of the type that never tans, flushed. +"Jack, come!" he said. + +He permitted himself something like real dramatic feeling as he signalled +his son to follow him out of the office and led the way to a corner of +one of the balconies where, under the light from the glass roof of the +great central court, he could see down the tiers of floors to the jewelry +counter which sparkled at the bottom of the well. + +"Look! look!" he exclaimed, rubbing his palms together with a peculiar +crisp sound. "All selling my goods! All built from the little store where +I began as a clerk!" + +"It's--it's immense!" gasped Jack; and he felt a dizziness and confusion +in gazing at this kind of an abyss. + +"And it's only beginning! It's to go on growing and growing! You see why +I wanted you to be strong, Jack; why it would not do to be weak if you +had all this responsibility." + +This was a form of apology for his farewell to Jack, but the message was +the same: He had not wanted a son who should be of his life and heart and +ever his in faults and illnesses. This was the recognizable one of the +shadows between them now recalled. He had wanted a fresh physical machine +into which he could blow the breath of his own masterful being and instil +the cunning of his experience. He saw in this straight, clean-limbed +youth at his side the hope of Jack's babyhood fulfilled, in the +projection of his own ego as a living thing after he himself was gone. + +"And it is to go on growing and growing, in my name and your name--John +Wingfield!" + +Jack was swallowing spasmodically; he moistened his lips; he grasped the +balcony railing so tight that his knuckles were white knobs on the bronze +back of his hand. The father in his enthusiasm hardly noticed this. + +"What couldn't I have done," he added, "if I had had all this to begin +with! All that you will have to begin with!" + +Jack managed a smile, rather thin and wavering. + +"Yes, I am going to try my best." + +"All I ask! You have me for a teacher and I know one or two little +things!" said the father, fairly grinning in the transmission of his +joke. "Now, you must be short on clothes," he added; "so you can get +something ready-made downstairs while you have some making at +Thompson's." + +"Don't you buy your clothes, your best clothes, I mean, in your own +store?" Jack asked. It was his first question in getting acquainted with +his future property. + +"No. We cater to a little bigger class of trade--one of the many twists +of the business," was the answer. "And now we'll meet at dinner, shall +we, and have a good long talk," he concluded, closing the interview and +turning to the door, his mind snapping back to the matter he was about to +take up when he had been interrupted with more eagerness than ever, now +that his egoism thrilled with a still greater purpose. + +"I--I left my hat on your desk," Jack explained, as he followed his +father into the office. + +"Well, you don't want to be carrying packages about," said John +Wingfield, Sr. "That is hardly the fashion in New York, though John +Wingfield's son can make it so if he wants to. I'll have that +flat-brimmed western one sent up to the house and you can fit out with +another when you go downstairs for clothes. That is, I suppose you will +want to keep this as a memento, eh?" and he held out the cowpuncher, +sweeping it with a sardonic glance. + +"No," Jack answered decisively, out of the impulse that came with the +sight of the veteran companion that had shielded him from the sun on +the trail. It was good to have any kind of an impulse after his +giddiness on the balcony at sight of all the phantasmagoria of detail +that he must master. + +If he were to be equal to this future there must be an end of temptation. +He must shake himself free of the last clinging bit of chrysalis of the +old life. His amazed father saw the child of the desert, where convention +is made by your fancy and the supply of water in your canteen, go to the +window and raise the sash. Leaning out, he let the hat drop into +Broadway, with his eyes just over the line of the ledge while he watched +it fall, dipping and gliding, to the feet of a messenger boy, who picked +it up, waved it gleefully aloft before putting it over his cap, and with +mock strides of grandeur went his way. + +"That gave him a lot of pleasure--and a remarkably quick system for +delivering goods, wasn't it?" said Jack, cheerfully. + +"Yes, I should say so!" assented his father, returning to his seat. +"Dinner at seven!" he called before the door closed; and as his finger +sought one of the push-buttons it rested for a moment on the metal edge +of the socket, his head bowed, while an indefinable emotion, mixed of +prophecy and recollection, must have fluttered through the routine +channels of his vigorous mind. + + + + +XXV + +"BUT WITH YOU, 'YES, SIR'" + + +As Jack came out of the office, Mortimer appeared from an adjoining room +in furtive, mouselike curiosity. + +"Not much damage done!" said Jack, in happy relief from the ordeal. "I am +without a hat, but I have the rose." He held it up before Mortimer's +worn, kindly face that had been so genuine in welcome. "Yes, I must have +kept it to decorate you, Peter!" + +Ineffectually, in timorous confusion, the old secretary protested while +Jack fastened it in his buttonhole. + +"And you are going to help me, aren't you, Peter?" Jack went on, +seriously. "You are going to hold up a finger of warning when I get off +the course. I am to be practical, matter-of-fact; there's to be an end to +all fantastic ideas." + +An end to all fantastic ideas! But it was hardly according to the gospel +of the matter-of-fact to take Burleigh, the fitter, out to luncheon. Jack +might excuse himself on the ground that he had not yet begun his +apprenticeship and had several hours of freedom before his first lesson +at dinner. This ecstasy of a recess, perhaps, made him lay aside the +derby, which the clerk said was very becoming, and choose a softer +head-covering with a bit of feather in the band, which the clerk, with +positive enthusiasm, said was still more becoming. At all events, it was +easy on his temples, while the derby was stiff and binding and conducive +to a certain depression of spirits. + +Burleigh, the fitter, was almost as old as Mortimer. He rose to the +exceptional situation, his eyes lighting as he surveyed the form to be +clothed with a professional gratification unsurpassed by that of Dr. +Bennington in plotting Jack's chest with a stethoscope. + +"Yes, sir, we will have that dinner-jacket ready to-night, sir, depend +upon it--and couldn't I show you something in cheviots?" + +Jack broke another precedent. A Wingfield, he decided to patronize +the Wingfield store, because he saw how supremely happy every order +made Burleigh. + +"You can do it as well as Thompson's?" he asked. + +"With you, yes, sir--though Thompson is a great expert on round +shoulders. But with you, yes, sir!" + +When the business of measuring was over, while Burleigh peered triumphant +over the pile of cloths from which the masterpieces were to be fashioned, +Jack said that he had a ripping appetite and he did not see why he and +Burleigh should not appease their hunger in company. Burleigh gasped; +then he grinned in abandoned delight and slipped off his shiny coat and +little tailor's apron that bristled with pins. + +They went to a restaurant of reputation, which Jack said was in keeping +with the occasion when a man changed his habits from Arizona simplicity +to urban multiplicity of courses. And what did Burleigh like? Burleigh +admitted that if he were a plutocrat he would have caviar at least once a +day; and caviar appeared in a little glass cup set in the midst of +cracked ice, flanked by crisp toast. After caviar came other things to +Burleigh's taste. He was having such an awesomely grand feast that he +was tongue-tied; but Jack could never eat in silence until he had +forgotten how to tell stories. So he told Burleigh stories of the trail +and of life in Little Rivers in a way that reflected the desert sunshine +in Burleigh's eyes. Burleigh thought that he would like to live in Little +Rivers. Almost anyone might after hearing Jack's description, in the joy +of its call to himself. + +"Now, if you would trust me," said Burleigh, when they left the +restaurant, "I should like to send out for some cloths not in stock for a +couple of suits. And couldn't I make you up three or four fancy +waistcoats, with a little color in them--the right color to go with the +cloth? You can carry a little color--decidedly, yes." + +"Yes, I rather like color," said Jack, succumbing to temptation, though +he felt that the heir to great responsibilities ought to dress in the +most neutral of tones. + +"And I should like to select the ties to go with the suits and a few +shirts, just to carry out my scheme--a kind of professional triumph for +me, you see. May I?" + +"Go ahead!" said Jack. + +"And you can depend on your evening suit to be up in time. But I am going +to rush a little broader braid on those ready-made trousers--you can +carry that, too," Burleigh concluded. + +When they parted Jack turned into Fifth Avenue. Before he had gone a +block the bulky eminence of a Fifth Avenue stage awakened his +imagination. How could anybody think of confinement in a taxicab when he +might ride in the elephant's howdah of that top platform, enjoying mortal +superiority over surrounding humanity? Jack hung the howdah with silken +streamers and set a mahout's turban on the head of the man on the seat in +front of him, while the glistening semi-oval tops of the limousines +floating in the mist of the rising grade from Madison Square to +Forty-second Street, swarmed and halted in a kind of blind, cramped _pas +de quatre_ from cross street to cross street, amid the breaking surge of +pedestrians. + +"Such a throbbing of machine motion," he thought, "that I don't see +how anybody can have an emotion of his own without bumping into +somebody else's." + +It was a scene of another age and world to him, puzzling, overpowering, +dismal, mocking him with a sense of loneliness that he had never felt on +the desert. Could he ever catch up with this procession which had all the +time been moving on in the five years of his absence? Could he learn to +talk and think in the regulated manner of the traffic rules of +convention? The few chums of his brief home school-days were long away +from the fellowship of academies; they had settled in their grooves, with +established intimacies. If he found his own flock he could claim +admission to the fold only with the golden key of his millions, rather +than by the password of kindred understanding. + +The tripping, finely-clad women, human flower of all the maelstrom of +urban toil, in their detachment seemed only to bring up a visualized +picture of Mary. What would he not like to do for her! He wished that he +could pick up the Waldorf and set it on the other side of the street as +a proof of the overmastering desire that possessed him whenever she was +in his mind. + +And the Doge! He was the wisest man in the world. With a nod of +well-considered and easy generosity Jack presented him with the new +Public Library. And then all the people on the sidewalks vanished and +the buildings melted away into sunswept levels, and the Avenue was a +trail down which Mary came on her pony in the resplendent sufficiency of +his dreams. + +"Great heavens!" he warned himself. "And I am to take my first lesson in +running the business this evening! What perfect lunacy comes from +mistaking the top of a Fifth Avenue stage for a howdah!" + + + + +XXVI + +THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY + + +How thankful he was that the old brick corner mansion in Madison Avenue, +with age alone to recommend its architecture of the seventies--let it +stand for what it was--had not been replaced by one of stone freshly +polished each year! The butler who opened the door was new and stiffer +than the one of the old days; but he saw that the broad hall, with the +stairs running across the rear in their second flight, was little more +changed than the exterior. + +Five years since he had left that hall! He was in the thrall of +anticipation incident to seeing old associations with the eyes of +manhood. The butler made to take his hat, but Jack, oblivious of the +attention, went on to the doorway of the drawing-room, his look centering +on a portrait that faced the door. In this place of honor he saw a +Gainsborough. He uttered a note of pained surprise. + +"There used to be another portrait here. Where is it?" he demanded. + +The butler, who had heard that the son of the house was an invalid, had +not recovered from his astonishment at the appearance of health of the +returned prodigal. + +"Upstairs, sir," he answered. "When Mr. Wingfield got this prize last +year, sir--" + +Though the butler had spoken hardly a dozen words, he became conscious +of something atmospheric that made him stop in the confusion of one +who finds that he has been garrulous with an explanation that does +not explain. + +"Please take this upstairs and bring back the other," said Jack. + +"Yes, sir. You will be going to your room, sir, and while--" The butler +had a feeling of a troublesome future between two masters. + +"Now, please!" said Jack, settling into a chair to wait. + +The Gainsborough countess, with her sweeping plumes, her rich, fleshy, +soft tones, her charming affectation, which gave you, after the art +interest, no more human interest in her than in a draped model, was +carried upstairs and back came the picture that it had displaced. The +frame still bore at the bottom the title "Portrait of a Lady," under +which it had been exhibited at the Salon many years ago. It was by a +young artist, young then, named Sargent. He had the courage of his +method, this youngster, no less than Hals, who also worked his wonders +with little paint when this suited his genius best. The gauze of the gown +where it blended with the background at the edge of the line of arm was +so thin, seemingly made by a single brush-stroke, that it almost showed +the canvas. + +A purpose in that gauze: The thinness of transparency of character! The +eyes of the portrait alone seemed deep. They were lambent and dark, +looking straight ahead inquiringly, yet in the knowledge that no answer +to the Great Riddle could change the course of her steps in the blind +alley of a life whose tenement walls were lighted with her radiance. You +could see through the gown, through the flesh of that frail figure, so +lacking in sensuousness yet so glowing with a quiet fire, to the soul +itself. She seemed of such a delicate, chaste fragility that she could be +shattered by a single harsh touch. There would be no outcry except the +tinkle of the fragments. The feelings of anyone who witnessed the +breaking and heard the tinkle would be a criterion of his place in the +wide margin between nerveless barbarism and sensitive gentility. + +"I give! I give! I give!" was her message. + +For a long time, he had no measure of it, Jack sat studying the portrait, +set clear in many scenes of memory in review. It had been a face as +changeful as the travels, ever full of quick lights and quick shadows. He +had had flashes of it as it was in the portrait in its very triumph of +resignation. He had known it laughing with stories of fancy which she +told him; sympathetic in tutorial illumination as she gave him lessons +and brought out the meaning of a line of poetry or a painting; beset by +the restlessness which meant another period of travel; intense as fire +itself, gripping his hands in hers in a defiance of possession; in moods +when both its sadness and its playfulness said, "I don't care!" and +again, fleeing from his presence to hide her tears. + +It was with the new sight of man's maturity and soberness that he now saw +his mother, feeling the intangible and indestructible feminine majesty of +her; feeling her fragility which had brought forth her living soul in its +beauty and impressionableness as a link with the cause of his Odyssey; +believing that she was rejoicing in his strength and understanding +gloriously that it had only brought him nearer to her. + +After he had been to his room to dress he returned to the same chair and +settled into the same reverie that was sounding depths of his being that +he had never suspected. He was mutely asking her help, asking the support +of her frail, feminine courage for his masculine courage in the battle +before him; and little tremors of nervous determination were running +through him, when he heard his father's footstep and became conscious of +his father's presence in the doorway. + +There was a moment, not of hesitation but of completing a thought, before +he looked up and rose to his feet. In that moment, John Wingfield, Sr. +had his own shock over the change in the room. The muscles of his face +twitched in irritation, as if his wife's very frailty were baffling +invulnerability. Straightening his features into a mask, his eyes still +spoke his emotion in a kind of stare of resentment at the picture. + +Then he saw his son's shoulders rising above his own and looked into +his son's eyes to see them smiling. Long isolated by his power from +clashes of will under the roof of his store or his house, the father +had a sense of the rippling flash of steel blades. A word might start a +havoc of whirling, burning sentences, confusing and stifling as a +desert sandstorm; or it might bring a single killing flash out of +gathering clouds. + +Thus the two were facing each other in a silence oppressive to both, +which neither knew how to break, when relief came in the butler's +announcement of dinner. Indeed, by such small, objective interruptions do +dynamic inner impulses hang that this little thing may have suppressed +the lightnings. + +The father was the first to speak. He hoped that a first day in New York +had brought Jack a good appetite; certainly, he could see that the store +had given him a wonderful fit for a rush order. + + + + +XXVII + +BY RIGHT OF ANCESTRY + + +There were to be no stories of Little Rivers at dinner; no questions +asked about desert life. This chapter of Jack's career was a past rung of +the ladder to John Wingfield, Sr. who was ever looking up to the rungs +above. The magnetism and charm with which he won men to his service now +turned to the immediate problem of his son, whom he was to refashion +according to his ideas. + +"Are you ready to settle down?" he asked, half fearful lest that scene in +the drawing-room might have wrought a change of purpose. + +In answer he was seeing another Jack; a Jack relaxed, amiable, +even amenable. + +"If you have the patience," said Jack. "You know, father, I haven't a +cash-register mind. I'm starting out on a new trail and I am likely to go +lame at times. But I mean to be game." + +He looked very frankly and earnestly into his father's eyes. + +"Wild oats sown! My boy, after all!" thought the father. "Respected his +mother! Well, didn't I respect mine? Of course--and let him! It is good +principles. It is right. He has health; that is better than schooling." + +In place of the shock of the son's will against his, he was feeling it as +a force which might yet act in unison with his. He expanded with the +pride of the fortune-builder. He told how a city within a city is created +and run; of tentacles of investment and enterprise stretching beyond the +store in illimitable ambition; how the ball of success, once it was set +rolling, gathered bulk of its own momentum and ever needed closer +watching to keep it clear of obstacles. + +"And I am to stand on top like a gymnast on a sphere or be rolled under," +thought Jack. "And I'll have cloth of gold breeches and a balancing pole +tipped with jewels; but--but--" + +"A good listener, and that is a lot!" thought the father, happily. + +Jack had interrupted neither with questions nor vagaries. He was gravely +attentive, marveling over this story of a man's labor and triumph. + +"And the way to learn the business is not from talks by me," said his +father, finally. "You cannot begin at the top." + +"No! no!" said Jack, aghast. "The top would be quite too insecure, too +dizzy to start with." + +"Right!" the father exclaimed, decidedly. "You must learn each department +of itself, and then how it works in with the others. It will be drudgery, +but it is best--right at the bottom!" + +"Yes, father, where there is no danger of a fall." + +"You will be put on an apprentice salary of ten dollars a week." + +"And I'll try to earn it." + +"Of course, you understand that the ten is a charge against the store. +That's business. But as for a private allowance, you are John Wingfield's +son and--" + +"I think I have enough of my own for the present," Jack put in. + +"As you wish. But if you need more, say the word. And you shall name the +department where you are to begin. Did you get any idea of which you'd +choose from looking the store over to-day?" + +"That's very considerate of you!" Jack answered. He was relieved and +pleased and made his choice quickly, though he mentioned it half timidly +as if he feared that it might be ridiculous, so uncertain was he about +the rules of apprenticeship. + +"You see I have been used to the open air and I'd like a little time in +which to acclimatize myself in New York. Now, all those big wagons that +bring the goods in and the little wagons that take them out--there is an +out-of-door aspect to the delivery service. Is that an important branch +to learn?" + +"Very--getting the goods to the customer--very!" + +"Then I'll start with that and sort of a roving commission to look over +the other departments." + +"Good! We will consider it settled. And, Jack, every man's labor that you +can save and retain efficiency--that is the trick! Organization and +ideas, that's what makes the employer and so makes success. Why, Jack, if +you could cut down the working costs in the delivery department or +improve the service at the present cost, why--" John Wingfield, Sr. +rubbed the palms of his hands together delightedly. + +Everything was going finely--so far. He added that proviso of _so far_ +instinctively. + +"Besides, Jack," he went on, changing to another subject that was equally +vital to his ego, "this name of Wingfield is something to work for. I was +the son of a poor New England clergyman, but there is family back of it; +good blood, good blood! I was not the first John Wingfield and you shall +not be the last!" + +He rose from the table, bidding the servant to bring the coffee to the +drawing-room. With the same light, quick step that he ascended the +flights in the store, he led the way downstairs, his face alive with the +dramatic anticipation that it had worn when he took Jack out of the +office to look down from the balcony of the court. + +"Ah, we have something besides the store, Jack!" he was saying, in the +very exultation of the pride of possession, as he went to the opposite +side of the mantel from the mother's portrait and turned on the reflector +over a picture. + +Jack saw a buccaneer under the brush of the gold and the shadows of +Spain; a robust, ready figure on fighting edge, who seemed to say, "After +you, sir; and, then, pardon me, but it's your finish, sir!" + +"It's a Velasquez!" Jack exclaimed. + +"And you knew that at a glance!" said his father. + +"Why, yes!" + +"Not many Velasquezes in America," said the father, thinking, +incidentally, that his son would not have to pay the dealers a heavy toll +for an art education, while he revelled in a surprise that he was +evidently holding back. + +"Or many better Velasquezes than this, anywhere," added Jack. "What +mastery! What a gift from heaven that was vouchsafed to a human being to +paint like that!" + +He was in a spell, held no less by the painter's art than by the subject. + +"Absolutely a certified Velasquez, bought from the estate of Count +Galting," continued his father. "I paid a cool two hundred and fifty +thousand for it. And that isn't all, Jack, that isn't all that you are +going to drudge for as an apprentice in the delivery department. I know +what I am talking about. I wasn't fooled by any of the genealogists who +manufacture ancestors. I had it all looked up by four experts, checking +one off against another." + +"Yes," answered Jack, absently. He had hardly heard his father's words. +In fervent scrutiny he was leaning forward, his weight on the ball of the +foot, the attitude of the man in the picture. + +"And who do you think he is--who?" pursued John Wingfield, Sr. + +"A man who fought face to face with the enemy; a man whom men followed! +Velasquez caught all that!" answered Jack. + +"That old fellow was a great man in his day--a great Englishman--and his +name was John Wingfield! He was your ancestor and mine!" + +After a quick breath of awakening comprehension Jack took a step nearer +the portrait, all his faculties in the throe of beaming inquiry of Señor +Don't Care and desert freedom, in the self-same, alert readiness of pose +as the figure he was facing. + +"They say I resemble him!" The father repeated that phrase which he had +used in benignant satisfaction to many a guest, but now seeing with +greedy eyes a likeness between his son and the ancestor deeper than mere +resemblance of feature, he added: "But you--you, Jack, you're the dead +spit of him!" + +"Yes," said Jack, as if he either were not surprised or were too +engrossed to be interested. To the buccaneer's "After you, sir; and, +then, your finish, sir!" he seemed to be saying, in the fully-lived +spirit of imagination: "A good epitaph, sir! I'll see that it is written +on your tombstone!" + +The father, singularly affected by the mutual and enjoyed challenge that +he was witnessing, half expected to see a sword leap out of the scabbard +of the canvas and another from Jack's side. + +"If he had lived in our day," said the father, "he would have built +himself a great place; he would have been the head of a great +institution, just as I am." + +"Two centuries is a long way to fetch a comparison," answered Jack, +hazily, out of a corner of his brain still reserved for conversation, +while all the rest of it was centered elsewhere. "He might have been a +cow-puncher, a revolutionist, or an aviator. Certainly, he would never +have been a camp-follower." + +"At all events, a man of power. It's in the blood!" + +"It's in the blood!" Jack repeated, with a sort of staring, lingering +emphasis. He was hearing Mary's protest on the pass; her final, +mysterious reason for sending him away; her "It's not in the blood!" +There could be no connection between this and the ancestor; yet, in the +stirred depths of his nature, probing the inheritance in his veins, her +hurt cry had come echoing to his ears. + +"Why, I would have paid double the price rather than not have got that +picture!" the father went on. "There is a good deal of talk about family +trees in this town and a strong tendency in some quarters for second +generations of wealth to feel a little superiority over the first +generation. Here I come along with an ancestor eight generations back, +painted by Velasquez. I tell you it was something of a sensation when I +exhibited him in the store!" + +"You--you--" and Jack glanced at his father perplexedly; "you exhibited +him in the store!" he said. + +"Why, yes, as a great Velasquez I had just bought. I didn't advertise him +as my ancestor, of course. Still, the fact got around; yes, the fact got +around, Jack." + +While Jack studied the picture, his father studied Jack, whose face and +whose manner of blissful challenge to all comers in the unconcern of easy +fatality and ready blade seemed to grow more and more like that of the +first John Wingfield. At length, Jack passed over to the other side of +the mantel and turned on the reflector over the portrait of his mother; +and, in turn, standing silently before her all his militancy was gone and +in its place came the dreamy softness with which he would watch the +Eternal Painter cloud-rolling on the horizon. And he was like her not in +features, not in the color of hair or eyes, but in a peculiar +sensitiveness, distinguished no less by a fatalism of its own kind than +was the cheery aggressiveness of the buccaneer. + +"Yes, father," he said, "that old ruffian forebear of ours could swear +and could kill. But he had the virtue of truth. He could not act or live +a lie. And I guess something else--how supremely gentle he could be +before a woman like her. Velasquez brought out a joyous devil and Sargent +brought out a soul!" + +John Wingfield, Sr., who stood by the grate, was drumming nervously on +the mantel. The drumming ceased. The fingers rested rigid and white on +the dark wood. Alive to another manifestation of the lurking force in +his son, he hastened to change the subject. + +"I had almost forgotten that you always had a taste for art, Jack." + +"Yes, from her;" which was hardly changing the subject. + +"As for the first John Wingfield, you may be sure that I wanted to know +everything there was to know about the old fellow," said the father. "So +I set a lot of bookworms looking up the archives of the English and +Spanish governments and digging around in the libraries after material. +Then I had it all put together in proper shape by a literary sharp." + +"You have that!" cried Jack. "You have the framework from which you can +build the whole story of him--the story of how he fought and how +Velasquez came to paint him? Oh, I want to read it!" With an unexplored +land between gilt-tooled covers under his arm he went upstairs early, in +the transport of wanderlust that had sent him away over the sand from +Little Rivers. _Sí, sí_, Firio, outward bound, camp under the stars! If +Señor Don't Care's desert journeys were over--and he had no thought but +that they were--there was no ban on travelling in fancy over sea trails +in the ancestor's company. + +Jack was with the buccaneer when he boarded the enemy at the head of his +men; with him before the Board of Admiralty when, a young captain of +twenty-two, he refused to lie to save his skin; with him when, in answer +to the scolding of Elizabeth, then an old woman, he said: "It is glorious +for one who fought so hard for Your Majesty to have the recognition even +of Your Majesty's chiding in answer to the protest of the Spanish +ambassador," which won Elizabeth's reversal of the Admiralty's decision; +with him when, in a later change of fortune, he went to the court of +Spain for once on a mission which required a sheathed blade; with him +when the dark eye of Velasquez, who painted men and women of his time +while his colleagues were painting Madonnas, glowed with a discoverer's +joy at sight of this fair-haired type of the enemy, whom he led away to +his studio. + +More than once was there mention of the fact that this terrible fighter +was gentle with women and fonder of the company of children than of +statesmen or courtiers. He had married the daughter of a great merchant, +a delicate type of beauty; the last to fascinate a buccaneer, according +to the gossips of the time. Rumor had it that he had taken her for the +wherewithal to pay the enormous debts contracted in his latest exploit. +To disprove this he went to sea in a temper with a frigate and came back +laden with the treasure of half a dozen galleons, to find that his wife +had died at the birth of a son. He promised himself to settle down for +good; but the fog of London choked lungs used to soft airs; he heard the +call of the sun and was away again to seek adventure in the broiling +reaches of the Caribbean. A man of restless, wild spirit, breathing +inconsistencies incomprehensible to the conventions of Whitehall! And his +son had turned a Cromwellian, who, in poverty, sought refuge in America +when Charles II. came to the throne; and from him, in the vicissitudes of +five generations, the poor clergyman was descended. + +Thus ran the tale in its completeness. The end of the ancestor's career +had been in keeping with its character and course. He had been spared +the slow decay of faculties in armchair reminiscence. He had gone down in +his ship without striking his colors, fighting the Spaniards one to +three. When Jack closed the cover on the last page tenderly and in +enraptured understanding, it was past midnight. + +The spaciousness of the sea under clouds of battle smoke had melted into +the spaciousness of the desert under the Eternal Painter's canopy. Then +four walls of a bedroom in Madison Avenue materialized, shutting out the +horizon; a carpet in place of sand formed the floor; and in place of a +blanket roll was a canopied bed upon which a servant had laid out a suit +of pajamas. In the impulse of a desire to look into the face of the first +John Wingfield in the light of all he now knew, Jack went downstairs, and +in the silence of the house drank in the portrait again. + +"You splendid old devil, you!" he breathed, understandingly. "How should +you like to start out delivering goods with me in the morning?" + + + + +XXVIII + +JACK GETS A RAISE + + +The next morning Jack went down town with his father in the limousine. +About an hour later, after he had been introduced to the head of the +delivery division, he was on his way up town beside a driver of one of +the wagons on the Harlem route. He was in the uniform of the Wingfield +light cavalry, having obtained a cap with embroidered initials on the +front. The driver was like to burst from inward mirth, and Jack was +regarding the prospect with veritable juvenile zest. + +At dinner that evening John Wingfield, Jr. narrated his experiences of +the day to John Wingfield, Sr. with the simplicity and verisimilitude +that always make for both realism and true comedy. + +"But, Jack, you took me too literally! It is hardly in keeping with your +position! You--" + +"Why, I thought that the only way to know the whole business was to +play every part. Didn't you ever deliver packages in person in your +early days?" + +"I can't say that I did!" the father admitted wryly. + +"Then it seems to me that you missed one of the most entertaining and +instructive features," Jack continued. "You cannot imagine the majestic +feminine disdain with which you may be informed that a five-cent bar of +soap should be delivered at the back door instead of the front door. The +most indignant example was a red-haired woman who was doing her own work +in a flat. She fairly blazed. She wanted to know if I didn't know what +dumb-waiters were for." + +"And what did you say?" the father asked wearily; for the ninth John +Wingfield had a limited sense of humor. + +"Oh, I try, however irritating the circumstances, to be most courtly, for +the honor of the store," said Jack. "I told her that I was very sorry and +I would speak to you in person about the mistake." + +"You mean that you admitted who you were?" + +"Oh, no! The red-haired woman laughed and took the package in at the +front door," Jack responded. Anybody in Little Rivers would have +understood just how he looked and smiled and why it was that the +red-haired woman laughed. + +"Jack--now, really, Jack, this is not quite dignified!" expostulated the +father. "What do you think your ancestor would say to it?" + +"I suspect that he would have made an even more ingratiating bow to the +lady than I could," said Jack, thoughtfully. "They had the grand manner +better developed in his day than in ours." + +In the ensuing weeks John Wingfield, Sr. dwelt in a kind of infernal +wonder about his son. He was cheered when some friend of his world who +had met Jack in the garb of his caste, as fitted by Burleigh, would say: +"Fine, strapping son you have there, Wingfield!" He was abashed and +dumfounded when Jack announced that he had taken Mamie Devore, who sold +culinary utensils in the basement, out to luncheon with her "steady +company," Joe Mathewson, driver of one of the warehouse trucks. + +"They were a little awed at first," Jack explained, "but they soon +became natural. I don't know anything pleasanter than making people feel +perfectly natural, do you? You see, Joe and Mamie are very real, father, +and most businesslike; an ambitious, upstanding pair. They're going to +have two thousand dollars saved before they marry. + +"'I don't believe that a woman ought to work out after she's married,' +was the way Joe put it. And Mamie, with her eyes fairly devouring him, +snapped back: 'No, she'd have enough to do looking after you, you big +old bluff!' + +"Mamie is a wiry little thing and Joe is a heavyweight, with a hand +almost as big as a baseball mit. That's partly why their practical +romance is so fascinating. Why, it's wonderful the stories that are +playing themselves out in that big store, father! Well, you see Joe is on +a stint--two thousand before he gets Mamie. He had been making money on +the side nights in boxing bouts. But Mamie stopped the fighting. She said +she was not going to have a husband with the tip of his nose driven up +between his eyes like a bull-dog's. And what do you imagine they are +going to do with the two thousand? Buy a farm! Isn't that corking!" + +John Wingfield, Sr. shrugged his shoulders, but did not express his +feelings with any remark. It seemed to him that Jack must have been born +without a sense of proportion. + +With the breaking of spring, when gardens were beginning to sprout, Jack +broadened his study to the trails of Westchester, Long Island, and New +Jersey, coursed by the big automobile vans of the suburban delivery. To +the people of the store, whose streets he traversed at will in +unremitting wonder over its varied activities, he had brought something +of the same sensation that he had to an Arizona town. He came to know the +employees by name, even as he had his neighbors in Little Rivers. He +nodded to the clerks as he passed down an aisle. They watched for his +coming and brightened with his approach and met his smile with their +smiles. In their idle moments he would stop and talk of the desert. + +Although he was learning to like the store as a community of human beings +its business was as the works of a watch, when all he knew was how to +tell the time by the face. But he tried hard to learn; tried until his +head was dizzy with a whirl of dissociated facts, which he knew ought to +be associated, and under the call of his utter restlessness would +disappear altogether for two or three days. + +"Relieving the pressure! It's a safety-valve so I shan't blow up," he +explained to his father, sadly. + +"Take your time," said John Wingfield, Sr., having in mind a recent talk +with Dr. Bennington. + +Jack listened faithfully to his father's clear-cut lessons. He asked +questions which only made his father sigh; for they had little to do with +the economy of working costs. All his suggestions were extravagant; they +would contribute to the joy of the employees, but not to profit. And +other questions made his father frown in devising answers which were in +the nature of explanations. Born of his rambling and humanly observant +relations with every department, they led into the very heart of things +in that mighty organization. There were times when it was hard for him +to control his indignation. There were trails leading to the room with +the glass-paneled door marked "Private" which he half feared to pursue. + +Thus, between father and son remained that indefinable chasm of thought +and habit which filial duty or politeness could not bridge. No stories of +the desert were ever told at home, though it was so easy to tell them to +Burleigh or Mathewson, those contrasts in a pale fitter of clothes and a +herculean rustler of dry-goods boxes. But echoes of the tales came to the +father through his assistants. He had the feeling of some stranger spirit +in his own likeness moving there in the streets of his city under the +talisman of a consanguinity that was nominal. One day he put an inquiry +to the general manager concretely, though in a way to avoid the +appearance of asking another's opinion about his own son. + +"He has your gift of winning men to him. There is no denying his +popularity with the force," said the general manager, who was a diplomat. + +The same question was put to Peter Mortimer. + +"We all love him. I think a lot of people in the store would march out to +the desert after him," said Mortimer, with real rejoicing in his candor +and courage. Indeed, of late he had been developing cheer as well as +courage, imbibing both, perhaps, from the roses in the vase on his +employer's desk. Jack had ordered a fresh bunch put there every day; and +when employees were sick packages of grapes and bunches of flowers came +to them, in Little Rivers fashion, with J.W. on the card, as if they had +come from the head of the firm himself. + +"Maybe Jack will soften the old man a little," ran a whisper from +basement to roof. For the battalions called him "Jack," rather than "Mr. +Wingfield," just as Little Rivers had. + +"The boy's good nature isn't making him too familiar with the employees?" +was a second question which the father had asked both the general manager +and Mortimer. + +"No. That is the surprising thing--the gift of being friendly without +being familiar," answered the manager. + +"He's got a kind of self-respect that induces respect in others," +said Peter. + +John Wingfield, Sr. was the proprietor of the store, but the human world +of the store began to feel a kind of proprietorship in Jack, while its +guardian interest in helping him in his mistakes was common enough to be +a conspiracy. + +And the callouses were gone from his hands. There was no longer a +dividing line between tan and white on his forehead. No outward symbol of +the desert clung to his person except the moments of the far vision of +distances in his eyes. Superficially, on the Avenue he would have been +taken for one of his caste. + +But tossing a cowpuncher hat out of a window into Broadway was easier +than tossing a thing out of mind. He sat up nights to write to Mary. +Letter after letter he poured out as a diary of his experiences in his +new world, letters breathing a pupil's hope of learning and all that +pupil's sorry vagaries. No answer ever came, not even to the most +appealing ones about his most adventurous conflicts with the dinosaur. +He felt the chagrin of the army of unpublished novelists who lay their +hearts bare on the stone slab of the dissectors in a publisher's +office. He might as well have thrown all he wrote into the +waste-basket so far as any result was concerned; yet he kept on +writing as if it were his glorious duty to report to her as his +superior. But he found a more responsive correspondent in Jim Galway; +and this was the letter he received: + +"DEAR JACK: + +"The whole valley is not yet sprouting with dates as you said it would +from your thinking of us. Maybe we didn't use the right seed. Your ranch +is still called Jack's ranch, and Firio is doing his best and about the +best I ever knew in an Indian. But as you always said, Indians are mostly +human, like the rest of us, barring a sort of born twist in their +intellect for which they aren't responsible. You see, Jack, a lot of your +sayings still live with us, though you are gone. + +"Well, Firio keeps your P.D. exercised and won't let anybody but himself +ride him. He says you will need him. For you can't budge the stubborn +little cuss. He declares you're coming back. When we tell him you're +worth twenty millions and he's plumb full of primitive foolishness and +general ignorance of the outside world, he says, '_Sí_, he will come +back!' like some heathen oracle that's strong on repetition and weak on +vocabulary. + +"Of course you know about the new addition to our citizenship, John +Prather, that double of yours that you didn't happen to meet. And I +might mention that by this time, after we've seen so much of him, we +agree with the Doge that he doesn't look a bit like you. Well, he's +making a fine ranch across the road from you, but hiring all his work +done, which ain't exactly according to Little Rivers custom, as you +will remember. The Doge sets a lot by him, though I can't see how +there's much in common between them. This fellow's not full of all that +kind of scholastic persiflage that you are, Jack. He's so all-fired +practical his joints would crack if he wasn't so oily; and he's up to +old man Lefferts' pretty often. + +"He goes to Phoenix a good deal. When I was there the other day I heard +he was circulating around among the politicians in his quiet way, and I +saw him and Pete Leddy hobnobbing together. I didn't like that. But when +I told the Doge of it he said he guessed there wasn't much real +hobnobbing. The Doge is certainly strong for Prather. Another thing I +heard was that, after all, old man Lefferts' two partners aren't dead, +and Prather's been hunting them up. + +"Come to think of it, I didn't tell you that Pete Leddy and some of the +gang have been back in town. Of course we have every confidence in the +Doge, he's been so fair to this community. Still, some of us can't help +having our private suspicions, considering what a lot we have at stake. +And four or five of us was talking the other night, when suddenly we all +agreed how you'd shine in any trouble, and if there was going to be +any--not that there is--we wished you were here. + +"Well, Jack, the pass hasn't changed and the sunsets are just as grand as +ever and the air just as free. The pass won't have changed and the +sunsets will be doing business at the old stand when the antiquaries are +digging up the remote civilization of Little Rivers and putting it in a +high scale because they ran across a pot of Mrs. Galway's jam in the +ruins--the same hifalutin compliment being your own when you were +nursing your wound, as you will remember. + +"Here's wishing you luck from the whole town, way out here in nowhere. + +"As ever yours, + +"James R. Galway. + +"P.S. Belvy Smith wants to know if you won't write just one story. I told +her you were too busy for such nonsense now. But she refuses to believe +it. She says being busy doesn't matter to you. She says the stories just +pop out. So I transmit her request. J.R.G." + +"P.D. waiting!" breathed Jack. "No changing Firio! He is like the pass. I +wonder how Wrath of God and Jag Ear are!" + +He wrote a story for Belvy. He wrote to Firio in resolute assertion that +he would never require the services of P.D. again, when he knew that +Firio, despite the protests, would still keep P.D. fit for the trail. He +wrote to Jim Galway how immersed he was in his new career, but that he +might come for a while--for a little while, with emphasis--if ever Jim +wired that he was needed. + +"That was a good holiday--a regular week-end debauch away from the shop!" +he thought, when the letters were finished. + +Soon after this came an event which, for the first time, gave John +Wingfield, Sr. a revelation of the side of his son that had won Little +Rivers and the interest of the rank and file of the store. Among Jack's +many suggestions, in his aim to carry out his father's talk about the +creative business sense the first night they were together, had been one +for a suburban clubbing delivery system. It had been dismissed as +fantastic, but Jack had asked that it be given a trial and his father had +consented. Its basis was a certain confidence in human nature. Jack and +his father had dined together the evening after the master of the +push-buttons had gone through the final reports of the experiment. + +"Well, Jack, I am going to raise your salary to a hundred a week," the +father announced. + +"On the ground that if you pay me more I might make myself worth more?" +Jack asked respectfully. + +"No, as a matter of business. Whenever any man makes two dollars for the +store, he gets one dollar and I keep the other. That is the basis of my +success--others earning money for me. Your club scheme is a go. As the +accountant works it out, it has brought a profit of two hundred a week." + +"Then I have done something worth while, really?" Jack asked, eagerly, +but half sceptical of such good fortune. + +"Yes. You have created a value. You have used your powers of observation +and your brain. That's the thing that makes a few men employers while the +multitude remains employees." + +"Father! Then I am not quite hopeless?" + +"Hopeless! My son hopeless! No, no! I didn't expect you to learn the +business in a week, or a month, or even a year. Time! time!" + +Nor did John Wingfield, Sr. wish his son to develop too rapidly. Now +that he was so sure of beating threescore and ten, while retaining the +full possession of his faculties, if he followed the rules of longevity, +he would not have welcomed a son who could spring into the saddle at +once. He wanted to ride alone. He who had never shared his power with +anyone! He who had never admitted anyone into even a few shares of +company partnership in his concern! Time! time! The boy would never fall +heir to undivided responsibility before he was forty. John Wingfield, +Sr. was pleased with himself; pleased over a good sign; and he could not +deny that he was pleased at the sudden change in Jack. For he saw Jack's +eyes sparkling into his own; sparkling with comradeship and spontaneous +gratification. Was the boy to be his in thought and purpose, after all? +Yes, of course; yes, inevitably, with the approach of maturity. Gradually +the flightiness of his upbringing would wear off down to the steel, the +hard-tempered, paternal steel. + +"You can scarcely realize what a fight it has been for me until you know +the life I led out in Arizona, getting strong for you and the store," +Jack began. + +"Strong for me! For the store! Yes, Jack!" There was an emphasis on the +subjective personal pronoun--for _him_; for the store! + +The father's face beamed a serene delight. This Jack accepted as the +expression of sympathy and understanding which he had craved. It was to +him an inspiration of fellowship that set the well of his inner being in +overflow and the force of his personality, which the father had felt +uncannily before the mother's picture, became something persuasive in its +radiance rather than something held in leash as a threatening and +volcanic element. Now he could talk as freely and happily of the desert +to his father as to Burleigh and Mathewson. He told of the long rides; +of Firio and Wrath of God. He made the tinkle of Jag Ear's bells heard in +the silence of the dining-room as it was heard in the silences of the +trail. He mentioned how he was afraid to come back after he was strong. + +"Afraid?" queried his father. + +"Yes. But I was coming--coming when, at the top of the pass, I saw Little +Rivers for the first time." + +He sketched his meeting with Mary Ewold; the story of the town and the +story of Jasper Ewold as he knew it, now glancing at his father, now +seeming to see nothing except visualization of the pictures of his story. +The father, looking at the table-cloth, at times playing with his +coffee-spoon, made no comment. + +"And that first night I saw that Jasper Ewold had met me somewhere +before. But--" he went on after going back to the incident of the villa +in his childhood--"that hardly explained. How could he remember the face +of a grown man from the face of a boy? Jasper Ewold! Do you recall ever +having met him? He must have known my mother. Perhaps he knew you, though +why he should not have told me I don't know." + +"Yes, yes--Jasper Ewold," said the father. "I knew him in his younger +days. His was an old family up in Burbridge, the New England town where I +came from. Too much college, too much travel, as I remember, +characterized Jasper Ewold. No settled point of view; and I judge from +what you say that he must have run through his patrimony. One of the ups +and downs of the world, Jack. And he never mentioned that he had met me?" + +"No." + +"Probably a part of that desert notion of freemasonry in keeping pasts a +secret. But why did you stay on after you had recovered from your wound?" +he asked penetratingly, though he was looking again at the bottom of his +coffee-cup. + +"For a reason that comes to a man but once in his life!" Jack answered. + +Had the father looked up--it was a habit of his in listening to any +report to lower his eyes, his face a mask--he might have seen Jack's +face in the supremacy of emotion, as it was when he had called up to +Mary from the canyon and when he had pleaded with her on the pass. But +John Wingfield, Sr. could not mistake the message of a voice vibrating +with all the force of a being let free living over the scene. With the +shadows settling over his eyes, Jack came to her answer and to the +finality of her cry: + +"It's not in the blood!" + +The only sound was a slight tinkle of a spoon against the coffee-cup. +Looking at his father he saw a nervous flutter in his cheeks, his lips +hard set, his brow drawn down; and the rigidity of the profile was such +that Jack was struck by the shiver of a thought that it must have been +like his own as others said it was when he had gripped Pedro Nogales's +arm. But this passed quickly, leaving, however, in its trail an +expression of shock and displeasure. + +"So it was the girl, that kept you--you were in love!" John Wingfield, +Sr. exclaimed, tensely. + +"Yes, I was--I am! You have it, father, the unchangeable all of it! I +face a wall of mystery. 'It's not in the blood!' she said, as if it were +some bar sinister. What could she have meant?" + +In the fever of baffled intensity crying for light and help, he was +sharing the secret that had beset him relentlessly and giving his father +the supreme confidence of his heart. Leaning across the table he grasped +his father's hand, which lay still and unresponsive and singularly cold +for a second. Then John Wingfield, Sr. raised his other hand and patted +the back of Jack's hesitantly, as if uncertain how to deal with this +latest situation that had developed out of his son's old life. Finally he +looked up good-temperedly, deprecatingly. + +"Well, well, Jack, I almost forgot that you are young. It's quite a bad +case!" he said. + +"But what did she mean? Can you guess? I have thought of it so much that +it has meant a thousand wild things!" Jack persisted desperately. + +"Come! come!" the father rallied him. "Time, time!" + +He gripped the hand that was gripping his and swung it free of the table +with a kindly shake. All the effective charm of his personality which he +never wasted, the charm that could develop out of the mask to gain an end +when the period of listening was over, was in play. + +"She excited the opposition of the strength in you," he said. "You ask +what did she mean? It is hard to tell what a woman means, but I judge +that she meant that it was not in her blood to marry a fellow who went +about fighting duels and breaking arms. She would like a more peaceful +sort; and, yes, anything that came into her mind leaped out and you were +mystified by her strange exclamation!" + +"Perhaps. I suppose that may be it. It was just myself, just my devil!" +Jack assented limply. + +"Time! time! All this will pass." + +Jack could not answer that commonplace with one of his own, that it would +not pass; he could only return the pressure when his father, rising and +coming around the table, slipped his arm about the son in a demonstration +of affection which was like opening the gate to a new epoch in their +relations. + +"And you would have killed Leddy! You could have broken that Mexican in +two! I should like to have seen that! So would the ancestor!" said the +father, giving Jack a hug. + +"Yes, but, father, that was the horror of it!" + +"Not the power to do it--no! I mean, Jack, that in this world it is well +to be strong." + +"And you think that I am no longer a weakling?" Jack asked strangely; +"that I carried out your instructions when you sent me away?" + +"Oh, Jack, you remember my farewell remark? It was made in irritation and +suffering. That hurt me. It hurt my pride and all that my work stands +for. It hurt me as much as it hurt you. But if it was a whip, why, then, +it served a purpose, as I wanted it to." + +"Yes, it was a whip!" said Jack, mechanically. + +"Then all ends well--all quits! And, Jack," he swung Jack, who was +unresisting but unresponsive, around facing him, "if you ever have any +doubts or any questions to ask bring them to me, won't you?" + +"Yes." + +"And, Jack, a hundred a week to-morrow! You're all right, Jack!" And he +gave Jack a slap on the back as they left the dining-room. + + + + +XXIX + +A MEETING ON THE AVENUE TRAIL + + +Light sang in the veins and thoughts of a city. Light cleansed the +streets of vapors. Light, the light of the sunshine of late May, made a +far different New York from the New York under a blanket of March mist of +the day of Jack's arrival. The lantern of the Metropolitan tower was all +blazing gold; Diana's scarf trailed behind her in the shimmering abandon +of her _honi soit qui mal y pense_ chases on Olympus; Admiral Farragut +grew urbane, sailing on a smooth sea with victory won; General Sherman in +his over-brightness, guided by his guardian lady, still gallantly pursued +the tone of time in the direction of the old City Hall and Trinity; and +the marble façade of the new library seemed no less at home than under an +Agean sky. An ecstasy, blinding eyes to blemishes, set critical faculties +to rejoicing over perfections. They graciously overlooked the blotch of +red brick hiding the body of St. Patrick's on the way up town in +gratitude for twin spires against the sky. + +Enveloping radiance gilded the sharp lines of skyscrapers and swept away +the shadows in the chasms between them. It pointed the bows of busy tugs +with sprays of diamonds falling on the molten surface of rivers and bays. +It called up paeans of childish trebles from tenement alleys; slipped +into the sickrooms of private houses, delaying the advent of crape on +the door; and played across the rows of beds in the public wards of +hospitals in the primal democracy of the gift of ozone to the earth. + +The milky glass roof of the central court of the Wingfield store acted as +a screen to the omnipotent visitor, but he set unfiltered patches of +delight in the aisles and on the counters near the walls. Mamie Devore +and Burleigh and Peter Mortimer and many other clerks and employees asked +if this were like a desert day and Jack said that it was. He longed to be +free of all roofs and feel the geniality of the hearth-fire of the +planetary system penetrating through his coat, his skin, his flesh, into +his very being. Why not close the store and make a holiday for everybody? +he asked himself; only to be amazed, on second thought, at such a +preposterous suggestion from a hundred-dollar-a-week author of created +profits in the business. He was almost on the point of acting on another +impulse, which was that he and his father break away into the country in +a touring car, not knowing where they were going to stop until hunger +overtook an inn. This, too, he dismissed as a milder form of the same +demoralizing order of heresy, bound to be disturbing to the new filial +relations springing from the night when he had told his desert story over +the coffee, which, contrary to the conventional idea of an exchange of +confidences clearing the mind of a burden, had only provoked more +restlessness. + +At least, he would fare forth for a while on the broad asphalt trail that +begins under the arch of the little park and runs to the entrance of the +great park. Even as the desert has its spell of overawing stillness in an +uninhabited land, so this trail had its spell of congested human +movement in the heart of habitations. A broad, luminous blade lay across +the west side of the street and left the other in shade; and all the +world that loved sunshine and had no errands on the east side kept to the +west side. There was a communism of inspiration abroad. It was a +conqueror's triumph just to be alive and feel the pulse-beat of the +throng. The very over-developed sensitiveness of city nerves became +something to be thankful for in providing the capacity for keener +enjoyment as compensation for the capacity for keener pain. + +Womankind was in spring plumage. The mere consciousness of the value of +light to their costumes, no less than the elixir in their nostrils, gave +vivacity to their features. As usual, Jack was seeing them only to see +Mary. The creation of no _couturier_ could bear rivalry with the garb in +which his imagination clothed her. He found himself suddenly engrossed in +a particular exhibit of fashion's parade a little distance ahead and +going in the same direction as himself, a young woman in a simplicity of +gown to which her carriage gave the final touch of art. Her steps had a +long-limbed freedom and lightness, with which his own steps ran in a +rhythm to the music of some past association. The thrall of a likeness, +which more and more possessed him, made him hasten to draw near for a +more satisfying glimpse. + +The young woman turned her head to glance into a shop-window and then +there could be no mistaking that cheek and chin and the peculiar relation +of the long lashes to the brow. It was the profile whose imprint had +become indelible on his mind when he had come round an elbow of rock on +Galeria. The Jack of wild, tumultuous pleading who had parted from Mary +Ewold on the pass became a Jack elate with the glad, swimming joy of May +sunshine at seeing and speaking to her again. + +"Mary! Mary!" he cried. "My, but you've become a grand swell!" he +breathed delectably, with a fuller vision of her. + +"Jack!" + +There was a nervous twitching of her lips. He saw her eyes at first in a +blaze of surprise and wonder; then change to the baffling sparkle, hiding +their depths, of the slivers of glass on the old barrier. His smile and +hers in unspoken understanding said that two comrades of another trail +had met on the Avenue trail. There had not been any Leddy; there had not +been any scene on the pass. They were back to the conditions of the +protocol he had established when they started out from the porch of the +Ewold bungalow in the airiest possible mood to look at a parcel of land. + +"And you also have become a grand swell!" she said. "Did you expect that +I should be in a gray riding-habit? Certainly I didn't expect to see you +in chaps and spurs." + +It was brittle business; but with a common resource in play they managed +it well. And there they were walking together, noted by passers-by for +their youth and beaming oblivion to everything but themselves. + +"How long have you been here?" Jack asked. + +"Two weeks," she answered. + +Two weeks in the same town and this his first glimpse of her! What a maze +New York was! What a desert waste of two weeks! + +"Yes. Our decision to come was rather abrupt," she explained. "A sudden +call to travel came to father; came to him like an inspiration that he +could not resist. And how happily he has entered into the spirit of the +city again! It has made him young." + +"And it has been quite like martyrdom for you!" Jack put in, teasingly. + +"Terrible! Sackcloth and ashes!" + +"I see you are wearing the sackcloth." + +She laughed outright, with a downward glance at her gown, at once in +guilt and appreciation. + +"Another whim of father's." + +"The Doge a scapegoat for fashion!" + +"Not a scapegoat--a partisan! He insisted on going to one of the best +places. Could I resist? I wanted to see how I felt, how I appeared." + +"The veritable curiosity of a Japanese woman getting her first +foreign gown!" + +"Thank you! That is another excuse." + +"And it certainly looks very well," Jack declared. + +"Do you think so?" Mary flushed slightly. She could not help being +pleased. "After six years, could I drop back into the old chrysalis +naturally, without awkwardness? Did I still know how to wear a fine +gown?"--and the gift for it, as anyone could see, was born in her as +surely as certain gifts were born in Jack. "But," she added, severely, "I +have only two--just two! And the cost of them! It will take the whole +orange crop!" + +Just two, when she ought to have twenty! When he would have liked to put +all the Paris models in the store in a wagon and, himself driving, +deliver them at her door! + +"Having succumbed to temptation, I enjoy it out of sheer respect to +the orange crop," Mary said; "and yes, because I like beautiful +gowns; wickedly, truly like them! And I like the Avenue, just as I +like the desert." + +And all that she liked he could give her! And all that he could give she +had stubbornly refused! + +The liveliness of her expression, the many shades of meaning that she +could set capering with a glance, were now as the personal reflection of +the day and the scene. Their gait was a sauntering one. They went as far +as the Park and started back, as if all the time of the desert were +theirs. They stopped to look into the windows of shops of every kind, +from antiques to millinery. When he saw a hat which he declared, after +deliberate, critical appraisement, would surely become her, she asked +boldly if it were better than the one she wore. + +"I mean an extra hat; that one more hat would have the good fortune of +becoming you!" + +"Almost a real contribution to the literature of compliments!" she +answered, unruffled. + +He thought, too, that she ought to have a certain necklace in a +jeweler's window. + +"To wear over my riding-habit or when I am digging in the flower beds?" +she inquired. + +When they passed a display of luxuries for masculine adornment, she found +a further retort in suggesting that he ought to have a certain giddy +fancy waistcoat. He complimented her on her taste, bought the waistcoat +and, going to the rear of the shop, returned wearing it with a +momentarily appreciated show of jaunty swagger. + +"Why be on the Avenue and not buy?" he queried, enthusing with a new +idea. + +Jim Galway should have a cowpuncher hat as a present. The style of band +was a subject of discussion calling on their discriminative views of +Jim's personal tastes. This led to thoughts of others in Little Rivers +who would appreciate gifts, and to the purchase of toys for the children, +a positive revel. When they were through it was well past noon and they +were in the region of the restaurants. The sun in majestic altitude swept +the breadth of the Avenue. + +"Shall we lunch--yes, and in the Best Swell Place?" he asked, as if it +were a matter-of-course part of the programme, while inwardly he was +stirred with the fear of her refusal. He felt that any minute she might +leave him, with no alternative but another farewell. She hesitated a +moment seriously, then accepted blithely and naturally. + +"Yes, the Best Swell Place--let's! Who isn't entitled to the Best Swell +Place occasionally?" + +After an argument in comparison of famous names, they were convinced that +they had really chosen the Best Swell Place by the fact of a vacant table +at a window looking out over a box hedge. Jack told the waiter that the +assemblage was not an autocracy, but a parliament which, with a full +quorum present, would enjoy in discursive appreciation selections from +the broad range of a bill of fare. + +A luncheon for two narrows a walk on the Avenue, where you are part of a +crowd, into restricted intimacy. He was feeling the intoxication of her +inscrutability, catching gleams of the wealth that lay beyond it, across +the limited breadth of a table-cloth. He forgot about the unspoken +conditions in a sally which was like putting his hand on top of the +barrier for an impetuous leap across. + +"I wrote you stacks of letters," he said, "and you never sent me one +little line; not even 'Yours received and contents noted!'" + +In a flash all intimacy vanished. She might have been at the other end of +the dining-room in somebody else's party nodding to him as to an +acquaintance. Her answer was delayed about as long as it takes to lift an +arrow from a quiver and notch it in a bowstring. + +"A novel may be very interesting, but that does not mean that I write to +the author!" + +He imagined her going through the meal in polite silence or in measured +commonplaces, turning the happy parliament into a frigid Gothic ceremony. +Why had he not kept in mind that sufficient to the hour is the pleasure +of it? Famished for her companionship, a foolhardy impulse of temptation +had risked its loss. The waiter set something before them and softly +withdrew. Jack signaled the unspoken humility of being a disciplined +soldier at attention on his side of the barrier and Mary signaled a +trifle superior but good-natured acceptance of his apology and promise of +better conduct. + +They were back to the truce of nonsense, apostrophizing the cooking of +the Best Swell Place, setting exclamations to their glimpses of people +passing in the street. For they had never wanted for words when talking +across the barrier; there was paucity of conversation only when he +threatened an invasion. + +While a New Yorker meeting a former New Yorker on the desert might have +little to tell not already chronicled in the press, a Little Riversite +meeting a former Little Riversite in New York had a family budget of +news. How high were Jack's hedges? How were the Doge's date-trees? How +was this and that person coming on? Listening to all the details, Jack +felt homesickness creeping over him, and he clung fondly to every one of +the swiftly-passing moments. By no reference and by no inference had she +suggested that there was ever any likelihood of his meeting or hearing +from her again. A thread of old relations had been spun only to be +snapped. She was, indeed, as a visitation developed out of the sunshine +of the Avenue, into which she would dissolve. + +"I was to meet father at a bookstore at three," she said, finally, +as she rose. + +"Inevitably he would be there or in a gallery," said Jack. + +"He has done the galleries. This is the day for buying books--still +more books! I suppose he is spending the orange crop again. If you keep +on spending the same orange crop, just where do you arrive in the maze +of finance?" + +"I should not like to say without consulting the head book-keeper or, at +least, Peter Mortimer!" + +They were coming out of the door of the Best Swell Place, now. A word and +she would be going in one direction and he in another. How easily she +might speak that word, with an electric and final glance of good-will! + +"But I must say howdy do to the Doge!" he urged. "I should like to +see him buying books. What a prodigal debauch of learning! I cannot +miss that!" + +"It is not far," she said, prolonging Paradise for him. + +A few blocks below Forty-second Street they turned into a cross street +which was the same that led to the Wingfield house; and halfway to +Madison Avenue they entered a bookstore. The light from low windows +spreading across the counters blended with the light from high windows at +the back, and here, on a platform at the head of the stairs, before a big +table sat the Doge, in the majesty of a great patron of literature, with +a clerk standing by in deftly-urging attentiveness. Mary and Jack paused +at the foot of the stairs watching him. Gently he was fingering an old +octavo; fingering it as one would who was between the hyperionic desire +of possession and a fear that a bank account owed its solvency to keeping +the amounts of deposits somewhere in proportion to the amount of +withdrawals. + +"No, sir! No more, you tempter!" he declared. "No more, you unctuous +ambassador from the court of Gutenberg! Why, this one would take enough +alfalfa at the present price a ton to bury your store under a haycock as +high as the Roman Pantheon!" + +The Doge rose and picked up his broad-brimmed hat, prepared to fly from +danger. He would not expose himself a moment longer to the wiles of +that clerk. + +"I'll wait for my daughter down there in the safe and economical environs +of the popular novels fresh from the press!" he said. + +Turning to descend the stairs he saw the waiting pair. He stopped stock +still and threw up his hand in a gesture of astonishment. His glance +hovered back and forth between Jack's face and Mary's, and then met +Jack's look with something of the same challenge and confidence of his +farewell on the road out of Little Rivers, and in an outburst of genial +raillery he began the conversation where he had left off with the final +call of his personal good wishes and his salutations to certain landmarks +of New York. + +"Well, well, Sir Chaps! I saw Sorolla in his new style; very different +from the academics of the young Sorolla. He has found his mission and let +himself go. No wonder people flocked to his exhibitions on misty days! +The trouble with our artists is that they are afraid to let themselves +go, afraid to be popular. They think technique is the thing, when it is +only the tool. Why, confound it all! all the great masters were popular +in their day--Venetian, Florentine, Flemish! Confound it, yes! And not +one Velasquez"--evidently he was talking partly to get his bearings after +his shock at seeing Jack--"no, not one Velasquez in the Metropolitan! I +go home without seeing a Velasquez. They have the Catherine Lorillard +Wolfe collection, thousands of square yards of it, and yes, cheer up! +Thank heaven, they have some great Americans, Inness and Martin and Homer +and our exile Whistler, who annexed Japan, and our Sargent, born in +Florence. And I did see the Metropolitan tower. I take off my hat, my +broad-brimmed hat, wishing that it were as big as a carter's umbrella, to +that tower. I hate to think it an accident of chaos like the Grand +Canyon. I rather like to think of it as majestic promise." + +The Doge had talked so fast that he was almost out of breath. He was +ready to yield the floor to Jack. + +"I kissed my hand to Diana for you!" said Jack. "And what do you think? +The lady in answer shook out her scarf and something white and small +fluttered down. I picked it up. It was a note." + +"Did you open that note?" asked the Doge in haughty suspicion. + +"Naturally." + +"Wasn't it marked personal for me?"--this in fine simulation of +indignation. + +"Without address!" + +"I am chagrined and surprised at Diana," said the Doge ruefully. "It's +the effect of city association. As a matter of course, she ought to have +given it to Mercury, or at least to one of the Centaurs, considering all +the horseshows that have been held under her skipping toes! Well, what +did she say? Being a woman of action she was brief. What did she say?" + +"It was in the nature of a general personal complaint. Her costume is in +need of repair; it is flaking disgracefully. She said that if you had not +forsaken your love of the plastic for love of the graphic arts you would +long ago have stolen a little gold off the Eternal Painter's palette, +just to clothe her decently for the sake of her own self-respect--the +town having set her so high that its sense of propriety was quite safe." + +"I stand convicted of neglect," said the Doge, coming down to the floor +of the store. "I will shoot her a bundle of gold leaf from the top of the +pass on a ray of evening sunshine." + +There, he gave Jack a pat on the shoulder; a hasty, playful, almost +affectionate demonstration, and broke off with a shout of: + +"Persiflage, sir, persiflage!" + +"It is manna to me!" declared Jack, in the fulness and sweetness of the +sensation of the atmosphere of Little Rivers reproduced in New York. + +"And not a Velasquez in the Metropolitan!" mused the Doge, bustling along +the aisle hurriedly. "Well, Mary, we have errands to do. There is no time +to spare." + +They were at the door, Jack in wistful insistence, hungry for their +companionship, and the Doge and Mary in common hesitancy for a phrase +before parting from him. He was ahead of the phrase. + +"But there is a Velasquez, one of the greatest of Velasquezes, just a few +steps from here! It would take only a minute to see it." + +"A Velasquez a few steps from here!" cried the Doge. "Where? Be exact, +before I let my hopes rise too high." + +"The subject is an ancestor of mine. My father has it." + +Jack had looked in the direction of the Wingfield house on the Madison +Avenue corner as he spoke, and the Doge had followed his glance. The +eagerness passed from the Doge's face, but not its intensity. That was +transmuted into something staring and hard. + +"A very great Velasquez!" Jack repeated. + +"My _amour propre_!" the Doge said, in whispered abstraction, using the +French which so exactly expresses the rightness of an inner feeling that +will not let one do a thing however much he may wish to. Then a wave of +confusion passed over his face, evidently at the echo of his thoughts in +the form of words come unwittingly from his lips. He tried to retrieve +his exclamation in an effort at the forensic: "The _amour propre_ of any +American is hurt by the thought that he must go to a private gallery to +see a Velasquez in the greatest city of the land!" + +But it was a lame explanation. Clearly, some old antipathy had been +aroused in Jasper Ewold; and it made him hesitate to enter the big red +brick house on the corner. + +"And we have a wonderful Sargent, too, a Sargent of my mother!" Jack +proceeded. + +"Yes, yes!" said the Doge, and eagerness returned; a strange, moving +eagerness that seemed to come from the same depths as the exclamation +that had arrested his acceptance of the invitation at the outset. It held +the monosyllables like drops of water trembling before they fell. + +"I should like you to see them both," said Jack. + +"Yes," said the Doge, the word an echo rather than consent. + +"There is no one at home at this hour; you will have all the time you can +spare for the pictures." + +In the ascendency of his ardor to retain the joy of their company and in +the perplexity of mystery injected afresh into his relations with Mary, +Jack was hardly conscious that his urging was only another way of saying +that his father was absent. And Mary had not thrown her influence either +for or against going. She was watching her father, curiously and +penetratingly, as if trying to understand the source of the emotion that +he was seeking to control. + +"Why, in that case," exclaimed the Doge, "why, you see," he went on to +explain, "we desert folk, though we are used to galleries, are a little +diffident about meeting people who live in big mansions. I mean, people +who have not had the desert training that you have had, Sir Chaps. If it +is only a matter of looking at a picture without any social +responsibilities, and that picture a Velasquez, why, we must take the +time, mustn't we, Mary?" + +"Yes," Mary assented. + +With Mary on one side of him and Jack on the other, the Doge was walking +heavily and slowly. + +"At what period of Velasquez's career?" he asked, vacantly. + +"When he was young and the subject was middle-aged, a Northerner, with +fair hair and lean muscles under a skin bronzed by the tropics, and the +unquenchable fire of youth in his eyes." + +"That ought to be a good Velasquez," said the Doge. + +At the bottom step of the flight up to the entrance to the house he +hesitated. He appeared to be very old and very tired. His face had gone +quite pale. The lids hung heavily over his eyes. Jack dropped back in +alarm to assist him; but his color quickly returned and the old challenge +was in his glance as it met Jack's. + +"Now for your Velasquez!" he exclaimed, with calm vigor. + +Once in the hall, Jack stood to one side of the door of the drawing-room +to let the Doge enter first. As the old man crossed the threshold his +hands were clasped behind him; his shoulders had fallen together, not in +weariness now, but in a kind of dazed, studious expectancy; and he faced +the "Portrait of a Lady." + +"This is the Sargent," he said slowly, his lips barely opening in +mechanical and absent comment. "A good Sargent!" + +He was as still as the picture in his bowed and earnest gaze into her +eyes, except for an occasional nervous movement of the fingers. All the +surroundings seemed to melt into a neutral background for the two; there +was nothing else in the room but the scholar in his age and the "Portrait +of a Lady" in her youth. Jack saw the Doge's face, its many lines +expressive as through a mist of time, its hills and valleys in the sun +and the shadow of emotions as variable as the mother's in life, speaking +personal resentment and wrong, admiration and tenderness, grievous +inquiry and philosophy, while the only answer was the radiant, "I give! I +give!" Finally, the Doge tightened the clasp of his hands, with a quiver +of his frame, as he turned toward Jack. + +"Yes, a really great Sargent--a Sargent of supreme inspiration!" he said. +"Now for your Velasquez!" + +Before the portrait of the first John Wingfield, Jasper Ewold's head and +shoulders recovered their sturdiness of outline and his features lighted +with the veritable touch of the brush of genius itself. He was the +connoisseur who understands, whose joy of possession is in the very +tingling depths of born instinct, rich with training and ripened by time. +It was superior to any bought title of ownership. In the presence of a +supreme standard, every shade of discriminative criticism and appraisal +became threads woven into a fabric of rapture. + +"Mary," he said, his voice having the mellowness of age in its deep +appreciation, "Mary, wherever you saw this--skied or put in a corner +among a thousand other pictures, in a warehouse, a Quaker meetinghouse, +anywhere, whatever its surroundings--should you feel its compelling +power? Should you pause, incapable of analysis, in a spell of tribute?" + +"Yes, I don't think I am quite so insensible as not to realize the +greatness of this portrait, or that of the Sargent, either," she +answered. + +"Good! I am glad, Mary, very glad. You do me credit!" + +Now he turned from the artist to the subject. He divined the kind of man +the first John Wingfield was; divined it almost as written in the +chronicle which Jack kept in his room in hallowed fraternity. Only he +bore hard on the unremitting, callous, impulsive aggressiveness of a +fierce past age, with its survival of the fittest swordsmen and +buccaneers, which had no heroes for him except the painters, poets, and +thinkers it gave to posterity. + +"Fire-eating old devil! And the best thing he ever did, the best luck he +ever had, was attracting the attention of a young artist. It's +immortality just to be painted by Velasquez; the only immortality many a +famous man of the time will ever know!" + +He looked away from the picture to Jack's face keenly and back at the +picture and back at Jack and back at the picture once more. + +"Yes, yes!" he mused, corroboratively; and Jack realized that at the same +time Mary had been making the same comparison. + +"Very like!" she said, with that impersonal exactness which to him was +always the most exasperating of her phases. + +Then the Doge returned to the Sargent. He was standing nearer the +picture, but in the same position as before, while Jack and Mary waited +silently on his pleasure; and all three were as motionless as the +furniture, had it not been for the nervous twitching of the Doge's +fingers. He seemed unconscious of the passing of time; a man in a maze of +absorption with his thoughts. Jack was strangely affected. His brain was +marking time at the double-quick of fruitless energy. He felt the +atmosphere of the room surcharged with the hostility of the unknown. He +was gathering a multitude of impressions which only contributed more +chaos to chaos. His sensibilities abnormally alive to every sound, he +heard the outside door opened with a latch-key; he heard steps in the +hall, and saw his father's figure in the doorway of the drawing-room. + +John Wingfield, Sr. appeared with a smile that was gone in a flash. +His face went stark and gray as stone under a frown from the Doge to +Jack; and with an exclamation of the half-articulate "Oh!" of +confusion, he withdrew. + +Jack looked around to see the Doge half turned in the direction of the +door, gripping the back of a chair to steady himself, while Mary was +regarding this sudden change in him in answer to the stricken change in +the intruder with some of Jack's own paralysis of wonder. The Doge was +the first to speak. He fairly rocked the chair as he jerked his hand free +of its support, while he shook with a palsy which was not that of fear, +for there was raging color in his cheeks. The physical power of his great +figure was revealed. For the first time Jack was able to think of him as +capable of towering militancy. His anger gradually yielded to the +pressure of will and the situation. At length he said faintly, with a +kind of abyssmal courtesy: + +"Thank you, Sir Chaps! Now I shall not go back to the desert without +having seen a Velasquez. Thank you! And we must be going." + +Jack had an impulse, worthy of the tempestuous buccaneer of the picture, +to call to his father to come down; and then to bar the front door until +his burning questions were heard. The still light in Mary's eyes would +have checked him, if not his own proper second thought and the fear of +precipitating an ungovernable crisis. There had been shadows, real +shadows, he was thinking wildly; they were not born of desert imaginings; +and out of the quandary of his anguish came only the desire not to part +from the Doge and Mary in this fashion! No, not until in some way +equilibrium of mind was restored. + +Though he knew that they did not expect or want his company, he went +out into the street with them. He would go as far as their hotel, he +remarked, in the bravery of simulated ease. The three were walking in +the same relative positions that they had before, with the Doge's bulk +hiding Mary from Jack's sight. The Doge set a rapid pace, as if under +the impetus of a desire to escape from the neighborhood of the +Wingfield house. + +"Well, Sir Chaps," he said, after a while, "it will be a long time before +the provincials come to New York again. Why, in this New York you can +spend a patrimony in two weeks"--this with an affected amusement at his +own extravagance--"and I've pretty nearly done it. So we fly from +temptation. Yes, Mary, we will take the morning train." + +"The morning train!" Mary exclaimed; and her surprise left no doubt that +her father's decision was new to her. Was it due to an exchange of +glances between a stark face and a face crimson with indignation which +Jack had already connected with the working out of his own destiny? + +"Yes, that is better than spending our orange crop again!" she hastened +to add, with reassuring humor. "I'm fairly homesick for our oasis." + +"We've had our fill of the big city," said the Doge, feelingly, "and we +are away to our little city of peace where we turned our pasts under with +the first furrows in the virgin soil." + +Then silence. The truce of nonsense was dead. Persiflage was dead. Jack +was as a mute stranger keeping at their side unasked, while the only +glimpse he had of Mary was the edge of her hat and her fingertips on her +father's sleeve. Silence, which he felt was as hard for them as for him, +lasted until they were at the entrance to the quiet little hotel on a +cross-town street where the Ewolds were staying; and having the first +glimpse of Mary's eyes since they had started, he found nothing +fathomable in them except unmistakable relief that the walk was over. + +"Thank you for showing me the Velasquez," said the Doge. + +"Thank you, Jack," Mary added. + +Both spoke in a manner that signaled to him the end of all things, but an +end which he could not accept. + +"I--I--oh, there are a thousand questions I--" he broke out, desperately. + +The muscles of his face tightened. Unconsciously he had leaned forward +toward the Doge in his intensity, and his attitude had become that of the +Wingfield of the portrait. A lower note of command ran through the +misery of his tone. + +Jasper Ewold stared at him in a second of scrutiny, at once burningly +analytic and reflective. Then he flushed as he had at sight of the figure +in the drawing-room doorway. His look plainly said: "How much longer do +you mean to harass me?" as if Jack's features were now no less the image +of a hard and bitter memory than those of John Wingfield, Sr. Jack drew +back hurt and dumb, in face of this anger turned on himself. At length, +the Doge mustered his rallying smile, which was that of a man who carries +into his declining years a burden of disappointments which he fears may, +in his bad moments, get the better of his personal system of philosophy. + +"Come, Mary!" he said, drawing his arm through hers. He became, in an +evident effort, a grand, old-fashioned gentleman, making a bow of +farewell. "Come, Mary, it's an early train and we have our packing +yet to do." + +This time it was, indeed, dismissal; such a dismissal with polite urgency +as a venerable cabinet minister might give an importunate caller who is +slow to go. He and Mary started into the hotel. But he halted in the +doorway to say over his shoulder, with something of his old-time cheer, +which had the same element of pity as his leave-taking on the trail +outside of Little Rivers: + +"Luck, Sir Chaps!" + +"Luck!" Mary called in the same strained tone that she had called to Jack +when he went over the pass on his way to New York, the tone that was like +the click of a key in the lock of a gate. + + + + +XXX + +WITH THE PHANTOMS + + +As Jack left the hotel entrance he was walking in the treadmill mechanics +of a prisoner pacing a cell, without note of his surroundings, except of +dim, moving figures with which he must avoid collision. The phantoms of +his boyhood, bulky and stiflingly near, had a monstrous reality, yet the +ghostly intangibility that mocked his sword-thrusts of tortured inquiry. +At length his distraction centered on the fact that he and his father +were to dine alone that evening. + +They dined alone regularly every Wednesday, when Jack made a report of +his progress and received a lesson in business. It was at the last +council of this kind that John Wingfield, Sr. had bidden his son to +bring all questions and doubts to him. Now Jack hailed the weekly +function as having all the promise of relief of a surgeon's knife. Fully +and candidly he would unburden himself of every question beating in his +brain and every doubt assailing his spirit. + +By the time that he was mounting the steps of the house his growing +impatience could no longer bear even the delay of waiting on dinner. When +he entered the hall he was the driven creature of an impelling desire +that must be satisfied immediately. + +"Will you ask my father if he will see me at once?" he said to the +butler. + +"Mr. Wingfield left word that he had to go into the country for the +night," answered the butler. "I am sorry, sir," he added confusedly, in +view of the blank disappointment with which the information was received. + +In dreary state Jack dined by himself in the big dining-room, leaving the +food almost untouched. At intervals he was roused to a sense of his +presence at table by the servant's question if he should bring another +course. Without waiting for the last one, he went downstairs to the +drawing-room, and standing near the "Portrait of a Lady," again poured +out his questions, receiving the old answer of "I give! I give!" which +meant, he knew, that she had given all of herself to him. Saying after +saying of hers raced through his mind without throwing light on the +mystery, which had the uncanniness of a conspiracy against him. + +And after his mother, Mary had influenced him more than any other person. +She had brought life to the seeds which his mother had planted in his +nature. That new life could not die, but without her it could not +flourish. Her cry of "It's not in the blood!" again came echoing to his +ears. What had she meant? The question sent him to the Ewolds' hotel; it +sent this note up to her room: + +"MARY: + +"In behalf of old desert comradeship, if I were in trouble wouldn't you +help me all you could? If I were in darkness and you could give me light, +would you refuse? Won't you see me for a few moments, if I promise to +keep to my side of the barrier which you have raised between us? I will +wait here in the lobby a long time, hoping that you will. + +"JACK." + +"All the light I have to give. I also am in darkness," came the answer in +a nervous, impulsive hand across a sheet of paper; and soon Mary herself +appeared from the elevator, not in the fashion of the Avenue, but in +simple gray coat and skirt, such as she wore at home. She greeted him in +a startled, half-fearful manner, as if her presence were due to the +impulsion of duty rather than choice. + +"Shall we walk?" she asked, turning toward the door in the welcome of +movement as a steadying influence in her evident emotion. + +There they were in the old rhythm of step of Little Rivers companionship +on a cross-town street. He saw that the costly hat that he had selected +for her in the display of a shop-window after all was not the equal of +the plain model with a fetching turn to the brim and a single militant +feather, which she wore that evening. The light feather boa around her +neck on account of the cool night air seemed particularly becoming. He +was near, very near, her, so near that their elbows touched; but the +nearness was like that of a picture out of a frame which has come to life +and may step back into cold canvas at any moment. Oh, it was hard, in the +might of his love for her, not to forget everything else and cry out +another declaration, as he had from the canyon! But her face was very +still. She was waiting for him to begin, while her fingers were playing +nervously with the tip of her boa. + +"I must be frank, very frank," he said. + +"Yes, Jack, or why speak at all?" + +"From the night of my arrival in Little Rivers, when the Doge at once +recognized who I was without telling me, I saw that, under his politeness +and his kindness, he was hostile to my presence in Little Rivers." + +"Yes, I think that in a way he was," she answered. + +"I was conscious that something out of the past was between him and me, +and that it included you in a subtle influence that nothing could change. +And this afternoon, while you were at the house and my father came to the +drawing-room door, I could not help noticing how the Doge was overcome. +You noticed it, too?" + +"Yes, I never saw my father in such anger before. It seemed to me that +he could have struck down that man in the doorway!" There was a +perceptible shudder, but she did not look up, her glance remaining level +with the flags. + +"And on the pass you said, 'It's not in the blood!'" he continued. "Yes, +almost in terror you said it, as if it spelled an impassable gulf between +us. Why? why? Mary, haven't I a right to know?" + +As he broke off passionately with this appeal, which was as the focus of +all the fears that had tormented him, they were immediately under the +light of a street lamp. She turned her head toward him resolutely, in the +mustering of her forces for an ordeal. Her face was pale, but there was +an effort at the old smile of comradeship. + +"Yes, as I said, the little light that I have is yours, Jack," she began. +"But there is not much. It is, perhaps, more what I feel than what I +know that has influenced me. All that my father has ever said about you +and your father and your relations to us was the night after I returned +from the pass ahead of you, when you had descended into the canyon to +frighten me with the risk you were taking." + +"I did not mean to frighten you!" he interjected. "I only followed +an impulse." + +"Yes, one of your impulses, Jack," she remarked, comprehendingly. "Father +and I have been so much together--indeed, we have never been apart--that +there is more than filial sympathy of feeling between us. There is +something akin to telepathy. We often divine each other's thoughts. I +think that he understood what had taken place between us on the pass; +that you had brought on some sort of a crisis in our relations. It was +then that he told me who you were, as you know. Then he talked of you and +your father--you still wish to hear?" + +"Yes!" + +"And you will listen in silence?" + +"Yes!" + +"I will grant your defence of your father, but you will not argue? I am +giving what you ask, in justice to myself; I am giving my reasons, my +feelings." + +"No, I will not argue." + +Their tones were so low that a passer-by would have hardly been conscious +that they were talking; but had the passer-by caught the pitch he might +have hazarded many guesses, every one serious. + +"Then, I will try to make clear all that father said. You were the image +of your father--a smile and a square chin. The smile could charm and the +chin could kill. He liked you for some things that seemed to spring from +another source, as he called it; but these would vanish and in the end +you would be like your father, as he knew when he saw you break Pedro +Nogales's arm. And you gloried in your strength; as you told me on the +pass and as I saw for myself in the duel. And to you, father said, +victory was the supreme guerdon of life. It ran triumphant and +inextinguishable in your veins." + +"I--" he said, chokingly; but remembered his promise not to argue. + +"Any opposition, any refusal excited your will to overcome it in the +sheer joy of the exercise of your strength. This had been your father's +story in everything, even in his marriage." + +She paused. + +"There is nothing more? No further light on his old relations with my +father and mother?" he asked. + +"Only a single exclamation, 'It's not in the blood for you to believe in +Jack Wingfield, Mary!' And after that he turned silent and moody. I +pressed him for reasons. He answered that he had told me enough. I had to +live my own life; the rest I must decide for myself. I knew that I was +hurting him sorely. I was striking home into that past about which he +would never speak, though I know it still causes him many days of +suffering." + +"But on the desert there is no past!" Jack exclaimed. + +"Yes, there is, Jack. There is your own heart. On the desert your past is +not shared with others. But to-night, after I received your note, I did +try, for the second time in my life, to share father's. I told him your +request; I spoke of the scene in your drawing-room; I asked him what it +meant. He answered that you must learn from one nearer you than he was, +and that he never wanted to think of that scene again." + +It was she who had chosen the direction at the street corners. They were +returning now toward the hotel. The fingers which had been playing with +the boa had crumpled the end of it into a ball, which they were gripping +so tightly that the knuckles were little white spots set in a blood-red +background. She was suffering, but determined to leave nothing unsaid. + +"Jack, when I said 'It's not in the blood' I was more than repeating my +father's words. They expressed a truth for me. I meant not only rebellion +against what was in you, but against the thing that was in me. Why, Jack, +I do not even remember my own mother! I have only heard father speak of +her sadly when I was much younger. Of late years he has not mentioned +her. He and the desert and the garden are all I have and all I know; and +probably, yes--probably I'm a strange sort of being. But what I am, I am; +and to that I will be true. Father went to the desert to save my life; +and broken-hearted, old, he is greater to me than the sum of any worldly +success. And, Jack, you forget--riding over the pass so grandly with your +impulses, as if to want a thing is to get it--you--but we have had good +times together; and, as I said, you belong on one side of the pass and I +on the other. This and much else, which one cannot see or define, is +between us. From the day you came, some forbidding influence seemed at +work in my father's life and mine; and when you had gone another man, +with your features and your smile, came to Little Rivers; one that I +understand even less than you!" + +Jack recalled the references to the new rancher by Bob Worther on the day +of his departure for the East and, later, in Jim Galway's letter. But he +did not speak. Something more compelling than his promise was keeping him +silent: her own apprehension, with its story of phantoms of her own. + +"And yesterday I saw your father's face," she went on, "as it appeared in +the doorway for a second before he saw my father and was struck with +fear, and how like yours it was--but more like John Prather's. And the +high-sounding preachments about the poverty that might go with fine gowns +became real to me. They were not banal at all. They were simple truth, +free of rhetoric and pretence. I knew that my cry of 'It's not in the +blood' was as true in me as any impulse of yours ever could be in you!" + +To the end, under the dominance of her will, she had not faltered; and +with the end she looked up with a faint smile of stoicism and an +invincible flame in her eyes. Anything that he might be able to say would +be as flashing a blade in and out of a blaze. She had become superior to +the resources of barrier or armor, confident of a self whose richness he +realized anew. He saw and felt the tempered fineness of her as something +that would mind neither siege nor prayer. + +"I am not afraid," she said, "and I know that you are not. It is all +right!" Then she added, with a desperate coolness, but still clasping the +boa rigidly: "The hotel is only a block away, and to-morrow you will be +back in the store and I shall soon be on my side of the pass." + +This was her right word for a situation when his temples were throbbing, +harking back, with time's reversal of conditions, to a situation after +the duel in the _arroyo_ was over and he had used the right word when her +temples were throbbing and her hands splashed. If retribution were her +object, she had repaid in nerve-twitch of torture for nerve-twitch of +torture. The picture that had been alive and out of its frame was back on +cold canvas. Even the girl he had known across the barrier, even the girl +in armor, seemed more kindly. But one can talk, even to a picture in a +frame; at least, Jack could, with wistful persistence. + +"You don't mind if I tell you again--if I speak my one continuous thought +aloud again?" he asked. "Mary, I love you! I love you in such a way that +I"--with a faint bravery of humor as he saw danger signals--"I would +build mud-houses all day for you to knock to pieces!" + +"Foolish business, Jack!" she answered. + +"Or drag a plow." + +"Very hard work!" + +"Or set out to tunnel a mountain single-handed, with hammer and chisel." + +"I think you would find it dreadfully monotonous at the end of the +first week." + +He had spoken his extravagances without winning a glance from her. She +had answered with a precision that was more trying than silence. + +"_I_ shouldn't find it so if you were in the neighborhood to welcome +me when I knocked off for the day," he declared. "You see, I can't +help it. I can't help what is in me, just as surely as the breath of +life is in me." + +"Jack!" she flashed back, with arresting sharpness, but without looking +around, while her step quickened perceptibly, "suppose I say that I am +sorry and I, too, cannot help it; that I, too, have temperament, as well +as you;" her tone was almost harsh; "that even you cannot have everything +you command; that for you to want a thing does not mean that I want it; +that I cannot help the fact that I do not--" + +With a quick interruption he stayed the end of the sentence, as if it +were a descending blade. + +"Don't say that!" he implored. "It is too much like taking a vow that +might make you fearfully stubborn in order to live up to it. Perhaps the +thing will come some day. It's wonderful how such a thing does come. You +see, I speak from experience," he went on, in wan insistence, with the +entrance to the hotel in sight. "Why, it is there before you realize it, +like the morning sunshine in a room while you are yet asleep. And you +open your eyes and there is the joyous wonder, settling itself all +through you and making itself at home forever. You know for the first +time that you are alive. You know for the first time that you were born +into this world merely because one other person was born into it." + +"Very well said," she conceded, in hasty approval, without vouchsafing +him a glance. "I begin to think you get more inspiration for compliments +on this side of the pass than on the other,"--and they were at the hotel +door. Precipitately she hastened through it, as if with her last display +of strength after the exhaustion of that walk. + + + + +XXXI + +PRATHER WOULD NOT WAIT + + +When he returned to the house, Jack found a letter that had come in the +late mail from Jim Galway: + +"First off, that story you sent for Belvy," Jim wrote. "We've heard it +read and reread, and the more it's worn with reading the fresher it gets +in our minds. As I size up the effect on the population, we folks in the +forties and fifties got more fun out of it than anybody except the folks +in the seventies and the five-to-twelve-year-olds. Some of the thirteen +and fourteen-year-olds were inclined to think at first that it wasn't +quite grown up enough for them, until they saw what fashionable +literature it was becoming. Then their dignified maturity limbered up a +little. Jack, it certainly did us a world of good. It seemed as if you +were back home again." + +"Back home again!" Jack repeated, joyously; and then shook his head at +himself in solemn warning. + +"And those of us that don't take our meat without salt sort of needed +cheering up," Jim went on. "Only a few days after I wrote you, the Doge +and Mary suddenly started for New York. Maybe he has looked you up." (The +"maybe" followed an "of course," which had been scratched through.) "And +maybe if he has you know more about what is going on here than we do. We +practically don't know anything; but I've sure got a feeling of that +uncertainty in the atmosphere that I used to have before a cyclone when I +lived in Kansas. This Prather, that so many thought at first looked like +you, has also gone to New York. + +"He left only two days ago. Maybe you will run across him. I don't know, +but it seems to me he's gone to get the powder for some kind of a blow-up +here. Jack, you know what would happen if we lost our water rights and +you know what I wrote you in my last letter. Leddy and Ropey Smith are +hanging around all the time, and since the Doge went a whole lot of +fellows that don't belong to the honey-bee class have been turning up and +putting up their tents out on the outskirts, like they expected something +to happen. If things get worse and I've got something to go on and we +need you, I'm going to telegraph just as I said I would; because, Jack, +though you're worth a lot of millions, someway we feel you're one of us. + +"Very truly yours for Little Rivers, + +"JAMES R. GALWAY. + +"P.S.--Belvy said to put in P.S. because P.S.'s are always the most +important part of a letter. She wants to know if you won't write +another story." + +"I will!" said Jack. "I will, immediately!" + +He made it a long story. He took a deal of pains with it in the very +relief of something to do when sleep was impossible and he must count the +moments in wretched impatience until his interview with the one person +who could answer his questions. + +As he went down town in the morning the very freshness of the air +inspired him with the hope that he should come out of his father's office +with every phantom reduced to a figment of imagination springing from the +abnormality of his life-story; with a message that should allay Mary's +fears and soften her harshness toward him; with the certainty that the +next time he and his father sat together at dinner it would be in a +permanent understanding, craved of affection. Mary might come to New +York; the Doge might spend his declining years in leisurely patronage of +bookshops and galleries; and he would learn how to run the business, +though his head split, as became a simple, normal son. + +These eddying thoughts on the surface of his mind, however, could not +free him of a consciousness of a deep, unsounded current that seemed to +be the irresistible, moving power of Mary's future, the store's, his +fathers, Jasper Ewold's and his own. With it he was going into a gorge, +over a cataract, or out into pleasant valleys, he knew not which. He knew +nothing except that there was no stopping the flood of the current which +had its source in streams already flowing before he was born. When the +last question had been asked his future would be clear. Relief was ahead, +and after relief would come the end of introspection and the beginning of +his real career. + +But another question was waiting for him in the store. It was walking the +streets of his father's city in the freedom of a spectator who comes to +observe and not to buy. Crossing the first floor as he came to the +court, Jack saw, with sudden distinctness among the many faces coming and +going, a profile which, in its first association, developed on his vision +as that of his own when he shaved in front of the ear in the morning. He +had only a glimpse before it was turned away and its owner, a young man +in a quiet gray suit, started up the stairs. + +Jack studied the young man's back half amusedly to see if this, too, were +like his own, and laughed at himself because he was sure that he would +not know his own back if it were preceding him in a promenade up the +Avenue. In peculiar suspense he was hoping that the young man would pause +and look around, as his father always did and shoppers often did, in a +survey of the busy, moving picture of the whole floor. But the young man +went on to the top of the flight. There he proceeded along the railing of +the court. His profile was again in view under a strong light, and Jack +realized that his first recognition of a resemblance was the recognition +of an indisputable fact. + +"Have I a double out West and another in New York?" he thought. "It gives +a man a kind of secondhand feeling!" + +Then he recalled Jim's letter saying that John Prather had gone to New +York. Was this John Prather? He had no doubt that it was when the object +of his scrutiny, with full face in view, stopped and leaned over the +balcony just above the diamond counter. There was a mole patch on the +cheek such as Jack remembered that the accounts of John Prather had +mentioned. + +"I am as much fussed as the giant was at the sight of yellow!" +Jack mused. + +But for the mole patch the features were his own, as he knew them, +though no one not given to more frequent personal councils with mirrors +than Señor Don't Care of desert trails knows quite the lights and shadows +of his own countenance, which give it its character even more than does +its form. John Prather was regarding the jewelry display, where the +diamonds were scintillating under the light from the milk glass roof, +with a smile of amused contemplation. His expression was unpleasant to +Jack. It had a quality of satire and of covetousness as its owner leaned +farther over the rail and rubbed the palms of his hands together as +gleefully as if the diamonds were about to fly into his pockets by +enchantment. + +All the time Jack had stood motionless in fixed and amazed observation. +He wondered that his stare had not drawn the other's attention. But John +Prather seemed too preoccupied with the dazzle of wealth to be +susceptible to any telepathic influence. + +"Great heavens! I am gaping at him as if he were climbing hand over hand +up the face of a sky-scraper!" Jack thought. It was time something +happened. Why should he get so wrought up over the fact that another man +looked like him? "I'll get acquainted!" he declared, shaking himself free +of his antipathy. "We are both from Little Rivers and that's a ready +excuse for introducing myself." + +As he started across the floor toward the stairs, Prather straightened +from his leaning posture. For an instant his glance seemed to rest on +Jack. Indeed, eye met eye for a flash; and then Prather moved away. His +decision to go might easily have been the electric result of Jack's own +decision to join him. Jack ran up the stairs. At the head of the flight +he saw, at half the distance across the floor, Prather's back entering an +elevator on the down trip. He hurried forward, his desire to meet and +speak with the man whose influence Jim Galway and Mary feared now +overwhelming. + +"Hello!" Jack sang out; and this to Prather's face after he had turned +around in the elevator. + +In the second while the elevator man was swinging to the door, Jack +and Prather were fairly looking at each other. Prather had seen that +Jack wanted to speak to him, even if he had not heard the call. His +answer was a smile of mixed recognition and satire. He made a +gesture of appreciative understanding of the distinction in their +likeness by touching the mole on his cheek with his finger, which +was Jack's last glimpse of him before he was shot down into the +lower regions of the store. + +"He did it neatly!" Jack gasped, with a sense of defeat and chagrin. "And +it is plain that he does not care to get acquainted. Perhaps he takes it +for granted that I am not friendly and foresaw that I would ask him a lot +of questions about Little Rivers that he would not care to answer." At +all events, the only way to accept the situation was lightly, his reason +insisted. "Having heard about the likeness, possibly he came to the store +to have a look at me, and after seeing me felt that he had been libeled!" + +But his feelings refused to follow his reason in an amused view. + +"I do not like John Prather!" he concluded, as he took the next elevator +to the top floor. "Yes, I liked Pete Leddy better at our first meeting. I +had rather a man would swear at me than smile in that fashion. It is +much more simple." + +The incident had had such a besetting and disagreeable effect that Jack +would have found it difficult to rid his mind of it if he had not had a +more centering and pressing object in prospect in the citadel of the +push-buttons behind the glass marked "Private." + +John Wingfield, Sr. looked up from his desk in covert watchfulness to +detect his son's mood, and he was conscious of a quality of manner that +recalled the returning exile's entry into the same room upon his arrival +from the West. + +"Well, Jack," the father said, with marked cheeriness, "I hear you have +been taking a holiday. It's all right, and you will find motoring beats +pony riding." + +"In some ways," Jack answered; and then he came a step nearer, his hand +resting on the edge of the desk, as he looked into his father's eyes with +glowing candor. + +John Wingfield, Sr.'s eyes shifted to the pushbuttons and later to a +paper on the desk, with which his fingers played gently. He realized +instantly that something unusual was on Jack's mind. + +"Father," Jack went on, "I want a long talk quite alone with you. When it +is over I feel that we shall both know each other better; we can work +together in a fuller understanding." + +"Yes, Jack," answered the father, cautiously feeling his way with a +swift upward glance, which fell again to the paper. "Well, what is it +now? Come on!" + +"There are a lot of questions I want to ask--family questions." + +"Family questions?" The fingers paused in playing with the paper for an +instant and went on playing again. The soft hands were as white as the +paper. "Family questions, eh? Well, there isn't much to our family except +you and I and that old ancestor--and a long talk, you say?" + +"Yes. I thought that probably this would be a good time; you could give +me an hour now. It might not take that long." + +Jack's voice was even and engaging and respectful. But it seemed to fill +the room with many echoing whispers. + +"I have a very busy day before me," the father said, still without +looking up. He was talking to a little pad at one corner of the green +blotter which had a list of his appointments. "Your questions are not so +imperative that they cannot wait?" + +"Then shall it be at dinner?" Jack asked. + +"At dinner? No. I have an engagement for dinner." + +"Shall you be home early? Shall I wait up for you?" Jack persisted. + +"Yes, that's it! Say at nine. I'll make a point of it--in the library at +nine!" John Wingfield, Sr.'s hand slipped away from the papers and +patted the back of Jack's hand. "And come on with your questions. I will +answer every one that I can." He was looking up at Jack now, smilingly +and attractively in his frankness. "Every one that I can, from the first +John Wingfield right down to the present!" + +But the hand that lay on Jack's was cold and its movement nervous and +spasmodic. + +"Thank you, father. I knew you would. I haven't forgotten your wish that +I should bring all my doubts and questions to you," said Jack, happily. +And in an impulse which had the devoutness of a rising hope he took that +cold, soft hand in both of his and gave it a shake; and the feel of the +son's grip, firm and warm, remained with John Wingfield, Sr. while he +stared at the door through which Jack had passed out. When he had pulled +himself together he asked Mortimer to connect him with Dr. Bennington. + +"Doctor, I want a little talk with you to-night before nine," he said. +"Could you dine with me--not at the house--say at the club? +Yes--excellent--and make it at seven. Yes. Good-by!" + + + + +XXXII + +A CRISIS IN THE WINGFIELD LIBRARY + + +A library atmosphere was missing from the Wingfield library, with its +heavy panelling and rows of red and blue morocco backs. Rather the +suggestion was of a bastion of privacy, where a man of action might make +his plans or take counsel at leisure amid rich and mellow surroundings. +Here, John Wingfield, Sr. had gained points through post-prandial +geniality which he could never have won in the presence of the battery of +push-buttons; here, his most successful conceptions had come to him; +here, he had known the greatest moments of his life. He was right in +saying that he loved his library; but he hardly loved it for its books. + +When he returned to the house shortly before nine from his session with +Dr. Bennington, it was with the knowledge that another great moment was +in prospect. He took a few turns up and down the room before he rang for +the butler to tell Jack that he had come in. Then he placed a chair near +the desk, where its occupant would sit facing him. After he sat down he +moved the desk lamp, which was the only light in the room, so that its +rays fell on the back of the chair and left his own face in shadow--a +precaution which he had taken on many other occasions in adroitness of +stage management. He drew from the humidor drawer of his desk a box of +the long cigars with blunt ends which need no encircling gilt band in +praise of their quality. + +As Jack entered, the father welcomed him with a warm, paternal smile. And +be it remembered that John Wingfield, Sr. could smile most pleasantly, +and he knew the value of his smile. Jack answered the smile with one of +his own, a little wan, a little subdued, yet enlivening under the glow of +his father's evident happiness at seeing him. The father, who had +transgressed the rules of longevity by taking a second cigar after +dinner, now pushed the box across the desk to his son. Jack said that he +would "roll one"; he did not care to smoke much. He produced a small +package of flake tobacco and a packet of rice paper and with a deftness +that was like sleight of hand made a cigarette without spilling a single +flake. He had not always chosen the "makings" in place of private stock +Havanas, but it seemed to suit his mood to-night. + +"That is one of the things you learned in the West," the father observed +affably, to break the ice. + +"I can do them with one hand," Jack answered. "But you are likely to +have an overflow--which is all right when you have the whole desert for +the litter. Besides, in a library it would have the effect of gallery +play, I fear." + +He was seated in a way that revealed all the supple lines of his figure. +However relaxed his attitude before his father, it was always suggestive +of latent strength, appealing at once to paternal pride and paternal +uncertainty as to what course the strength would take. His face under the +light of the lamp was boyish and singularly without trace of guile. + +The father struck a match and held it to light his son's cigarette; +another habit of his which he had found flattering to men who were +brought into the library for conference. Jack took a puff slowly and, +after a time, another puff, and then dropped the cigarette on the ash +receiver as much as to say that he had smoked enough. Something told John +Wingfield, Sr. that this was to be a long interview and in no way +hurried, as he saw the smile dying on the son's lips and misery coming +into the son's eyes. + +"These last two days have been pretty poignant for me," Jack began, in a +simple, outright fashion; "and only half an hour ago I got this. It was +hard to resist taking the first train West." He drew a telegram from his +pocket and handed it to his father. + +"We want you and though we don't suppose you can come, we simply had to +let you know. + +"JAMES R. GALWAY." + +"It is Greek to me," said the father. "From your Little Rivers +friends, I judge." + +"Yes. I suppose that we may as well begin with it, as it drove everything +else out of my mind for the moment." + +John Wingfield, Sr. swung around in his chair, with his face in the +shadow. His attitude was that of a companionable listener who is prepared +for any kind of news. + +"As you will, Jack," he said. "Everything that pertains to you is my +interest. Go ahead in your own way." + +"It concerns John Prather. I don't know that I have ever told you about +him in my talks of Little Rivers." + +"John Prather?" The father reflectively sounded the name, the while he +studied the spiral of smoke rising from his cigar. "No, I don't think you +have mentioned him." + +It was Jack's purpose to take his father entirely into his confidence; to +reveal his own mind so that there should be nothing of its perplexities +which his father did not understand. He might not choose a logical +sequence of thought or event, but in the end nothing should be left +untold. Indeed, he had not studied how to begin his inquiries. That he +had left to take care of itself. His chief solicitude was to keep his +mind open and free of bitterness whatever transpired, and it was evident +that he was under a great strain. + +He told of the coming of John Prather to Little Rivers while he was +absent; of the mention of the likeness by his fellow-ranchers; and of the +fears entertained by Jim Galway and Mary. When he came to the scene in +the store that afternoon it was given in a transparent fulness of detail; +while all his changing emotions, from his first glimpse of Prather's +profile to the effort to speak with him and the ultimatum of Prather's +satirical gesture, were reflected in his features. He was the +story-teller, putting his gift to an unpleasant task in illumination of +sober fact and not the uses of imagination; and his audience was his +father's cheek and ear in the shadow. + +"Extraordinary!" John Wingfield, Sr. exclaimed when Jack had finished, +glancing around with a shrug. "Naturally, you were irritated. I like to +think that only two men have the Wingfield features--the features of the +ancestor--yes, only two: you and I!" + +"It was more than irritation; it was something profound and disturbing, +almost revolting!" Jack exclaimed, under the disagreeable spell of his +vivid recollection of the incident. "The resemblance to you was so +striking, father, especially in the profile!" Jack was leaning forward, +the better to see his father's profile, dim in the half light. "Yes, +recognizable instantly--the nose and the lines about the mouth! You have +never met anyone who has seen this man? You have never heard of him?" he +asked, almost morbidly. + +John Wingfield, Sr. broke into a laugh, which was deprecatory and +metallic. He looked fairly into Jack's eyes with a kind of inquiring +amazement at the boy's overwrought intensity. + +"Why, no, Jack," he said, reassuringly. "If I had I shouldn't have +forgotten it, you may be sure. And, well, Jack, there is no use of being +sensitive about it, though I understand your indignation--especially +after he flaunted the fact of the resemblance in such a manner and +refused to meet you. From what I have heard about that fight with +Leddy--Dr. Bennington told me--I can appreciate why he did not care to +meet you." He laughed, more genially this time, in the survey of his +son's broad shoulders. "I fear there is something of the old ancestor's +devil in you when you get going!" he added. + +So his father had seen this, too--what Mary had seen--this thing born in +him with the coming of his strength! + +"Yes, I suppose there is," he admitted, ruefully. "Yes, I have reason to +know that there is." + +His face went moody. Any malice toward John Prather passed. He was +penitent for a feeling against a stranger that seemed akin to the dormant +instinct that had made him glory in holding a bead on Pete Leddy. + +"And I am glad of it!" said John Wingfield, Sr., with a flash of stronger +emotion than he had yet shown in the interview. + +"I am not. It makes me almost afraid of myself," Jack answered. + +"Oh, I don't mean firing six-shooters--hardly! I mean backbone," he +hastened to add, almost ingratiatingly. "It is a thing to control, Jack, +not to worry about." + +"Yes, to control!" said Jack, dismally. + +He was hearing Ignacio's cry of "The devil is out of Señor Don't Care!" +and seeing for the thousandth time Mary's horrified face as he pressed +Pedro Nogales against the hedge. Now poise was all on the side of the +father, who glanced away from Jack at the glint of the library cases in +the semi-darkness in satisfaction. But only a moment did the son's absent +mood last. He leaned forward quivering, free from his spell of +reflection, and his words came pelting like hail. He was at grip with the +phantoms and nothing should loosen his hold till the truth was out. + +"Father, I could not fail to see the look on your face and the look on +Jasper Ewold's when you found him in the drawing-room!" + +At the sudden reversal of his son's attitude, John Wingfield, Sr. had +drawn back into the shadow, as, if in defensive instinct before the force +that was beating in Jack's voice. + +"Yes, I was startled; yes, very startled! But, go on! Speak everything +that you have in mind; for it is evident that you have much to say. Go +on!" he repeated more calmly, and turned his face farther into the +shadow, while he inclined his head toward Jack as if to hear better. One +leg had drawn up under him and was pressing against the chair. + +Jack waited a moment to gather his thoughts. When he spoke his +passion was gone. + +"We have always been as strangers, father," he began. "I have no +recollection of you in childhood until that day you came as a stranger to +the house at Versailles. I was seven, then. My mother was away, as you +will recall. I remember that you did not kiss me or show any affection. +You did not even say who you were. You looked me over, and I was very +frail. I saw that I did not please you; and I did not like you. In my +childish perversity I would speak only French to you, which you did not +understand. When my mother came home, do you remember her look? I do. She +went white as chalk and trembled. I was frightened with the thought that +she was going to die. It was a little while before she spoke and when she +did speak she was like stone. She asked you what you wanted, as if you +were an intruder. You said: 'I have been looking at the boy!' Your +expression told me again that you were not pleased with me. Without +another word you departed. I can still hear your steps on the walk as you +went away; they were so very firm." + +"Yes, Jack, I can never forget." The tone was that of a man racked. "What +else?" he asked. "Go on, Jack!" + +"You know the life my mother and I led, study and play together. And +that was the only time you saw me until I was fourteen. I was mortally in +awe of you then and in awe of you the day I went West with your message +to get strong. But I got strong; yes, strong, father!" + +"Yes, Jack," said the father. "Yes, Jack, leave nothing unsaid--nothing!" + +Now Jack swept back to the villa garden in Florence, the day of the +Doge's call; and from there to the Doge's glance of recognition that +first night in Little Rivers; then to the scene in front of the +bookstore, when the Doge hesitated about going to see the Velasquez. He +pictured the Doge's absorption over the mother's portrait; he repeated +Mary's story on the previous evening. + +All the while the profile, so dimly outlined in the outer darkness beyond +the lamp's circle of light, to which he had been speaking, had not +stirred. The father's cigar had gone out. It lay idly in his fingers, +which rested on the arm of the chair, above a tiny pile of ashes on the +rug. But there was no other sign of emotion, except his half affirmative +interjections, with a confessional's encouragement to empty the mind of +its every affliction. + +"Why were my mother and myself always in exile? What was this barrier +between you and her? Why was it that I never saw you? Why this bitterness +of Jasper Ewold against you? Why should that bitterness be turned against +me? I want to know, father, so that we can start afresh and right. I no +longer want to be in the dark, with its mystery, but in the light, where +I can grapple with the truth!" + +There was no rancor, no crashing of sentences; only high tension in the +finality of an inquiry in which hope and fear rose together. + +"Yes, Jack!" exclaimed John Wingfield, Sr., after a silence in which he +seemed to be passing all that Jack had said in review. "I am glad you +have told me this; that you have come to the one to whom you should come +in trouble. You have made it possible for me to speak of something that I +never found a way to speak about, myself. For, Jack, you truly have been +a stranger to me and I to you, thanks to the chain of influences which +you have mentioned." + +Very slowly John Wingfield, Sr. had turned in his chair. Distress was +rising in his tone as he leaned toward Jack. His face under the rim of +light of the lamp had a new charm, which was not that of the indulgent or +flattering or winning smile, or the masterful set of his chin on an +object. He seemed pallid and old, struggling against a phantom himself; +almost pitiful, this man of strength, while his eyes looked into Jack's +with limpid candor. + +"Jack, I will tell you all I can," he said. "I want to. It is duty. It is +relief. But first, will you tell me what your mother told you? What her +reasons were? I have a right to know that, haven't I, in my effort to +make my side clear?" He spoke in direct, intimate appeal. + +Jack's lips were trembling and his whole nature was throbbing in a +new-found sympathy. For the first time he saw his father as a man of +sensitive feeling, capable of deep suffering. And he was to have the +truth, all the truth, in kindness and affection. + +"After you had left the house at Versailles," said Jack, "she took me in +her arms and said that you were my father. 'Did you like him?' she asked; +and I said no, realizing nothing but the childish impression of the +interview. At that she was wildly, almost hysterically, triumphant. I was +glad to have made her so happy. 'You are mine alone! You have only me!' +she declared over and over again. 'And you must never ask me any +questions, for that is best.' She never mentioned you afterward; and in +all my life, until I was fourteen, I was never away from her." + +Again the palm of John Wingfield, Sr.'s hand ran back and forth over his +knee and the foot that was against the chair leg beat a nervous tattoo; +while he drew a longer breath than usual, which might have been either of +surprise or relief. His face fell back behind the rim of the lamp's rays, +but he did not turn it away as he had when Jack was talking. + +"You know only the Jasper Ewold who has been mellowed by time," he began. +"His scholarship was a bond of companionship for you in the isolation of +a small community. I know him as boy and young man. He was very +precocious. At the age of eight, as I remember, he could read his Caesar. +You will appreciate what that meant in a New England town--that he was +somewhat spoiled by admiration. And, naturally, his character and mine +were very different, thanks to the difference in our situations; for the +Ewolds had a good deal of money in those days. I was the type of boy who +was ready to work at any kind of odd job in order to get dimes and +quarters for my little bank. + +"Well, it is quite absurd to go back to that as the beginning of Jasper +Ewold's feelings toward me; but one day young Wingfield felt that young +Ewold was patronizing him. We had a turn at fisticuffs which resulted in +my favor. Jasper was a proud boy, and he never quite forgave me. In fact, +he was not used to being crossed. Learning was easy for him; he was +good-looking; he had an attractive manner, and it seemed only his right +that all doors should open when he knocked. Soon after our battle he went +away to school. Not until we were well past thirty did our paths cross +again. He was something of a painter, but he really had had no set +purpose in life except the pleasures of his intellectual diversions. I +will not say that he was wild, but at least he had lived in the abundant +freedom of his opportunities. He fell in love at the same time that I did +with Alice Jamison. You have seen your mother's picture, but that gives +you little idea of her beauty in girlhood." + +"I have always thought her beautiful!" Jack exclaimed spontaneously. + +"Yes. I am glad. She always was beautiful to me; but I like best to think +of her before she turned against me. I like to think of her as she was in +the days of our courtship. Fortune favored me instead of Jasper Ewold. I +can well understand the blow it was to him, that she should take the +storekeeper, the man without learning, the man without family, as people +supposed then, when he thought that she belonged entirely to his world. +But his enmity thereafter I can only explain by his wounded pride; by a +mortal defeat for one used to having his way, for one who had never known +discipline. Your mother and I were very happy for a time. I thought that +she loved me and had chosen me because I was a man of purpose, while +Jasper Ewold was not." + +John Wingfield, Sr. spoke deliberately, measuring his thought before he +put it into words, as if he were trying to set himself apart as one +figure in a drama while he aimed to do exact justice to the others. + +"It was soon after you were born that your mother's attitude changed. She +was, as you know, supersensitive, and whatever her grievances were she +kept them to herself. My immersion in my affairs was such that I could +not be as attentive to her as I ought to have been. Sometimes I thought +that the advertisement with our name in big letters in every morning +paper might be offensive to her; again, that she missed in me the +education I had had to forfeit in youth, and that my affection could +hardly take its place. I know that Jasper Ewold saw her occasionally, and +in his impulse I know that he said things about me that were untrue. But +that I pass over. In his place I, too, might have been bitter. + +"The best explanation I can find of your mother's change toward me is one +that belongs in the domain of psychology and pathology. She suffered a +great deal at your birth and she never regained her former strength. When +she rose from her bed it was with a shadow over her mind. I saw that she +was unhappy and nervous in my presence. Indeed, I had at times to face +the awful sensation of feeling that I was actually repugnant to her. She +was especially irritable if I kissed or fondled you. She dropped all her +friends; she never made calls; she refused to see callers. I consulted +specialists and all the satisfaction I had was that she was of a +peculiarly high-strung nature and that in certain phases of melancholia, +where there is no complete mental and physical breakdown, the patient +turns on the one whom she would hold nearest and dearest if she were +normal. The child that had taken her strength became the virtual passion +of her worship, which she would share with no one. + +"When she proposed to go to Europe for a rest, taking you with her, I +welcomed the idea. I rejoiced in the hope that the doctors held out that +she would come back well, and I ventured to believe in a happy future, +with you as our common object of love and care. But she never returned, +as you know; and she only wrote me once, a wild sort of letter about what +a beautiful boy you were and that she had you and I had the store and I +was never to send her any more remittances. + +"I made a number of trips to Europe. I could not go frequently, because +in those days, Jack, I was a heavy borrower of money in the expansion of +my business, and only one who has built up a great business can +understand how, in the earlier and more uncertain period of our banking +credits, the absence of personal attention in any sudden crisis might +throw you on the rocks. Naturally, when I went I wrote to Alice that I +was coming; but I always found that she had gone and left no address for +forwarding mail from the Crédit Lyonnais. Once when I went without +writing she eluded me, and the second time I found that she had a cottage +at Versailles. That, as you know, was the only occasion when I ever saw +you or her until I came to bring you home after her sudden death." + +"Yes," Jack whispered starkly. "That day I had left her as well as +usual and came home to find her lying still and white on a couch, her +book fallen out of her hand onto the floor and--" the words choked in +his throat. + +"And the stranger, your father, who came for you seemed very hard and +forbidding to you!" + +"Yes," Jack managed to say. + +"But, Jack, when my steps sounded so firm the day I left you at +Versailles it was the firmness of force of will fighting to accept the +inevitable. For I had seen your face. It was like mine, and yet I had to +give you up! I had to give you up knowing that I might not see you again; +knowing that this tragic, incomprehensible fatality had set you against +me; knowing that any further efforts to see you meant only pain for Alice +and for me. Whatever happiness she knew came from you, and that she +should have. And remember, Jack, that out of all this tragedy I, too, had +my point of view. I had my moments of reproach against fate; my moments +of bitterness and anger; my moments when I set all my mind with, volcanic +energy into my affairs in order to forget my misfortune. I had to build +for the sake of building. Perhaps that hardened me. + +"When you came home I saw that you were mine in blood but not mine in +heart. All your training had been foreign, all of estrangement from the +business and the ways of the home-country; which you could not help, I +could not help, nothing now could help. But, after all, I had been +building for you; that was my new solace. I wanted you to be equal to +what was coming to you, and that change meant discipline. To be frank +with you, as you have been with me, you were sickly, hectic, dreamy; and +when word came that you must go to the desert if your life were to be +saved--well, Jack, I had to put affection aside and consider this blow +for what it was, and think not of kind words but of what was best for you +and your future. I knew that my duty to you and your duty to yourself was +to see you become strong, and for your sake you must not return until you +were strong. + +"Now, as for the scene in the drawing-room the other day: I could not +forget what Jasper Ewold had said of me. That was one thing. Another was +that I had detected his influence over you; an influence against the +purpose and steadiness that I was trying to inculcate in you; and +suddenly coming upon him in my own house, in view of his enmity and the +way in which he had spoken about me, I was naturally startled and +indignant and withdrew to avoid a scene. That is all, Jack. I have +answered your questions to the best of my knowledge. If others occur to +you I will try my best to answer them, too;" and the father seemed ready +to submit every recess of his mind to the son's inquisition. + +"You have answered everything," said Jack; "everything--fairly, +considerately, generously." + +There was a flash of triumph in the father's eyes. Slowly he rose and +stood with his finger-ends caressing the blotting-pad. Jack rose at +the same time, his movement automatic, instinctively in sympathy with +his father's. His head was bowed under stress of the emotion, +incapable of translation into language, which transfixed him. It had +all been made clear, this thing that no one could help. His feeling +toward his mother could never change; but penetrating to the depths in +which it had been held sacred was a new feeling. The pain that had +brought him into the world had brought misery to the authors of his +being. There was no phantom except the breath of life in his nostrils +which they had given him. + +Watchfully, respecting the son's silence, the father's lips tightened, +his chin went out slightly and his brows drew together in a way that +indicated that he did not consider the battle over. At length, Jack's +head came up and his face had the strength of a youthful replica of the +ancestor's, radiant in gratitude, and in his eyes for the first time, in +looking into his father's, were trust and affection. There was no word, +no other demonstration except the steady, liquid look that spoke the +birth of a great, understanding comradeship. The father fed his hunger +for possession, which had been irresistibly growing in him for the last +two months, on that look. He saw his son's strength as something that had +at last become malleable; and this was the moment when the metal was at +white heat, ready for knowing turns with the pincers and knowing blows of +the hammer. + +The message from Jim Galway was still on the table where the father had +laid it after reading. Now he pressed his fingers on it so hard that the +nails became a row of red spots. + +"And the telegram, Jack?" he asked. + +Jack stared at the yellow slip of paper as the symbol of problems that +reappeared with burning acuteness in his mind. It smiled at him in the +satire of John Prather triumphing in Little Rivers. It visualized +pictures of lean ranchers who had brought him flowers in the days of his +convalescence; of children gathered around him on the steps of his +bungalow; of all the friendly faces brimming good-will into his own on +the day of his departure; of a patch of green in desert loneliness, with +a summons to arms to defend its arteries of life. + +"They want me to help--I half promised!" he said. + +"Yes. And just how can you help?" asked his father, gently. + +"Why, that is not quite clear yet. But a stranger, they made me one of +themselves. They say that they need me. And, father, that thrilled me. It +thrilled the idler to find that there was some place where he could be of +service; that there was some one definite thing that others thought he +could do well!" + +The father proceeded cautiously, reasonably, with his questions, as one +who seeks for light for its own sake. Jack's answers were luminously +frank. For there was always to be truth between them in their new +fellowship, unfettered by hopes or vagaries. + +"You could help with your knowledge of law? With political influence? +Help these men seasoned by experience in land disputes in that region?" + +"No!" + +"And would Jasper Ewold, whom I understand is the head and founder of the +community, want you to come? Has he asked you?" the father continued, +drawing in the web of logic. + +"On the contrary, he would not want me." + +"And Miss Ewold? Would she want you?" + +There Jack hesitated. When he spoke, however, it was to admit the fact +that was stabbing him. + +"No, she would not. She has dismissed me. But--but I half promised," he +added, his features setting firmly as they had after Leddy had fired at +him. "It seems like duty, unavoidable." + +The metal was cooling, losing its malleability, and the father proceeded +to thrust it back into the furnace. + +"Then, I take it that your value to Little Rivers is your cool hand +with a gun," he said, "and the summons is to uncertainties which may +lead to something worse than a duel. You are asked to come because you +can fight. Do you want to go for that? To go to let the devil, as you +call it, out of you?" + +Now the metal was soft with the heat of the shame of the moment when Jack +had called to Leddy, "I am going to kill you!" and of the moment when he +saw Pedro Nogales's limp, broken arm and ghastly face. + +"No, no!" Jack gasped. "I want no fight! I never want to draw a bead on a +man again! I never want to have a revolver in my hand again!" + +He was shuddering, half leaning against the desk for support. His +father waited in observant comprehension. Convulsively, Jack +straightened with desperation and all the impassioned pleading to Mary +on the pass was in his eyes. + +"But the thing that I cannot help--the transcendent thing, not of logic, +not of Little Rivers' difficulties--how am I to give that up?" he cried. + +"Miss Ewold, you mean?" + +"Yes!" + +"Jack, I know! I understand! Who should understand if not I?" The father +drew Jack's hand into his own, and the fluid force of his desire for +mastery was flowing out from his finger-ends into the son's fibres, which +were receptively sensitive to the caress. "I know what it is when the +woman you love dismisses you! You have her to think of as well as +yourself. Your own wish may not be lord. You may not win that which will +not be won"--how well he knew that!--"either by protest, by persistence, +or by labor. You are dealing with the tender and intangible; with +feminine temperament, Jack. And, Jack, it is wise for you, isn't it, to +bear in mind that your life has not been normal? With the switch from +desert to city life homesickness has crept over you. From to-night things +will not be so strange, will they? But if you wish a change, go to +Europe--yes, go, though I cannot bear to think of losing you the very +moment that we have come to know each other; when the past is clear and +amends are at hand. + +"And, Jack, if your mother were here with us and were herself, would she +want you to go back to take up a rifle instead of your work at my side? I +do not pretend to understand Jasper Ewold's or Mary Ewold's thoughts. She +has preferred to make another generation's ill-feeling her own in a thing +that concerns her life alone. She has seen enough of you to know her +mind. For, from all I hear, you have not been a faint-hearted lover. Is +it fair to her to follow her back to the desert? Is it the courage of +self-denial, of control of impulse on your part? Would your mother want +you to persist in a veritable conquest by force of your will, whose +strength you hardly realize, against Mary Ewold's sensibilities? And if +you broke down her will, if you won, would there be happiness for you and +for her? Jack, wait! If she cares for you, if there is any germ of love +for you in her, it will grow of itself. You cannot force it into blossom. +Come, Jack, am I not right?" + +Jack's hands lay cold and limp in his father's; so limp that it seemed +only a case of leading, now. Yet there was always the uncertain in the +boy; the uncertain hovering under that face of ashes that the father was +so keenly watching; a face so clearly revealing the throes of a struggle +that sent cold little shivers into his father's warm grasp. Jack's eyes +were looking into the distance through a mist. He dropped the lids as if +he wanted darkness in which to think. When he raised them it was to look +in his father's eyes firmly. There was a half sob, as if this +sentimentalist, this Señor Don't Care, had wrung determination from a +precipice edge, even as Mary Ewold had. He gripped his father's hands +strongly and lifted them on a level with his breast. + +"You have been very fine, father! I want you to be patient and go on +helping me. The trail is a rough one, but straight, now. I--I'm too +brimming full to talk!" And blindly he left the library. + +When the door closed, John Wingfield, Sr. seized the telegram, rolled it +up with a glad, fierce energy and threw it into the waste-basket. His +head went up; his eyes became points of sharp flame; his lips parted in a +smile of relief and triumph and came together in a straight line before +he sank down in his chair in a collapse of exhaustion. After a while he +had the decanter brought in; he gulped a glass of brandy, lighted another +cigar, and, swinging around, fell back at ease, his mind a blank except +for one glowing thought: + +"He will not go! He will give up the girl! He is to be all mine!" + +It is said that the best actors never go on the stage. They play real +parts in private life, making their own lines as they watch the other +players. One of this company, surveying the glint of his bookcases, was +satisfied with the greatest effort of his life in his library. + + + + +XXXIII + +PRATHER SEES THE PORTRAIT + + +It did not occur to Jack to question a word of the narrative that had +reduced a dismal enigma to luminous, connected facts. With the swift +processes of reason and the promptness of decision of which he was +capable on occasion, he had made up his mind as to his future even as he +ascended the stairs to his room. The poignancy of his father's appeal had +struck to the bed-rock of his affection and his conscience, revealing +duty not as a thing that you set for yourself, but which circumstances +set for you. + +Never before had he realized how hopelessly he had been a dreamer. Firio, +P.D., Wrath of God, and Jag Ear became the fantastic memory of another +incarnation. His devil should never again rejoice in having his finger on +a trigger or send him off an easy traveller in search of gorgeous +sunrises. His devil should be transformed into a backbone of unremitting +apprenticeship in loving service for the father who had built for him in +love. Though his head split, he would master every detail of the +business. And when Jack stepped into the Rubicon he did not splash around +or look back. He went right over to the new country on the other bank. + +But there were certain persons whom he must inform of the crossing. +First, he wrote a telegram to Jim Galway: "Sorry, but overwhelming duty +here will not permit. Luck and my prayers with you." Then to Firio a +letter, which did not come quite so easily: "You see by now that you are +mistaken, Firio. I am not coming back. Make the most of the ranch--your +ranch--that you can." The brevity, he told himself, was in keeping with +Firio's own style. Besides, anything more at length would have opened up +an avenue of recollections which properly belonged to oblivion. + +And Mary? Yes, he would write to her, too. He would cut the last strand +with the West. That was best. That was the part of his new courage of +self-denial stripping itself of every trammeling association of +sentiment. Other men had given up the women of their choice; and he could +never be the man of this woman's choice. Somehow, his father's talk had +made him realize an inevitable outcome which had better be met and +mastered in present fortitude, rather than after prolonged years of +fruitless hope centering two thousand miles away. He started a dozen +letters to Mary, meaning each to be a fitting _envoi_ to their +comradeship and a song of good wishes. Each one he wrote in the haste of +having the task quickly over, only to throw away what he had written when +he read it. The touch that he wanted would not come. He was simply +flashing out a few of a thousand disconnected thoughts that ran away +incoherently with his pen. + +But wasn't any letter, any communication of any kind, superfluous? Wasn't +it the folly of weak and stupid stubbornness? She had spoken her final +word in their relations at the hotel door. There was no Little Rivers; +there was no Mary; there was nothing but the store. To enforce this fiat +he had only to send the wire to Jim and post the letter to Firio. This he +would do himself. A stroll would give him fresh air. It was just what he +needed after all he had been through that evening; and he would see the +streets not with any memory of the old restlessness when he and his +father were strangers, but kindly, as the symbol of the future. + +His room was on the second floor. As he left it, he heard the door-bell +ring, its electric titter very clear in the silence of the house. No +doubt it meant a telegram for his father. At the turn of the stairs on +the first floor he saw the back of the butler before the open door. +Evidently it was not a matter of a telegram, but of some late caller. +Jack paused in the darkness of the landing, partly to avoid the bother of +having to meet anyone and partly arrested by the manner of the butler, +who seemed to be startled and in doubt about admitting a stranger at that +hour. Indistinctly, Jack could hear the caller's voice. The tone was +familiar in a peculiar quality, which he tried to associate with a voice +that he had heard frequently. The butler, apparently satisfied with the +caller's appearance, or, at least, with his own ability to take care of a +single intruder, stepped back, with a word to come in. Then, out of the +obscurity of the vestibule, appeared the pale face of John Prather. Jack +withdrew farther into the shadows instinctively, as if he had seen a +ghost; as if, indeed, he were in fear of ghosts. + +"I will take your card to Mr. Wingfield," said the butler. + +Prather made a perfunctory movement as if for a card-case, but +apparently changed his mind under the prompting suggestion that it was +superfluous. + +"My name is John Prather," he announced. "Mr. Wingfield knows who I am +and I am quite sure that he will see me." + +While the butler, after rapping cautiously, went into the library with +the message, John Prather stood half smiling to himself as he looked +around the hall. The effect seemed to please him in a contemplative +fashion, for he rubbed the palms of his hands together, as he had in his +survey of the diamond counters. He was serenity itself as John Wingfield, +Sr. burst out of the library, his face hard-set. + +"I thought you were going this evening!" he exclaimed. "By what right do +you come here?" + +He placed himself directly in front of Prather, thus hiding Prather's +figure, but not his face, which Jack could see was not in the least +disturbed by the other's temper. + +"Oh, no! The early morning train has the connections I want for Arizona," +he answered casually, as if he were far from being in any hurry. "I was +taking a walk, and happening to turn into Madison Avenue I found myself +in front of the house. It occurred to me what a lot I had heard about +that ancestor, and seeing a light in the library, and considering how +late it was, I thought I might have a glimpse of him without +inconveniencing any other member of the family. Do you mind?" + +He put the question with an inflection that was at once engaging and +confident. + +"Mind!" gasped John Wingfield, Sr. + +"I am sure you do not!" Prather returned. Now a certain deference and a +certain pungency of satire ran together in his tone, the mixture being +nicely and pleasurably controlled. "Is it in there, in the drawing-room?" + +"And then what else? Where do you mean to end? I thought that--" + +"Nothing else," Prather interrupted reassuringly. "Everything is settled, +of course. This is sort of a farewell privilege." + +"Yes, in there!" snapped John Wingfield, Sr. "It's the picture on the +other side of the mantel. I will wait here--and be quick, quick, I tell +you! I want you out of this house! I've done enough! I--" + +"Thanks! It is very good-natured of you!" + +John Prather passed leisurely into the drawing-room and John Wingfield, +Sr. stood guard by the door, his hand gripping the heavy portieres for +support, while his gaze was steadily fixed at a point in the turn of the +stairs just below where Jack was obscured in the shadow. His face was +drawn and ashen against the deep red of the hangings, and torment and +fear and defiance, now one and then the other, were in ascendency over +the features which Jack had always associated with composed and +unchanging mastery until he had seen them illumined with affection only +an hour before. And the father had said that he had never met or heard of +John Prather! The father had said so quietly, decidedly, without +hesitation! This one thought kept repeating itself to Jack's stunned +brain as he leaned against the wall limp from a blow that admits of no +aggressive return. + +"The ancestor certainly must have been a snappy member of society in his +time! It has been delightful to have a look at him," said John Prather, +as he came out of the drawing-room. + +He paused as he spoke. He was still smiling. The mole on his cheek was +toward the stairway; and it seemed to heighten the satire of his smile. +The faces of the young man and the old man were close together and they +were standing in much the same attitude, giving an effect of likeness in +more than physiognomy. That note of John Prather's voice that had sounded +so familiar to Jack was a note in the father's voice when he was +particularly suave. + +"This is the end--that is the understanding--the end?" demanded John +Wingfield, Sr. + +"Oh, quite!" John Prather answered easily, moving toward the door. He +did not offer his hand, nor did John Wingfield, Sr. offer to take it. +But as he went out he said, his smile broadening: "I hope that Jack +makes a success with the store, though he never could run it as well as +I could. Good-by!" + +"Good-by!" gasped John Wingfield, Sr. + +He wheeled around distractedly and stood still, his head bowed, his +fingers working nervously before his hands parted in a shrugging, +outspread gesture of relief; then, his head rising, his body stiffening, +once more his arbitrary self, he started up the stairs with the firm yet +elastic step with which he mounted the flights of the store. + +If Jack remained where he was they would meet. What purpose in questions +now? The answer to all might be as false as to one. He was no more in a +mood to trust himself with a word to his father than he had been to trust +himself with a word to John Prather. He dropped back into the darkness +of the dining-room and sank into a chair. When a bedroom door upstairs +had closed softly he was sequestered in silence with his thoughts. + +His own father had lied to him! Lied blandly! Lied with eyes limpid with +appeal! And the supreme commandment on which his mother had ever insisted +was truth. The least infraction of it she would not forgive; it was the +only thing for which she had ever punished him. He recalled the one +occasion when she had seemed harsh and merciless, as she said: + +"A lie fouls the mouth of the one who utters it, Jack. A lie may torture +and kill. It may ruin a life. It is the weapon of the coward--and never +be a coward, Jack, never be afraid!" + +At the New England preparatory school which he had attended after he came +home, a lie was the abomination on which the discipline of student +comradeship laid a scourge. Out on the desert, where the trails run +straight and the battle of life is waged straight against thirst and +fatigue and distance, men spoke straight. + +And nothing had been explained, after all! The phantom was back, +definite of form and smiling in irony. For it had a face, now, the face +of John Prather! How was he connected with the story of the mother? the +father? the Doge? + +Then, like a shaft of light across memory, came the recollection of a +thing that had been so negligible to Jack at the time. It was Dr. +Bennington's first question in Jack's living-room; a question so +carelessly put and so dissociated from the object of his visit! Jack +remembered Dr. Bennington's curious glance through his eyebrows as he +asked him if he had met John Prather. And Dr. Bennington had brought Jack +into the world! He knew the family history! The Jack that now rose from +the chair was a Jack of action, driven by the scourge of John Prather's +smile into obsession with the one idea which was crying: "I will know! I +will know!" + +Downstairs in the hall he learned over the telephone that Dr. Bennington +had just gone out on a call. It would be possible to see him yet +to-night! An hour later, as the doctor entered his reception-room he was +startled by a pacing figure in the throes of impatience, who turned on +him without formality in an outburst: + +"Dr. Bennington, you asked me in Little Rivers if I had ever met John +Prather. I have met him! Who is he? What is he to me?" + +The doctor's suavity was thrown off its balance, but he did not lose +his presence of mind. He was too old a hand at his profession, too +capable, for that. + +"I refuse to answer!" he said quickly and decisively. + +"Then you do know!" Jack took a step toward the doctor. His weight was on +the ball of his foot; his eyes had the fire of a command that was not to +be resisted. + +"Heavens! How like the ancestor!" the doctor exclaimed involuntarily. + +"Then you do know! Who is he? What is he to me?" + +It seemed as if the ceiling were about to crack. The doctor looked away +to avoid the bore of Jack's unrelenting scrutiny. He took a turn up and +down, rapidly, nervously, his fingers pressed in against the palms and +the muscles of his forearms moving in the way of one who is trying to +hold himself in control by an outward expression of force against inward +rebellion. + +"I dined with your father to-night!" he exclaimed. "I counseled him to +tell you the truth! I said that if he did not want to tell it for its own +sake, as policy it was the only thing to you! I--I--" he stopped, facing +Jack with a sort of grisly defiance. "Jack, a doctor is a confessor of +men! He keeps their secrets! Good-night!" And he strode through the +office door, which he closed behind him sharply, in reminder that the +interview was at an end. + +As Jack went down the steps into the night, the face of John Prather, +with a satirical turn to the lips, was preceding him. Now he walked madly +up and down and back and forth across town to the river fronts, with +panting energy of stride, as he fastened the leash of will on quivering +nerves. When dawn came it was the dawn of the desert calling to a brain +that had fought its way to a lucid purpose. It started him to the store +in the fervor of a grateful mission, while a familiar greeting kept +repeating itself in his ears on the way: + +"You won't forget, Jack, about giving me a chance to come along if you +ever go out West again, will you?" + +The question was one in answer to a promise; a reminder from certain +employees into whom he had fused his own spirit of enthusiasm about dry +wastes yielding abundance. + +"But you must work very hard," he had told them. "Not until you have +callouses on your hands can you succeed or really know how to enjoy a +desert sunrise or sunset. After that, you will be able to stand erect and +look destiny in the face." + +"No February slush!" Burleigh, the fitter, had said. "No depending on +one man to hold your job!" + +"Your own boss! You own some land and you just naturally get what you +earn!" according to Joe Mathewson. + +"And from what I can make out," observed one of the automobile van +drivers whom Jack had accompanied on the suburban rounds, "it requires +about as much brains as running an automobile to be what you'd call a +first-class, a number one desert Rube, Jack!" + +"Yes," Jack told him. "The process that makes the earth fruitful is not +less complicated than a motor, simply because it is one of the earliest +inventions. You mix in nature's carbureter light and moisture with the +chemical elements of the soil." + +"I'm on!" the chauffeur rejoined. "If a man works with a plow instead of +a screwdriver, it doesn't follow that his mind is as vacant as a cow that +stands stockstill in the middle of the road to show you that you can't +fool her into thinking that radiators are good to eat." + +In explaining the labor and pains of orange-growing, which ended only +with the careful picking and packing, Jack would talk as earnestly as his +father would about the tedious detail which went into the purchase and +sale of the articles in any department of the store. He might not be able +to choose the best expert for the ribbon counter, but he had a certain +confidence that he could tell the man or the woman who would make good in +Little Rivers. No manager was more thorough in his observation of clerks +for promotion than Jack in observing would-be ranchers. He had given his +promise to one after another of a test list of disciples; and at times he +had been surprised to find how serious both he and the disciples were +over a matter that existed entirely on the hypothesis that he was not +going to stay permanently in New York. + +This morning he was at the store for the last time, arriving even before +the delivery division, to circulate the news that he was returning to +Little Rivers. Trouble was brewing out there, he explained, but they +could depend on him. He would make a place for them and send word when he +was ready; and all whom he had marked as faithful were eager to go. Thus +he had builded unwittingly for another future of responsibilities when he +had paused in the midst of the store's responsibilities to tell stories +of how a desert ranch is run. + +But one disciple did not even want to wait on the message. It was Peter +Mortimer, whom Jack caught on his way to the elevator at eight, his usual +hour, to make sure of having the letters opened and systematically +arranged when his employer should appear. + +"So you are going, Jack! And--and, Jack, you know?" asked Peter +significantly. + +"Yes, Peter. And I see that you know." + +"I do, but my word is given not to tell." + +Through that night's march Jack had guessed enough. He had guessed his +fill of chill misery, which now took the place of the hunger of inquiry. +The full truth was speeding out to the desert. It was with John Prather. + +"Then I will not press you, Peter," he said. "But, Peter, just one +question, if you care to answer; was it--was it this thing that drove my +mother into exile?" + +"Yes, Jack." + +Then a moment's silence, with Peter's eyes full of sympathy and Jack's +dull with pain. + +"And, Jack," Peter went on, "well, I've been so long at it that suddenly, +now you're going, I feel choked up, as if I were about to overflow with +anarchy. Jack, I'm going to give notice that I will retire as soon as +there is somebody to take my place. I want to rest and not have to keep +trying to remember if I have forgotten anything. I've saved up a little +money and whatever happens out there, why, there'll be some place I can +buy where I can grow roses and salads, as you say, if nothing more +profitable, won't there?" + +"Yes, Peter. I know other fertile valleys besides that of Little Rivers, +though none that is its equal. I shall have a garden in one of them and +you shall have a garden next to mine." + +"Then I feel fixed comfortable for life!" said Peter, with a perfectly +wonderful smile enlivening the wrinkles of his old face, which made Jack +think once more that life was worth living. + +Later in the morning, after he had bought tickets for Little Rivers, Jack +returned to the house. When he stood devoutly before the portrait, whose +"I give! I give!" he now understood in new depths, he thought: + +"I know that you would not want to remain here another hour. You would +want to go with me." + +And before the portrait on the other side of the mantel he thought, +challengingly and affectionately: + +"And you? You were an old devil, no doubt, but you would not lie! No, +you would not lie to the Admiralty or to Elizabeth even to save your +head! Yes, you would want to go with me, too!" + +Tenderly he assisted the butler to pack the portraits, which were put in +a cab. When Jack departed in their company, this note lay on the desk in +the library, awaiting John Wingfield, Sr.'s return that evening: + +"Father: + +"The wire to Jim Galway which I enclose tells its own story. It was +written after our talk. When I was going out to send it I saw John +Prather and you in the hall. You said that you knew nothing of him. I +overheard what passed between you and him. So I am going back to Little +Rivers. The only hope for me now is out there. + +"I am taking the portrait of my mother, because it is mine. I am taking +the portrait of the ancestor, because I cannot help it any more than he +could help taking a Spanish galleon. That is all I ask or ever could +accept in the way of an inheritance. + +"Jack." + + + + +XXXIV + +"JOHN WINGFIELD, YOU--" + + +John Wingfield, Sr. had often made the boast that he never worried; +that he never took his business to bed with him. When his head touched +the pillow there was oblivion until he awoke refreshed to greet the +problems left over from yesterday. Such a mind must be a reliably +co-ordinated piece of machinery, with a pendulum in place of a heart. It +is overawing to average mortals who have not the temerity to say +"Nonsense!" to great egos. Yet the best adjusted clocks may have a lapse +in a powerful magnetic storm, and in an earthquake they might even be +tipped off the shelf, with their metal parts rendered quite as helpless +by the fall as those of a human organism subject to the constitutional +weaknesses of the flesh. + +It was also John Wingfield, Sr.'s boast to himself that he had never been +beaten, which average mortals with the temerity to say "Nonsense!"--that +most equilibratory of words--might have diagnosed as a bad case of +self-esteem finding a way to forget the resented incidental reverses of +success. Yet, even average mortals noted when John Wingfield, Sr. +arrived late at the store the morning after Jack's departure for the West +that he had not slept well. His haggardness suggested that for once the +pushbutton to the switch of oblivion had failed him. The smile of +satisfied power was lacking. In the words of the elevator boy, +impersonal observer and swinger of doors, "I never seen the old man like +that before!" + +But the upward flight through the streets of his city, if it did not +bring back the smile, brought back the old pride of ownership and +domination. He still had a kingdom; he was still king. Resentment rose +against the cause of the miserable twelve hours which had thrown the +machinery of his being out of order. He passed the word to himself that +he should sleep to-night and that from this moment, henceforth things +would be the same as they had been before Jack came home. Yes, there was +just one reality for him. It was enthroned in his office. This morning +was to be like any other business morning; like thousands of mornings to +come in the many years of activity that stretched ahead of him. + +"A little late," he said, explaining his tardiness to his secretary; a +superfluity of words in which he would not ordinarily have indulged. "I +had some things to attend to on the outside." + +With customary quiet attentiveness, Mortimer went through the mail with +his employer, who was frequently reassuring himself that his mind was as +clear, his answers as sure, and his interest as concentrated as usual. +This task finished, Mortimer, with his bundle of letters and notes in +hand, instead of going out of the room when he had passed around the +desk, turned and faced the man whom he had served for thirty years. + +"Mr. Wingfield--" + +"Well, Peter?" + +John Wingfield, Sr. looked up sharply, struck by Mortimer's tone, which +seemed to come from another man. In Mortimer's eye was a placid, +confident light and his stoop was less marked. + +"Mr. Wingfield, I am getting on in years, now," he said, "and I have +concluded to retire as soon as you have someone for my place; the sooner, +sir, the more agreeable to me." + +"What! What put this idea into your head?" John Wingfield, Sr. snapped. +Often of late he had thought that it was time he got a younger man in +Peter's place. But he did not like the initiative to come from Peter; not +on this particular morning. + +"Why, just the notion that I should like to rest. Yes, rest and play a +little, and grow roses and salads," said the old secretary, respectfully. + +"Roses and salads! What in--where are you going to grow them?" + +There was something so serene about Peter that his highly imperious, +poised employer found it impertinent, not to say maddening. Peter had a +look of the freedom of desert distances in his eyes already. A lieutenant +was actually radiating happiness in that neutral-toned sanctum of power, +particularly this morning. + +"I am going out to Little Rivers, or to some place that Jack finds +for me, where I am to have a garden and work--or maybe I better call +it potter around--out of doors in January and February, just like it +was June." + +Peter spoke very genially, as if he were trying to win a disciple on his +own account. + +"With Jack! Oh!" gasped John Wingfield, Sr. He struck his closed fist +into the palm of his hand in his favorite gesture of anger, the +antithesis of the crisp rubbing of the palms, which he so rarely used of +late years. Rage was contrary to the rules of longevity, exciting the +heart and exerting pressure on the artery walls. + +"Yes, sir," answered Peter, pleasantly. + +"Well--yes--well, Jack has decided to go back!" Then there rose strongly +in John Wingfield, Sr.'s mind a suspicion that had been faintly signaled +to his keen observation of everything that went on in the store. "Are any +other employees going?" he demanded. + +"Yes, sir, I think there are; not immediately, but as soon as he finds a +place for them." + +"How many?" + +"I don't think it is any secret. About fifty, sir." + +"Name some of them!" + +"Joe Mathewson, that big fellow who drives a warehouse truck, and +Burleigh;" and Peter went on with those of the test proof list +whom he knew. + +Every one of them had high standing. Every one represented a value. While +at first John Wingfield, Sr. had decided savagely that Mortimer should +remain at his pleasure, now his sense of outraged egoism took an opposite +turn. He could get on without Mortimer; he could get on if every employee +in the store walked out. There were more where they came from in a city +of five millions population; and no one in the world knew so well as he +how to train them. + +"Very good, Peter!" he said rigidly, as if he were making a declaration +of war. "Fix up your papers and leave as soon as you please. I will have +one of the clerks take your place." + +"Thank you. That is very kind, Mr. Wingfield!" Mortimer returned, so +politely, even exultantly, that his aspect seemed treasonable. + +John Wingfield, Sr. tried to concentrate his attention on some long and +important letters that had been left on his desk for further +consideration; but his mind refused to stick to the lines of typewriting. + +"This one is a little complicated," he thought, "I will lay it aside." + +He tried the second and the third letters, with no better results. A +tanned face and a pair of broad shoulders kept appearing between him and +the paper. Again he was thinking of Jack, as he had all night, to the +exclusion of everything else. Unquestionably, this son had a lot of +magnetic force in him; he had command of men. Why, he had won fifty of +the best employees out of sheer sentiment to follow him out to the +desert, when they had no idea what they were in for! + +His gaze fell and rested for some time on the bunch of roses on his desk. +Every morning there had been a fresh bunch, in keeping with the custom +that Jack had established. The father had become so used to their +presence that he was unconscious of it. For all the pleasure he got out +of them, they might as well have been in the cornucopia vase in the +limousine. His hand went out spasmodically toward the roses, as if he +would crush them; crush this symbol of the thing drawn from the mother +that had invaded the calm autocracy of his existence. The velvety +richness of the petals leaning toward him above the drooping grace of +their stems made him pause in realization of the absurdity of his anger. +A feeling to which he had been a stranger swept over him. It was like a +breaking instinct of dependableness; and then he called up Dr. +Bennington. + +"Well, he has gone!" he told the doctor, desperately. + +"You did not tell him the truth!" came the answer; and he noted that the +doctor's voice was without its usual suavity. It was as matter-of-fact to +the man of millions as if it had been advising an operation in a +dispensary case. + +"No, not exactly," John Wingfield, Sr. confessed. + +"I told you what his nature was; how it had drawn on the temperament of +his mother. I told you that with candor, with a decently human humility +appealing to his affections, everything was possible. And remember, he is +strong, stronger than you, John Wingfield! There's a process of fate in +him! John Wingfield, you--" The sentence ended abruptly, as if the doctor +had dropped the receiver on the hooks with a crash. + +Phantoms were closing in around John Wingfield, Sr.... His memory +ranged back over the days of ardent youth, in the full tide of growing +success, when to want a thing, human or material, meant to have it.... +And in his time he had told a good many lies. The right lie, big and +daring, at the right moment had won more than one victory. With John +Prather out of the way, he had decided on an outright falsehood to his +son. Why had he not compromised with Dr. Bennington's advice and tried +part falsehood and part contrition? But no matter, no matter. He would +go on; he was made of steel. + +Again the tanned face and broad shoulders stood between him and the +page. Jack was strong; yes, strong; and he was worth having. All the old +desire of possession reappeared, in company with his hatred of defeat. +He was thinking of the bare spot on the wall in the drawing-room in place +of the Velasquez. There would be an end of his saying: "The boy is the +spit of the ancestor and just as good a fighter, too; only his abilities +are turned into other channels more in keeping with the spirit of the +age!" An end of: "Fine son you have there!" from men at the club who had +given him only a passing nod in the old days. For he was not displeased +that the boy was liked, where he himself was not. The men whom he admired +were those who had faced him with "No!" across the library desk; who had +got the better of him, even if he did not admit it to himself. And the +strength of his son, baffling to his cosmos, had won his admiration. No, +he would not lose Jack's strength without an effort; he wanted it for his +own. Perhaps something else, too, there in the loneliness of the office +in the face of that bunch of roses was pulling him: the thrill that he +had felt when he saw the moisture in Jack's eyes and felt the warmth of +his grasp before Jack left the library. + +And Jack and John Prather were speeding West to the same destination! +They would meet! What then? There was no use of trying to work in an +office on Broadway when the forces which he had brought into being over +twenty years ago were in danger of being unloosed out on the desert, with +Jack riding free and the fingers of the ancestor-devil on the reins. John +Wingfield, Sr. called in the general manager. + +"You are in charge until I return," he said; and a few hours later he was +in a private car, bound for Little Rivers. + + + + +PART III + +HE FINDS HIS PLACE IN LIFE + + + + +XXXV + +BACK TO LITTLE RIVERS + + +As with the gentle touch of a familiar hand, the ozone of high altitudes +gradually and sweetly awakened Jack. The engine was puffing on an +upgrade; the car creaked and leaned in taking a curve. Raising the shade +of his berth he looked out on spectral ranges that seemed marching and +tumbling through dim distances. With pillows doubled under his head he +lay back, filling sight and mind with the indistinctness and spacious +mystery of the desert at night; recalling his thoughts with his last +view of it over two months ago in the morning hours after leaving El +Paso and seeing his future with it now, where then he had seen his +future with the store. + +"Think of old Burleigh raising oranges! I am sure that the trees will be +well trimmed," he whispered. "Think of Mamie Devore in the thick of the +great jelly competition, while the weight of Joe Mathewson's shoulders +starts a spade into the soil as if it were going right to the centre of +the earth. Why, Joe is likely to get us into international difficulties +by poking the ribs of a Chinese ancestor! Yes--if we don't lose our +Little Rivers; and we must not lose it!" + +The silvery face of the moon grew fainter with the coming of a ruddier +light; the shadows of the mountains were being etched definitely on the +plateaus that stretched out like vast floors under the developing glow +of sunrise; and the full splendor of day had come, with its majestic +spread of vision. + +"When Joe sees that he will feel so strong he will want to get out and +carry the Pullman," Jack thought. "But Mamie will not let him for fear +that he will overdo!" + +How slow the train seemed to travel! It was a snail compared to Jack's +eagerness to arrive. He was inclined to think that P.D., Wrath of God, +and Jag Ear were faster than through expresses. He kept inquiring of the +conductor if they were on time, and the conductor kept repeating that +they were. How near that flash of steel at a bend around a tongue of +chaotic rock, stretching out into the desert sea, with its command to man +to tunnel or accept a winding path for his iron horse! How long in coming +to it in that rare air, with its deceit of distances! Landmark after +landmark of peak or bold ridge took the angle of some recollected view of +his five years' wanderings. It was already noon when he saw Galeria from +the far end of the long basin that he had crossed, with the V as the +compass of his bearings, on the ride that brought him to the top to meet +Mary and Pete Leddy. + +Then the V was lost while the train wound around the range that formed +one side of the basin's rim. The blaze of midday had passed before it +entered the reaches of the best valley yet in the judgment of a +connoisseur in valleys; and under the Eternal Painter's canopy a spot of +green quivered in the heat-rays of the horizon. His Majesty was in a +dreamy mood. He was playing in delicate variations, tranquil and +enchanting, of effects in gold and silver, now gossamery thin, now +thick and rich. + +"What is this thing crawling along on two silken threads and so afraid of +the hills?" he was asking, sleepily. "Eh? No! Bring the easel to me, if +you want a painting. I am not going to rise from my easy couch. There! +Fix that cushion so! I am a leisurely, lordly aristocrat. Palette? No, I +will just shake my soft beard of fine mist back and forth across the sky, +a spectrum for the sunrays. So! so! I see that this worm is a railroad +train. Let it curl up in the shadow of a gorge and take a nap. I will +wake it up by and by when I seize my brush and start a riot in the +heavens that will make its rows of window-glass eyes stare." + +"I am on this train and in a hurry!" Jack objected. + +"Do I hear the faint echo of a human ego down there on the earth?" +demanded the Eternal Painter. "Who are you? One of the art critics?" + +"One of Your Majesty's loving subjects, who has been away in a foreign +kingdom and returns to your allegiance," Jack answered. + +"So be it. I shall know if what you say is true when I gaze into your +eyes at sunset." + +"I am bringing you a Velasquez!" Jack added. + +"Good! Put him where he can have a view out of the window of his first +teacher at work in the studio of the universe." + +The train crept on toward the hour of the Eternal Painter's riot and +toward Little Rivers, while the patch of green was softly, impalpably +growing, growing, until the crisscross breaks of the streets developed +and Jack could identify the Doge's and other bungalows. He was on the +platform of the car before the brakes ground on the wheels, leaning out +to see a crowd at the station, which a minute later became a prospect of +familiar, kindly, beaming faces. There was a roar of "Hello, Jack!" in +the heavy voices of men and the treble of children. Then he did not see +the faces at all for a second; he saw only mist. + +"Not tanned, Jack, but you'll brown up soon!" + +"Gosh! But we've been lonesome without you!" + +"Cure any case of sore eyes on record!" + +Jack was too full of the glory of this unaffected welcome in answer to +his telegram that he was coming to find words at first; but as he fairly +dropped off the steps into the arms of Jim Galway and Dr. Patterson he +shouted in a shaking voice: + +"Hello, everybody! Hello, Little Rivers!" + +He noted, while all were trying to grasp his hands at once, that the men +had their six-shooters. A half-dozen were struggling to get his suit +case. Not one of his friends was missing except the Doge and Mary. + +"Let the patient have a little air!" protested Dr. Patterson, as some +started in to shake hands a second time. + +"Fellow-citizens, if there's anything in the direct primary I feel sure +of the nomination!" said Jack drily. + +"You're already elected!" shouted Bob Worther. + +Around at the other side of the station Jack found Firio waiting his turn +in patient isolation, with P.D., Wrath of God, and Jag Ear. + +"_Sí! sí_!" called Firio triumphantly to all the sceptics who had told +him that Jack would not return. + +Jack took the little Indian by the shoulders and rocked him back and +forth in delight, while Firio's eyes were burning coals of jubilation. + +"You knew!" Jack exclaimed. "You were right! I have come back!" + +"_Sí, sí_! I know!" repeated Firio. + +"No stopping him from bringing the whole cavalcade to the station, +either," said Jim Galway. "And he wouldn't join the rest of us out in +front of the station. He was going to be his own reception committee and +hold an overflow meeting all by himself!" + +There was no disguising the fact that the equine trio of veterans +remembered Jack. With P.D. and Jag Ear the demonstration was +unrestrained; but however exultant Wrath of God might be in secret, he +was of no mind to compromise his reputation for lugubriousness by any +public display of emotional weakness. + +"Wrath of God, I believe you were a cross-eyed Cromwellian soldier in +your previous incarnation!" said Jack; "and as it is hard for a horse to +be crosseyed, you could not retain the characteristic. Think of that! +Wouldn't a cross-eyed Cromwellian soldier strike fear to the heart of any +loyalist? And Jag Ear, you're getting fat!" + +"I keep his hoofs hard. When he fat he eat less on trail!" explained +Firio, becoming almost voluble. "All ready for trail!" he hinted. + +"Not now, Firio," said Jack. "And, Firio, there's a package at the +station, a big, flat case. It came by express on the same train with +me--the most precious package in the world. See that it is taken to +the house." + +"Sí! You ride?" asked Firio, offering P.D.'s reins. + +"No, we'll all walk." + +The procession had started toward the town when Jack felt something soft +poking him in the small of the back and looked around to find that the +cause was P.D.'s muzzle. Wrath of God and Jag Ear might go with Firio, +but P.D. proposed to follow Jack. + +"And after I have ridden you thousands of miles and you've heard all my +songs over and over! Well, well, P.D., you are a subtle flatterer! Come +along!" Then he turned to Jim Galway: "Has John Prather arrived?" + +"Yes, last night." + +"He is here now?" Jack put in quickly. + +"No; he pulled out at dawn on his way to Agua Fria." + +"Oh!" Jack was plainly disappointed. "He has the grant for the +water rights?" + +"Yes," said Jim, "though he hasn't made the fact public. He does +everything in his smooth, quiet fashion, with a long head, and I suppose +he hasn't things just right yet to spring his surprise. But there is no +disputing the fact--he has us!" + +One man henceforth was in control of the water. His power over the +desert community would be equivalent to control of the rains in a +humid locality. + +"You see," Jim continued, "old man Lefferts' partners had really never +sold out to him; so his transfer to the Doge wasn't legal. He turned his +papers over to Prather, giving Prather full power to act for him in +securing the partners' surrender of their claims and straighten out +everything with the Territory and get a bonafide concession. That is as I +understand it, for the whole business has been done in an underhand way. +Prather represented to the Doge that he was acting entirely in the +interests of the community and his only charge would be the costs. The +Doge quite believed in Prather's single-mindedness and public spirit. +Well, with the use of money and all the influences he could command, +including the kind that Pete Leddy exercises, he got the concession and +in his name. It was very smart work. I suppose it was due to the crafty +way he could direct the Doge to do his wishes that the Doge happened to +be off the scene at the critical stage of the negotiations. When he went +to New York all that remained was for him to obtain the capital for his +scheme. Lefferts and his partners had the underlying rights and the Doge +the later rights, thanks to his improvements, and Prather has them both. +Well, Leddy and his crowd have been taking up plots right and left; +that's their share in the exploitation. They're here, waiting for the +announcement to be made and--well, the water users' association is still +in charge; but it won't be when Prather says the word." + +"And you have no plans?" Jack asked. + +"None." + +"And the Doge?" + +"None. What can the old man do? Though nobody exactly blames him, a good +many aren't of a mind to consult him at all. The crisis has passed beyond +him. Three or four men, good men, too, were inclined to have it out with +John Prather; but that would have precipitated a general fight with +Leddy's gang. The conservatives got the hot-heads to wait till you came. +You see, the trouble with every suggestion is that pretty much everybody +is against it except the fellow who made it. The more we have talked, +the more we have drifted back to you. It's a case of all we've got in the +world and standing together, and we are ready to get behind you and take +orders, Jack." + +"Yes, ready to fight at the drop of the hat, seh, or to sit still on our +doorsteps with our tongues in our cheeks and doing the wives' mending, as +you say!" declared Bob Worther. "It's right up to you!" + +"You are all of the same opinion?" asked Jack. + +They were, with one voice, which was not vociferous. For theirs was that +significantly quiet mood of an American crowd when easy-going good nature +turns to steel. Their partisanship in pioneerdom had not been with +six-shooters, but with the ethics of the Doge; and such men when aroused +do not precede action with threats. + +"All right!" said Jack. + +There was a rustle and an exchange of satisfied glances and a chorus of +approval like an indrawing of breath. + +"First, I will see the Doge," Jack added; "and then I shall go to +the house." + +Galway, Dr. Patterson, Worther, and three or four others went on with him +toward the Ewold bungalow. They were halted on the way by Pete Leddy, +Ropey Smith, and a dozen followers, who appeared from a side street and +stopped across Jack's path, every one of them with a certain slouching +aggressiveness and staring hard at him. Pete and Ropey still kept faith +with their pledge to Jack in the _arroyo_. They were without guns, but +their companions were armed in defiance of the local ordinance which had +been established for Jack's protection. + +"Howdy do, Leddy?" said Jack, as amiably as if there had never been +anything but the pleasantest of relations between them. + +"Getting polite, eh! Where's your pretty whistle?" Leddy answered. + +"I put it in storage in New York," Jack said laughing; then, with a +sudden change to seriousness: "Leddy, is it true that you and John +Prather have got the water rights to this town?" + +"None of your d----d business!" Leddy rapped out. "The only business I've +got with you has been waiting for some time, and you can have it your way +out in the _arroyo_ where we had it before, right now!" + +"As I said, Pete, I put the whistle in storage and I have already +apologized for the way I used it," returned Jack. "I can't accommodate +you in the _arroyo_ again. I have other things to attend to." + +"Then the first time you get outside the limits of this town you will +have to play my way--a man's way!" + +"I hope not, Pete!" + +"Naturally you hope so, for you know I will get you, you--" + +"Careful!" Jack interrupted. "You'd better leave that out until we are +both armed. Or, if you will not, why, we both have weapons that nature +gave us. Do you prefer that way?" and Jack's weight had shifted to the +ball of his foot. + +Plainly this was not to Pete's taste. + +"I don't want to bruise you. I mean to make a clean hole through you!" +he answered. + +"That is both courteous and merciful; and you are very insistent, Leddy," +Jack returned, and walked on. + +"Just as sweet as honey, just as cool as ice, and just as sunny as +June!" whispered Bob Worther to the man next him. + +Again Jack was before the opening in the Ewold hedge, with its glimpse +of the spacious living-room. The big ivory paper-cutter lay in its +accustomed place on the broad top of the Florentine table. In line with +it on the wall was a photograph of Abbey's mural in the Pennsylvania +capitol and through the open window a photograph of a Puvis de Chavannes +was visible. Evidently the Doge had already hung some of the +reproductions of masterpieces which he had brought from New York. But no +one was on the porch or in the living-room; the house was silent. As +Jack started across the cement bridge he was halted by a laugh from his +companions. He found that P.D. was taking no risks of losing his master +again; he was going right on into the Doge's, too. Jim took charge of +him, receiving in return a glance from the pony that positively reeked +of malice. + +Again Jack was on his way around the Doge's bungalow on the journey he +had made so many times in the growing ardor of the love that had mastered +his senses. The quiet of the garden seemed a part of the pervasive +stillness that stretched away to the pass from the broad path of the +palms under the blazonry of the sun. As he proceeded he heard the +crunching of gravel under a heavy tread. The Doge was pacing back and +forth in the cross path, fighting despair with the forced vigor of his +steps, while Mary was seated watching him. As the Doge wheeled to face +Jack at the sound of his approach, it was not in surprise, but rather in +preparedness for the expected appearance of another character in a +drama. This was also Mary's attitude. They had heard of his coming and +they received his call with a trace of fatalistic curiosity. The Doge +suddenly dropped on a bench, as if overcome by the weariness and +depression of spirits that he had been defying; but there was something +unyielding and indomitable in Mary's aspect. + +"Well, Sir Chaps, welcome!" said the Doge. "We still have a seat in the +shade for you. Will you sit down?" + +But Jack remained standing, as if what he had to say would be soon said. + +"I have come back and come for good," he began. "Yes, I have come back to +take all the blue ribbons at ranching," he added, with a touch of garden +nonsense that came like a second thought to soften the abruptness of his +announcement. + +"For good! For good! You!" The Doge stared at Jack in incomprehension. + +"Yes, my future is out here, now." + +"You give up the store--the millions--your inheritance!" cried the Doge, +still amazed and sceptical as he sounded the preposterousness of this +idea to worldly credulity. + +"Quite!" + +There was no mistaking the firmness of the word. "To make your fortune, +your life, out here?" + +The Doge's voice was throbbing with the wonder of the thing. + +"Yes!" + +"Why? Why? I feel that I have a right to ask why!" demanded the Doge, in +all the majesty of the moment when he faced John Wingfield, Sr. in the +drawing-room. + +"Because of a lie and what it concealed. Because of reasons that may not +be so vague to you as they are to me." + +"A lie! Yes, a lie that came home!" the Doge repeated, while he passed +his hand back and forth over his eyes. The hand was trembling. Indeed, +his whole body was trembling, while he sought for self-control and to +collect his thoughts for what he had to say to that still figure awaiting +his words. When he looked up it was with an expression wholly new to +Jack. Its candor was not that of transparent mental processes in serene +philosophy or forensic display, but that of a man who was about to lay +bare things of the past which he had kept secret. + +"Sir Chaps, I am going to give you my story, however weak and blameworthy +it makes me appear," he said. "Sir Chaps, you saw me in anger in the +Wingfield drawing-room, further baffling you with a mystery which must +have begun for you the night that you came to Little Rivers when we +exchanged a look in which I saw that you knew that I recognized you. I +tried to talk as if you were a welcome stranger, when I was holding in my +rancor. There was no other face in the world that I would not rather have +seen in this community than yours! + +"How glad I was to hear that you were leaving by the morning train! How I +counted the days of your convalescence after you were wounded! How glad I +was at the news that you were to go as soon as you were well! With what a +revelry of suggestion I planned to speed your parting! How demoralized I +was when you announced that you were going to stay! How amazed at your +seriousness about ranching--but how distrustful! Yet what joy in your +companionship! At times I wanted to get my arms around you and hug you as +a scarred old grizzly bear would hug a cub. And, first and last, your +success with everybody here! Your cool hand in the duel! That iron in +your will which would triumph at any cost when you broke Nogales's arm! +For some reason you had chosen to stop, in the play period of youth, on +the way to the inheritance to overcome some obstacle that it pleased you +to overcome and to amuse yourself a while in Little Rivers--you with your +steadiness in a fight and your airy, smiling confidence in yourself!" + +"I--I did not know that I was like that!" said Jack, in hurt, groping +surprise. "Was I truly?" + +The Doge nodded. + +"As I saw you," he said. + +Jack looked at Mary, frankly and calmly. + +"Was I truly?" he asked her. + +"As I saw you!" she repeated, as an impersonal, honest witness. + +"Then I must have been!" he said, with conviction. "But I hope that I +shall not be in the future." And he smiled at Mary wistfully. But her +gaze was bent on the ground. + +"And you want it all--all the story from me?" the Doge asked, hesitating. + +"All!" Jack answered. + +"It strikes hard at your father." + +"The truth must strike where it will, now!" + +"Then, your face, so like your father's, stood for the wreck of two +lives to me, and for recollections in my own career that tinged my view +of you, Jack. You were one newcomer to Little Rivers to whom I could not +wholly apply the desert rule of oblivion to the past and judgment of +every man solely by his conduct in this community. No! It was out of the +question that I could ever look at you without thinking who you were. + +"You know, of course, that your father and I spent our boyhood in +Burbridge. Once I found that he had told me an untruth and we had our +difference out, as boys will; and, as I was in the right, he confessed +the lie before I let him up. That defeat was a hurt to his egoism that he +could not forget. He was that way, John Wingfield, in his egoism. It was +like flint, and his ambition and energy were without bounds. I remember +he would say when teased that some day he should have more money than all +the town together, and when he had money no one would dare to tease him. +He had a remarkable gift of ingratiation with anyone who could be of +service to him. My uncle, who was the head of the family, was fond of +him; he saw the possibilities of success in this smart youngster in a New +England village. It was the Ewold money that gave John Wingfield his +start. With it he bought the store in which he began as a clerk. He lost +a good part of the Ewold fortune later in one of his enterprises that did +not turn out well. But all this is trifling beside what is to come. + +"He went on to his great commercial career. I, poor fool, was an egoist, +too. I tried to paint. I had taste, but no talent. In outbursts of +despair my critical discrimination consigned my own work to the rubbish +heap. I tried to write books, only to find that all I had was a head +stuffed with learning, mixed with the philosophy that is death to the +concentrated application that means positive accomplishment. But I could +not create. I was by nature only a drinker at the fountain; only a +student, the pitiful student who could read his Caesar at eight, learn a +language without half trying, but with no ability to make my knowledge of +service; with no masterful purpose of my own--a failure!" + +"No one is a failure who spreads kindliness and culture as he goes +through life," Jack interrupted, earnestly; "who gives of himself +unstintedly as you have; who teaches people to bring a tribute of flowers +to a convalescent! Why, to found a town and make the desert bloom--that +is better than to add another book to the weight of library shelves or to +get a picture on the line!" + +"Thank you, Jack!" said the Doge, with a flash of his happy manner of +old, while there was the play of fleeting sunshine over the hills and +valleys of his features. "I won't call it persiflage. I am too selfish, +too greedy of a little cheer to call it persiflage. I like the illusion +you suggest." + +He was silent for a while, and when he spoke again it was with the tragic +simplicity of one near his climax. + +"Your father and I loved the same girl---your mother. It seemed that in +every sympathy of mind and heart she and I were meant to travel the long +highway together. But your father won her with his gift for ingratiation +with the object of his desire, which amounts to a kind of genius. He won +her with a lie and put me in a position that seemed to prove that the +lie was truth. She accepted him in reaction; in an impulse of heart-break +that followed what she believed to be a revelation of my true character +as something far worse than that of idler. I married the woman whom he +had made the object of his well-managed calumny. My wife knew where my +heart was and why I had married her. It is from her that Mary gets her +dark hair and the brown of her cheeks which make her appear so at home on +the desert. Soon after Mary's birth she chose to live apart from me--but +I will not speak further of her. She is long ago dead. I knew that your +mother had left your father. I saw her a few times in Europe. But she +never gave the reason for the separation. She would talk nothing of the +past, and with the years heavy on our shoulders and the memory of what we +had been to each other hovering close, words came with difficulty and +every one was painful. Her whole life was bound up in you, as mine was in +Mary. It was you that kept her from being a bitter cynic; you that kept +her alive. + +"Some of the Ewold money that John Wingfield lost was mine. You see how +he kept on winning; how all the threads of his weaving closed in around +me. I came to the desert to give Mary life with the fragments of my +fortune; and here I hope that, as you say, I have done something worthier +than live the life of a wandering, leisurely student who had lapsed into +the observer for want of the capacity by nature or training to do +anything else. + +"But sometimes I did long for the centres of civilization; to touch +elbows with their activities; to feel the flow of the current of +humanity in great streets. Not that I wanted to give up Little Rivers, +but I wanted to go forth to fill the mind with argosies which I could +enjoy here at my leisure. And Mary was young. The longing that she +concealed must be far more powerful than mine. I saw the supreme +selfishness of shutting her up on the desert, without any glimpse of the +outer world. I sensed the call that sent her on her lonely rides to the +pass. I feared that your coming had increased her restlessness. + +"But I wander! That is my fault, as you know, Sir Chaps. Well, we come to +the end of the weaving; to the finality of John Wingfield's victory. +Little Rivers was getting out of hand. I could plan a ranch, but I had +not a business head. I had neither the gift nor the experience to deal +with lawyers and land-grabbers. I knew that with the increase of +population and development our position was exciting the cupidity of +those who find quicker profit in annexing what others have built than in +building on their own account. I knew that we ought to have a great dam; +that there was water to irrigate ten times the present irrigated area. + +"Then came John Prather. I saw in him the judgment, energy, and ability +for organization of a real man of affairs. He was young, self-made, +engaging and convincing of manner. He liked our life and ideals in Little +Rivers; he wanted to share our future. In his resemblance to you I saw +nothing but a coincidence that I passed over lightly. He knew how to +handle the difficult situation that arose with the reappearance of old +man Lefferts' partners. He would get the water rights legalized beyond +dispute and turn them over to the water users' association; he would +bring in capital for the dam; the value of our property would be +enhanced; Little Rivers would become a city in her own right, while I was +growing old delectably in the pride of founder. So he pictured it and so +I dreamed. I was so sure of the future that I dared the expense of a trip +to New York. + +"And always to me, when I looked at you and when I thought of you, you +were the son of John Wingfield; you incarnated the inheritance of his +strength. But when, from the drawing-room, I saw your father, whom I had +not seen for fifteen years, then--well, the thing came to me in a burning +second, the while I glimpsed his face before he saw mine. He was smiling +as if pleased with himself and his power; he was rubbing the palms of his +hands together; and I saw that it was John Prather who was like John +Wingfield in manner, pose, and feature. You were like the fighting man, +your ancestor, and your airy confidence was his. And I, witless and +unperceiving, had been won by the same methods of ingratiation with which +John Wingfield had won the assistance of the Ewold fortune for the first +step of his career; with which he had won Alice Jamison and kept me +unaware of his plan while he was lying to her. + +"Finally, let us say, in all charity, that your father is what he is +because of what is born in him and for the same reason that the snowball +gathers size as it rolls; and I am what I am for the same reason that the +wind scatter the sands of the desert--a man full of books and tangent +inconsequence of ideas, without sense; a simpleton who knows a painting +but does not know men; a garrulous, philosophizing, blind, old +simpleton, whose pompous incompetency has betrayed a trust! Through me, +men and women came here to settle and make a home! Through me they +lose--to my shame!" + +The Doge buried his face in his hands and drew a deep breath more +pitiful than a sob, which, as it went free of the lungs, seemed to leave +an empty ruin of what had once been a splendid edifice. He was in +striking contrast to Mary, who, throughout the story fondly regarding +him, had remained as straight as a young pine. Now, with her rigidity +suddenly become so pliant that it was a fluid thing mixed of +indignation, fearlessness, and compelling sympathy, she sprang to his +side. She knew the touchstone to her father's emotion. He did not want +his cheek patted in that moment of agony. He wanted a stimulant; some +justification for living. + +"There is no shame in believing in those who speak fairly! There is +honor, the honor of faith in mankind!" she cried penetratingly. "There is +no shame in being the victim of lies!" + +"No! No shame!" the Doge cried, rising unsteadily to his feet +under the whip. + +"And we are not afraid for the future!" she continued. "And the other men +and women in Little Rivers are not afraid for the future!" + +"No, not afraid under this sun, in this air. Afraid!" + +An unconquerable flame had come into his eyes in answer to that in +Mary's. + +"The others have asked me to act for them, and I think I may yet save our +rights," said Jack. "Will you also trust me?" + +"Will I trust you, Jack? Trust you who gave up your inheritance?" +exclaimed the Doge. "I would trust you on a mission to the stars or to +lead a regiment; and the wish of the others is mine." + +Jack had turned to go, but he looked back at Mary. + +"And you, Mary? I have your good wishes?" + +He could not resist that question; and though it was clear that nothing +could stay him--as clear as it had been in the _arroyo_ that he would +keep his word and face Leddy--he was hanging on her word and he was +seeing her eyes moist, with a bright fire like that of sunshine on still +water. She was swaying slightly as a young pine might in a wind. Her eyes +darkened as with fear, then her cheeks went crimson with the stir of her +blood; and suddenly, her eyes were sparkling in their moisture like water +when it ripples under sunshine. + +"Yes, Jack," she said quietly, with the tense eagerness of a good cause +that sends a man away to the wars. + +"That is everything!" he answered. + +So it was! Everything that he could ask now, with his story and hers so +fresh in mind! He started up the path, but stopped at the turn to look +back and wave his hand to the two figures in a confident gesture. + +"Luck with you, Sir Chaps!" called the Doge, with all the far-carrying +force of his oldtime sonorousness. + +"Luck! luck!" Mary called, on her part; and her voice had a flute note +that seemed to go singing on its own ether waves through the tender +green foliage, through all the gardens of Little Rivers, and even away +to the pass. + +"Mary! Mary!" he answered, with a ring of cheeriness. "Luck for me will +always come at your command!" + +A moment later Galway and the others saw him smiling with a hope that ran +as high as his purpose, as he passed through the gateway of the hedge. + +"It will all be right!" he told them. + +With P.D. keeping his muzzle close to the middle of Jack's back, the +party started toward his house, which took them almost the length of the +main street. + +"Prather went by the range trail, of course?" Jack asked Galway. + +"No, straight out across the desert," said Galway. + +"Straight out across the desert!" exclaimed Jack, mystified. + +For one had a choice of two routes to Agua Fria, which was well over the +border in Mexico. Not a drop of water was to be had on the way across the +trackless plateau, but halfway on the range trail was a camping-place, +Las Cascadas, where a spring which spouted in a tiny cascade welcomed the +traveller. Under irrigation, most of the land for the whole stretch +between the two towns would be fertile. There was said to be a big +underground run at Agua Fria that could be pumped at little expense. + +"All I can make out of Prather's taking a straight line, which really is +slower, as you know, on account of the heavy sand in places, is to look +over the soil," said Galway. "He may be preparing to get a concession in +Mexico at the same time as on this side, so as to secure control of the +whole valley. It means railroads, factories, new towns, millions--but you +and I have talked all this before in our dreams." + +"Who was with him?" Jack asked. + +"Pedro Nogales. He seems to have taken quite a fancy to Pedro and Pedro +is acting as guide. Leddy recommended him, I suppose." + +"No one else?" + +"No." + +"Good!" said Jack. + +As they turned into the side street where the front of Jack's bungalow +was visible, Jim Galway observed that they had seen nothing of Leddy or +any of his followers. + +"Maybe he's gone to join Prather," said Bob Worther. + +But Jack paid no attention to the remark. He was preoccupied with the +first sight of his ranch in over two months. + +"It will be all right!" he called out to the crowd in his yard; for the +others who had met him at the station were waiting for him there. "Bob, +those umbrella-trees could shade a thin, short man now, even if he didn't +hug the trunk! Firio has done well, hasn't he?" he concluded, after he +had walked through the garden and surveyed the fields and orchards in +fond comparison as to progress. + +"The best I ever knew an Indian to do!" said Jim Galway. + +"And everything kept right on growing while I was away! That's the joy of +planting things. They are growing for somebody, if not for you!" + +Inside the house he found Firio, with the help of some of the ranchers, +taking the pictures out of their cases. Firio surveyed the buccaneer +for some time, squinting his eyes and finally opening them saucer-wide +in approval. + +"You!" he said to Jack. And of the Sargent, after equally deliberate +observation, he said: "A lady!" + +That seemed about all there was to say and expressed the thought of the +onlookers. + +"And, Firio, now it's the trail!" said Jack. + +"_Sí, sí_!" said Firio, ever so softly. "We take rifles?" + +"Yes. Food for a week and two-days' water." + +It pleased Jack to hang the portraits while Firio was putting on Jag +Ear's pack; and he made it a ceremony in which his silence was +uninterrupted by the comments of the ranchers. They stood in wondering +awe before John Wingfield, Knight, hung where he could watch the Eternal +Painter at his sunset displays and looking at the "Portrait of a Lady" +across the breadth of the living-room, whose neutral tones made a perfect +setting for their dominant genius. + +"I believe they are at home," said Jack, with a fond look from one to the +other, when Firio came to say that everything was ready. + +"Señor Jack," whispered Firio insinuatingly, "for the trail you wear the +grand, glad trail clothes and the big spurs. I keep them shiny--the big +spurs!" He was speaking with the authority of an expert in trail +fashions, who would consider Jack in very bad form if he refused. + +"Why, yes, Firio, yes; it is so long since we have been on the trail!" +And he went into the bedroom to make the change. + +"I've never seen him quite so dumb quiet!" said Worther. + +Jack certainly had been quiet, ominously quiet and self-contained. When +he came out of the bedroom he was without the jaunty freedom of manner +that Little Rivers always associated with his full regalia. In place of +the dreamy distances in his eyes on such occasions were a sad +preoccupation and determination. When they went outside to Firio and the +waiting ponies, the Eternal Painter was in his evening orgy of splendor. +But even Jack did not look up at the sky this time as he walked along in +silence with his fellow-citizens to the point where the farthest furrow +of his ranch had been drawn across the virgin desert. His foot was +already in the stirrup when Jim Galway spoke the thought of all: + +"Jack, there's only two of you, and if it happened that you met +Leddy--" + +"It is Prather that I want to see," Jack answered. + +"But Leddy's whole gang! We don't know what your plans are, but if +there's going to be a mix-up, why, we've got to be with you!" + +"No!" said Jack, decidedly. "Remember, Jim, you were to trust me. This is +a mission that requires only two; it is between Prather and me. We are +going to get acquainted for the first time." + +Already Firio, riding Wrath of God, had started, and the bells of Jag Ear +were jingling, while the rifles, their bores so clean from Firio's care, +danced with the gleams of sunset in their movement with the burro's +jogging trot. Jack sprang into the saddle, his face lighting as the foot +came home in the stirrup. + +"It will be all right!" he called back. + +P.D. in the freshness of his long holiday, feeling a familiar pressure of +a leg, hastened to overtake his companions; and the group of Little +Riversites watched a chubby horseman and a tall, gaunt horseman, bathed +in gold, riding away on a hazy sea of gold, with Jag Ear's bells growing +fainter and fainter, until the moving specks were lost in the darkness. + + + + +XXXVI + +AROUND THE WATER-HOLE + + +Easy traveller had turned speedy traveller, on a schedule. Never had he +and Firio ridden so fast as in pursuit of John Prather, who had eight +hours' start of them on a two-days' journey. Jag Ear had to trot all the +time to keep up. Ounce by ounce he was drawing on his sinking fund of fat +in a constitutional crisis. + +"I keep his hoofs good. I keep his wind good. All right!" said Firio. + +It was after midnight before the steady jingle of Jag Ear's orchestra had +any intermission. An hour for food and rest and the little party was off +again in the delicious cool of the night, toward a curtain pricked with +stars which seemed to be drawn down over the edge of the world. + +"What sort of horses had Prather and Nogales?" Jack asked. He must reach +the water-hole as soon as Prather; for it was not unlikely that Prather +might have fresh mounts waiting there to take him on to the nearest +railroad station in Mexico. + +"Look good, but bad. Nogales no know horses!" Firio answered. + +"And they rode in the heat of the day!" said Jack, confidently. + +"_Sí_! And we ride P.D. and Wrath of God!" + +There were no sign-posts on this highway of desert space except the +many-armed giant cacti, in their furrowed armor set with clusters of +needles, like tawny auroras gleaming faintly; no trail on the hard earth +under foot, mottled with bunches of sagebrush and sprays of low-lying +cacti, all as still as the figures of an inlaid flooring in the violet +sheen, with an occasional quick, irregular, shadowy movement when a +frightened lizard or a gopher beat a precipitate retreat from the +invading thud of hoofs in this sanctuary of dust-dry life. And the course +of the hoofs was set midway between the looming masses of the mountain +walls of the valley. + +Firio listened for songs from Señor Jack; he waited for stories from +Señor Jack; but none came. He, the untalkative one of the pair, the +living embodiment of a silent and happy companionship back and forth from +Colorado to Chihuahua, liked to hear talk. Without it he was lonesome. +If, by the criterion of a school examination, he never understood more +than half of what Jack said, yet, in the measure of spirit, he understood +everything. + +Now Jack was going mile after mile with nothing except occasional urging +words to P.D. His close-cut hair well brushed back from his forehead +revealed the sweep of his brow, lengthening his profile and adding to the +effect of his leanness. The moonlight on his face, which had lost its +tan, gave him an aspect of subdued and patient serenity in keeping with +the surroundings. You would have said that he could ride on forever +without tiring, and that he could go over a precipice now without even +seeing any danger sign. He had never been like this in all Firio's +memory. The silence became unsupportable for once to Indian taciturnity. +If Jack would not talk Firio would. Yes, he would ask a question, just to +hear the sound of a voice. + +"We go to fight?" + +"No, Firio." + +"Not to fight Prather?" + +"No." + +"To fight Leddy?" + +"I hope not." + +"Why we go? Why so--why so--" he had not the language to express the +strange, brooding inquiry of his mind. + +"I go to save Little Rivers." + +"_Sí_!" said Firio, but as if this did not answer his question. + +"I go to get the end of a story, Firio--my story!" continued Jack. "I +have travelled long for the story and now I shall have it all from +John Prather." + +"_Sí, sí_!" said Firio, as if all the knowledge in the world had flashed +into his head quicker than the hand of legerdemain could run the leaves +of a pack of cards through its fingers. "And then?" + +At last Firio had won a smile from the untanned face which could not be +the same to him until it was tanned. + +"Then I shall plant seeds and keep the ground around them soft and +the weeds out of it; and I shall wear my heart on my sleeve and lay a +siege--a siege in the open, without parallels or mines! A siege in +the open!" + +Firio did not understand much about parallels or mines or, for that +matter, about sieges; but he could see the smile fading from Jack's lips +and could comprehend that the future of which Jack was speaking was very +far from another prospect, which was immediate and vivid in his mind. + +"But you must fight Leddy! _Sí, sí_! You must fight Leddy first!" + +"Then I must, I suppose," said Jack, absently. "All things in their turn +and time." + +"_Sí_!" answered Firio. All things in their turn and time! This desert +truth was bred in him through his ancestry, no less than in the Eternal +Painter himself. + +Again the silence of the morning darkness, with all the stars twinkling +more faintly and some slipping from their places in the curtain into the +deeper recesses of the broad band of night on the surface of the rolling +ball. The plodding hoofs kept up their regular beat of the march of their +little world of action in the presence of the Infinite; plodding, +plodding on into the dawn which sent the last of the stars in flight, +while the curtain melted away before blue distances swimming with light. +Still bareheaded, Jack looked into the face of the sun which heaved above +an irregular roof of rocks. It blazed into the range on the other side of +the valley. It slaked its thirst with the slight fall of dew as a great, +red tongue would lick up crumbs. Sun and sky, cactus and sagebrush, rock +and dry earth and sand, that was all. Nowhere in that stretch of basin +that seemed without end was there a sign of any other horseman or of +human life. + +But at length, as they rode, their eyes saw what only eyes used to desert +reaches could see, that the speck in the distance was not a cactus or +even two or three cacti in line, but something alive and moving. +Perceptibly they were gaining on it, while it developed into two riders +and a pack animal in single file. Now Jack and Firio were coming into a +region of more stunted vegetation, and soon the two figures emerged into +a stretch of gray carpet on which they were as clearly silhouetted as a +white sail on a green sea. + +"Very thick sand there--five or six miles of it. It make this the +long way," said Firio. "They call it the apron of hell to fools who +ride at noon." + +"And beyond that how many miles to the water-hole?" + +"Five or six." + +But Firio knew a way around where the going was good. It made a +difference of two or three miles in distance against them, but two or +three times that in their favor in time and the strength taken out of +their ponies. + +"How long will Prather be in getting through the sand?" Jack asked. + +Firio squinted at the objects of their pursuit for a while, as if he +wanted to be exact. + +"Almost as many hours as miles," he said. + +Near the zenith now, the sun was a bulging furnace eye, piercing through +shirts into the flesh and sucking the very moisture of the veins. A +single catspaw was all that the Eternal Painter had to offer over that +basin shut in between the long, jagged teeth of the ranges biting into +the steel-blue of the sky. The savage, merciless hours of the desert day +approached; the hours of reckoning for unknowing and unprepared +travellers. + +Jag Ear's bells had a faint plaintiveness at intervals and again their +jingling was rapid and hysterical, as he tried to make up the distance +lost through a lapse in effort. He had ceased altogether to wiggle the +sliver of ear--the baton with which he conducted his orchestra--because +this was clearly a waste of energy. P.D.'s steps still retained their +dogged persistence, but their regular beat was slower, like that of a +clock that needs winding. His head hung low. Wrath of God was no more and +no less melancholy than when he was rusticating in Jack's yard. It seemed +as if his sad visage, so reliably and grandly sad, might still be +marching on toward the indeterminate line of the horizon when his legs +were worn off his body. + +"Firio, you brown son of the sun," said Jack, with a sudden display of +his old-time trail imagery, "you prolix, garrulous Firio, you knew! You +had the great equine trio ready, and look at the miles they have done +since sunset to prove it! You, P.D., favorite trooper of our household +cavalry! You, Wrath of God, don't be afraid to make an inward smile, for +your face will never tell on you! You, Jag Ear, beat a tattoo with the +fragment of the gothic glory of burrohood, for we rest, to go on all the +faster when the heat of the day is past!" + +While Prather and Nogales were riding over hell's apron, their pursuers +had saddles off hot, moist backs, over which knowing hands were run to +find no sores. After they had eaten, P.D. and Wrath of God and Jag Ear +stood in drooping relaxation which would make the most of every moment of +respite. Jack and Firio, with a blanket fastened to the rifles as +standards, made a patch of shade in which they lay down. + +"Have a nap, Firio," said Jack. "I will wake you when it is time +to start." + +"And you--you no sleep?" asked Firio. + +"I could not sleep to-day," Jack answered. "I don't feel as if I could +sleep until I've seen Prather and heard his story--my story--Firio!" And +he lay with eyes half closed, staring at the steel blue overhead. + +It was well after midday when they mounted for the remainder of the +journey. The Eternal Painter was shaking out the silvery cloud-mist of +his beard across a background that had a softer, kindlier, deeper blue. +The shadows of the ponies and their riders and Jag Ear and his pack no +longer lay under their bellies heavily, but were stretched out to one +side by the angle of the sun, in cheerful, jogging fraternity. Prather +and Nogales had again become only a speck. + +"Do you think that they are out of the sand?" asked Jack. + +"Very near," Firio answered. + +"Their ponies had a whole night's rest--we must not forget that," said +Jack; "and they must be in a hurry, for certainly Nogales had sense +enough to rest over noon." + +"_Quien sabe_!" answered Firio. "But we catch them--_sí, sí_!" + +Leading the way, Firio turned toward the eastern range until he came to a +narrow tongue of shale almost as hard to the hoofs as asphalt, that ran +like a shoal across that sea of sand. Rest had given the great equine +trio renewed life. P.D., reduced in rank to second place, could not think +of allowing more than a foot between his muzzle and the tail of Wrath of +God, who was bound to make up the time he had lost in pursuit of the +horizon. Another hypothesis of Jack's as to the cause of Wrath of God's +melancholy was that solemn Covenanter's inability to get any nearer to +the edge of the earth. Once he could poke his nose through the blue +curtain and see what was on the other side, the satisfaction of his +eternal curiosity might have made him a rollicking comedian. As for Jag +Ear, his baton was once more conducting his orchestra in spirited tempo. +He, who was nearest of all three in heart to Firio, might well have been +saying to himself: "I knew! I knew we were not going through the sand! +Firio and I knew!" + +So rapidly were they gaining that, when past the sand and they turned +back westward, it was only a question of half an hour or so to come up +with Prather and Nogales. Nogales had been riding ahead; but now Prather, +after gazing over his shoulder for some time at his pursuers, took the +lead. He was urging his horse as if he would avoid being overtaken. +Evidently Nogales did not share that desire, for he let Prather go on +alone. But Prather's horse was too tired after its effort in the sand and +he halted and waited until Nogales, at a slow walk, closed up the gap +between them, when they proceeded at their old, weary gait. + +As Jack and Firio came within hailing distance, both Prather and Nogales +glanced at them sharply; but no word was spoken on either side. The +absence of any call between these isolated voyagers of the desert sea was +strangely unlike the average desert meeting. Prather and Nogales did not +look back again, not even when Jack and Firio were very near. A neigh by +P.D., a break into a trot by him and Wrath of God, and Firio was saying +to Nogales: + +"You went right through the sand!" + +"_Sí_!" answered Pedro, with a grin. + +Still Prather did not so much as turn his head to get a glimpse of Jack, +nor did he offer any sign of knowledge of Jack's presence when Jack +reined alongside him so close that their stirrup leathers were brushing. +Prather was gazing at the desert exactly in front of him, the reins +hanging loose, almost out of hand. His horse was about spent, if not on +the point of foundering. Jack was so near the mole on the cheek of the +peculiar paleness that never tans that by half extending his arm he might +have touched it. After all, it was only a raised patch of blue, a blemish +removable by the slightest surgical operation which its owner must have +preferred to retain. + +Firio and Nogales, also riding side by side, were also silent. There was +no sound except Jag Ear's bells, now sunk to a faint tinkle in keeping +with the slow progress of Prather's beaten horse. Looking at Prather's +hands, Jack was thinking of another pair of hands amazingly like them. In +the uncanniness of its proximity he was imagining how the profile would +look without the birthmark, and he found himself grateful for the +silence, which spoke so powerfully to him, in the time that it provided +for bringing his faculties under control. + +"How do you do?" he said at last, pleasantly. + +Probably the silence had been equally welcome to Prather in charting his +own course in the now unavoidable interview. He looked around slowly, and +he was smiling with a trace of the satire that Jack had seen in the +elevator, but smiling watchfully in a way that covers the apprehension of +a keen glance. And he saw features that were calm and eyes that were +still as the sky. + +"How do you do?" he answered; and paused as one who is about to slip a +point of steel home into a scabbard. "How do you do, brother?" he +added, as if uttering a shibboleth that could protect him from any +physical violence. + +"Brother! Brother! Yes!" repeated Jack, with dry lips. + +This shaping of conviction into fact so nakedly, so coolly, made all the +desert and the sky swim before him in kaleidoscopic patches of blue and +gray, shot with zigzag flashes. He half reeled in the saddle; his hands +gripped the pommel to hold himself in place. It was as if a long strain +of nervous tension had come to an end with a crack. Prather's smile took +a turn of deeper satisfaction. It was like John Wingfield, Sr.'s after +Jack had left the library. + +"This is the first time we have ever met to speak," said Prather, easily. + +"Yes!" assented Jack, the gray settling back into desert and the blue +into sky and the zigzag flashes becoming only the brilliance of late +afternoon sunshine. + +"Certainly it is time that we got acquainted, brother," said Prather. + +"It is!" agreed Jack. "It is time that I knew your story!" + +"Which you have hardly heard from your--I mean, our father!" The pause +between the "your" and the "our" was made with an appreciative +significance. "Well, you see, I was the brother who had the mole on +his cheek!" + +"Yes--pitifully yes!" said Jack, with a kind of horror at the expression +of this face in his father's likeness, no less than at the words. + +"Why, no! I've often thought of _you_ rather pitifully!" said Prather. + +"You well might!" Jack answered, feelingly. "We may well share a common +pity for each other." + +There was no sign that John Prather subscribed to the sentiment except in +a certain quizzical turn of his lips, as he looked away. + +"Yes, the story has been kept from me. I have come for it!" said Jack. + +"That is raking out the skeletons. But why not rake out our skeletons +together, you and I?" said Prather. + +It was clear that he enjoyed the prospect as an opportunity for +retributive enlightenment. + +"To begin with, I have the rights of primogeniture in my favor," he said. +"I was born a day before you were, in the same city of New York. My +mother's name was not down in the telephone list as Mrs. Wingfield, +however--I look at it all philosophically, you understand--and it was +just that which made the difference between you and me, outside of the +difference of our natures. But I am proud of my birth on both sides, in +my own way. My mother was won without marriage and she was true to +father. A woman of real ability, my mother! She was well suited to be +John Wingfield's wife; better, I think, in the practical world of +materialism than your mother. By a peculiar coincidence, unknown to +father, my mother called in Dr. Bennington. So you and I have a further +bond, in that the same doctor brought us into the world." + +"And my mother must have known this!" Jack exclaimed, in racking horror. + +At last the cause of her exile was clear in all its grisly monstrousness; +the source of the pain in her eyes in the portrait had been traced home. +Again he saw her white and trembling when she returned to the house in +Versailles to find a visitor there; and now he realized the fulness of +her relief when the frail boy said that he did not like his father. Her +travels had spoken the restlessness of flight in search of oblivion to +the very fact of his paternity. The "I give! I give!" of the portrait was +the giving of the infinity of her fine, sensitive being to him to make +him all hers. His feeling which had held him on the desert when he should +have gone home, that feeling of literal revulsion toward his inheritance, +was a thing born in him which had grown under her caresses and her +training. She had been living solely for him to that last moment when the +book dropped out of her hand; and the incarnation of that which had +killed her was riding beside him now in the flesh. He felt a weaving of +his muscles, a tightening of his nerves, as if waiting on the spark of +will, and all the strength that he had built in the name of the store was +madly tempted. But no! John Prather was not to blame, any more than +himself. He would listen to John Prather, as justice listens to evidence, +and endure his stare to the end. + +"Yes, your mother knew," continued Prather. "My mother made a point of +having her know. That was part of my mother's own bitterness. That was +her teaching to me from the first. She had no illusions. She knew the +advantages and the disadvantages of her position. She was and is one of +the few persons in the world of whom my father is a little afraid." + +"Then she still lives?" asked Jack sharply. + +"Yes, she is in California," Prather returned. "She often referred to the +mole on my cheek as the symbol of my handicap in the world of convention. +'But for the mole, Jack, you would have the store,' she often said. It +delighted her that I had my father's face. As I grew older the +resemblance became more marked. I could see that I pleased my father with +my practical ideas of life, which I developed when quite young. He saw to +it that my mother and I lived well and that I went to a good school. From +my books I drew the same lesson as from my peculiar inheritance; the +lesson that my mother was always inculcating. 'A bank account,' she would +repeat, 'will erase even a mole patch on the cheek. It is the supreme +power that will carry you anywhere, Jack. You must make money!' + +"When father came to see her he would talk with a candor with which I am +sure he never talked to your mother. He would tell of his successes, +revealing the strategy and system by which they were won, finding her +both understanding and sympathetic. I became a little blade that +delighted to get sharp against his big blade by asking him questions. He +did not want me about the store, and this was one of the things in which +my mother humored him. She knew just when to humor and just when to +threaten the play of the strong card which she always held. + +"All the while her ambition was laying its plans. It was that I should +have the Wingfield store one day, myself. Out of school hours I would +range the other department stores. You see, I had not only inherited my +father's face more strikingly than you had, but also his talents. I +spent the summer vacations of my fourteenth and fifteenth years in a +store. I won the attention of my superiors and promise of promotion. I +foresaw the day when I should so prove my ability that father would take +me into his own store, and then, gradually, I would make my place, +secure, while you were idling about Europe. And in those days you were +frail and I was vigorous. + +"There was no mistaking that father's sense of convention was the one +thing that stood between him and my desire. He feared the world's opinion +if the truth became known, and deep down in heart he could never get over +the pride of having married into your mother's family. You had very good +blood on the maternal side, as they say, while my mother had begun in the +cloak department and was self-made, like father. Again, I was so truly +his son in every instinct that he may have been a little jealous of me. +Father does not like to think that any other man was ever quite as great +as he is. I confess that is the way I feel, too. That is what life is, +after all--it is yourself. Yes, I saw the store as mine--surely mine, +with time!" + +Prather's reins lay across the pommel of the saddle drawn taut by the +drooping head of his horse, which was barely dragging one foot after +another. He gave Jack a glance of flashing resentment and then, in his +first impulse of real emotion, made a fist of one hand and drove it +angrily into the palm of the other before continuing. + +"Then father went to Europe to bring you home. He had decided for the +son of convention, the son of blood! Though self-made, he was for family +as against talent. Besides, it was a victory for him. At last you were +his. After your return there was a scene between mother and him, a cool, +bitter argument. He defied her to play her last card. He said that you +knew the truth and that she could at best only make a row. And he wanted +us out of New York; the place for me was a new country. He would make us +a handsome allowance. So my mother agreed to his terms and we went to the +Pacific coast. There I was to enter one of the colleges. My mother wanted +me to have a college education, you see. The last meeting between father +and me was very interesting, blade playing on blade. He really hated to +let me go, for by this time he knew how hopeless you were. He embraced me +and said that I would get on, anyway. I told him that the only trouble +was that while I was the real son, I had a mole on my cheek. + +"The West was best. There we could claim the favor of convention, Mrs. +Prather and her son. I matriculated at Stanford, but I saw nothing in it +for me. It was all dream stuff. Greek and Latin don't help in building a +fortune. They handicap you with the loss of time it takes to learn them, +at least; and I meant to be worth a million before I was thirty. Now I +know that I shall be worth two or three or four millions at thirty, if +all goes as I plan. So I cut college and broke for Goldfield. I ran a +store and was a secret partner in a saloon that paid better than the +store. I was in the game morning, noon, and night; it beat marching to +class to recite Horace and fiddle with the binomial theorem, as it must +for every man who counts for something in the world." + +Throughout, Prather's tone, except for the one moment of anger, had been +that of an even recital of facts by one who does not allow himself to +consider anything but facts in the judgment of his position. At times he +gave Jack covert glances out of the tail of his eye and saw Jack's face +white and drawn and his head lowered. Now Prather became the victim--so +he would have put it, no doubt--of another outburst of feeling. + +"But it was not like having the store!" he said. "No, my heart was in the +store; and that morning when you saw me looking down from the gallery I +was permitting myself to dream. I was thinking of what had come to you, +the fairy prince of good fortune, who had no talent for your inheritance, +and of what I might have done with it. I was thinking how I could win men +to work for me"--and there he was smiling with the father's charm--"and +of the millions to come if I could begin to build on the foundation that +father had laid. I saw branches in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia--a great +chain of stores all co-ordinated under my directing hand--I the master!" + +He rubbed the palms of his hands together as he had over the +scintillation of the jewelry counters. Though Jack had not looked around, +his ear recognized that crisp sound of exultant power. + +"Yes," Jack murmured thoughtfully, as if inviting Prather to go on with +anything further he might have to say. + +"All mine--mine!" Prather concluded, in a sort of hypnosis with his +own picture. + +Jack still stared at the earth, his profile limned in gold and the side +of his face toward Prather in shadow. They were nearing the clump of +cotton-woods around the water-hole at the base of a tongue of the range +which ran out into the desert, and Firio rode up to whisper in Spanish: + +"Señor Jack, see there! Horsemen!" + +Jack raised his head with a returning sense of his surroundings to see +some mounted men, eight in all he counted, riding along the range trail a +half mile nearer the water-hole than themselves. Their horses had the +gait of exhaustion after a long, hard ride. + +"You know who it is?" Firio whispered. + +"Yes," Jack answered. "They had the better trail and have outridden us. +All right, Firio!" + +"Leddy--Pete Leddy and some of his men!" exclaimed Prather, shading his +eyes to watch the file of figures now passing under the cotton-woods. It +seemed to relieve him. "I suppose he came on my account," he added, +nodding to Nogales. + +"Yes," said Nogales, with a grin. He always either grinned or his face +had a half savage impassiveness. + +"I wonder if Leddy thought I was in danger," and Prather gave Jack a +knowing glance of satisfaction. "We shall all camp together," he +added, smiling. + +Jack did not answer for a moment. He was intent on the cotton-woods. +Leddy and his companions appeared on the other side, the figures of +riders and horses bathed in the sunset glow. Then they disappeared as if +the earth had swallowed them up. + +"They are going on! They are not going to stop!" said Prather +apprehensively. + +"There is a basin beyond the water-hole and the seepage makes a little +pasture," Jack explained. "You will see them back in a moment." + +"Oh, yes!" said Prather, with a thrill in his voice; and again the +palms of his hands were making that refrain of delight. "But I have +told my story," he resumed. "Now may I ask you a question? Why have you +come back?" + +Jack looked around frankly and dispassionately. + +"To save Little Rivers from you! I understand that you have secured the +water rights." + +"Well, then, I have!" declared Prather, confidently, "and I mean to have +the rights for the whole valley!" and he struck his fist into his palm. +"You see," he went on, with another flash of satire, "it is not exactly +fair that you should have the store and Little Rivers, too. I had heard +of the possibilities here from my friend Leddy, who was also at +Goldfield. A useful man in his place! He got his sixth notch there. When +I came and looked around and saw that here was the opportunity I wanted, +I wired father that in any fair division of territory everything west of +the Mississippi belonged to me"--he was showing some bravado in his sense +of security now, when he saw that Leddy and his men were returning +through the cotton-woods to the water-hole--"and I should like to have +you out of my way. I told him you were the picture of health, even if you +didn't have anything in your head, and if you were ever going to learn +the business it was time that you began. But father is always careful. +Naturally he wanted to check off my report with another's; for he didn't +want you back if you were ill. So he sent Dr. Bennington out to get +professional confirmation of my statement." + +"And you told Jasper Ewold that you wanted the rights only to turn them +over to the water users' association and then bring in capital to build a +dam, with everybody sharing alike in the prosperity that was to come." + +"Yes, and Jasper Ewold was so simple! Well, what I told him was +strategy--strategy of which I think father would approve. When you have a +big object in view the end must justify the means. Look at the situation! +Two hundred thousand acres of land waiting on water to be the most +fertile in the world! Why, when I rode up the valley the first time and +saw what could be done, I was amazed to think that such an opportunity +should be lying around loose. Little Rivers was so out of the way that +other promoters had overlooked it, and everybody had sort of taken it for +granted that Jasper Ewold and his water users' association really had +legal possession. It was my chance. I thought big. That dam should be +mine. I had the money I had made in Goldfield, but it was not enough for +my purpose. + +"Where should I turn for outside capital that would not demand a +majority interest in the project? I concluded that it was time father +did something for me in return for giving up the store. Besides this +call of justice I had another influence with him. I was sure that when +he told my mother that you knew the truth he was making a statement that +suited his purpose. I was sure that you knew nothing of my story and +that father did not want you to know it. I was ready to tell if he did +not meet my demands. + +"Well, you know how he can talk when he wants to gain a point. I fancy +that I talked as well as father when I showed him how that dam would pay +for itself in five years in tolls and twenty per cent on the capital +after that; when I showed him how a population ten times that of his +store would have to take their water from me; when I showed him all the +side issues of profit from town sites and the increase of values of the +big holdings which Leddy's men would take up for me. You ought to have +seen his eyes glow. He could not withstand his pride in me. 'You have the +gift, the one gift!' he said. I told him yes, it was in the blood; and I +struck while the iron was hot. I got an outright sum from him; and he +could not resist a chance to share all that profit when capital was to be +had in New York for three or four per cent. He went in as silent partner, +as I was in the saloon at Goldfield; as a partner with a minority +interest." + +John Prather paused to laugh to himself over his victory, while the +movement of palm on palm was rapid and prolonged. + +"Our arrangement amounted to the commercial division of territory for the +family, which I had suggested," he went on with appreciative irony. "You +and he were to have the east side of the Mississippi and I was to have +the west, and you were never to know my story. Publicly, father and I +were strangers and quits, and we came to this agreement in the room of a +down-town hotel. + +"The day before I started West I simply had to have a look through the +store--the store that I loved and that I had to lose. Yes, the store is +far more to my taste than this rough western life. Naturally, as my +existence was to be kept a secret from you, when you followed me to the +elevator and tried to get acquainted I couldn't have it." + +"But as the elevator descended you pointed to the mole," said Jack. + +"Did I? I suppose that was an involuntary, instinctive pleasantry. The +previous evening father and I had had a farewell visit together. We went +into the country." + +"The night after the scene in the drawing-room!" Jack thought. + +"I knew that father was worried because he had to make an effort to show +that he was not. Usually he can cover his worries perfectly. He said that +he might have a fight in order to keep you and that he very much wanted +you to stay. But he did not succeed," concluded Prather, fist driving +into palm. "You came on the express after me." + +"Because, fortunately, you went to the house to have a look at the +ancestor!" + +"Yes," said Prather. "But I did not see you." + +"However, I saw you from the landing and overheard what passed between +you and father!" + +"No matter!" cried Prather harshly. "I am prepared for you!" He looked +toward the water-hole significantly. "And the concession is mine! The dam +will be mine!" + +"The dam could be built and all the valley might bloom without so much +power passing into the hands of one man," said Jack. + +P.D. scenting the pasturage and feeling the pangs of thirst was starting +forward at a smarter pace; but Jack held him back to the snail's crawl of +Prather's pony. + +"Who would do it? Jasper Ewold? Jim Galway?" Prather demanded. "What +these men need is a leader. They don't realize what I am doing for them. +Do they think I want to put in ten years out here for nothing? For every +dollar that they make for me they are going to make one for themselves. +That's the rule of prosperity. I am not robbing them. I am taking only my +fair share in return for creative business genius. The fellows in Little +Rivers who sulk and don't get on will have only themselves to thank." + +"But they lose their independence," Jack was arguing quietly, as if he +would thrash out the subject. "There are other things than money in +this world." + +"There's nothing much money won't do!" said Prather. + +"It will not give one self-respect or courage or moral fibre; it will not +bring the gift of poetry, music, or painting; or turn a lie into truth; +or bring back virtue to a woman who has been defiled; or make the courage +to face death calmly." + +"It will do all I want!" Prather answered. "Father not having been true +to his agreement by keeping you in New York, why should I keep his +secret? He breaks faith; I break faith. It seems to me as if there were +no escaping the penalty of my birth. I no sooner arrive than I find the +whole town knows of your return; and not only that, but a wire comes from +father saying that we had better not meet until he comes." + +"Until he comes! Yes, go on!" + +"Well, as you say, you are here to save Little Rivers and that meant an +interview with me, and--well," again the palms in their crisp movement, +"before I started out I told Pete Leddy that if you came after me I +should look to him for protection, and it seems he is on time." + +"Yes," said Jack, without looking at Prather. All the while he had kept +watch on the water-hole, and he received Prather's announcement stoically +as a confirmation of his suspicions. + +"So, if you will take my advice, brother, the best thing for you to do is +to ride back before we reach the water-hole, unless you prefer Leddy's +company. This time he will fight you in his way." + +"My horse is tired and there is neither water nor feed for him except +there." Jack stated this quietly and stubbornly, as he nodded toward the +cotton-woods. Then he looked around to Prather. Suddenly Prather found +himself looking at a face that seemed to have only the form of that face +by the side of which he had been riding. It was as if another man had +taken Jack's place in the saddle. The ancestor was rising in Jack. +Prather saw an electric spark in Jack's eyes, the spark of the high +voltage that made his muscles weave and a flutter come in his cheeks. +"No, I am not going back until I have recovered the rights that you have +taken from Little Rivers!" he said. + +Prather in sudden confusion realized that he had let his feelings go too +soon. They were not yet at the water-hole, and he was within easy reach +of that hand working on the reins in a way that promised an outburst. + +"You think of physical violence against me--your own flesh and blood!" he +said defensively. + +He saw Jack shudder in reaction and knew that he was safe for the moment. +When Jack looked away at the water-hole Prather's fingers slipped to his +own six-shooter and rested there, twitching nervously; and in the rear +Firio was watching both him and Nogales shrewdly. + +From any outward sign now, Jack might have been starting on another +journey with quiet eagerness; a journey that might end at a precipice a +few yards ahead or at the other side of the world. Of this alone you +could be sure from the resoluteness of his features, that he was going +straight on; while Firio, in the telepathy of desert companionship, +understood that he was missing no developing detail within the narrow +range of vision in front of P.D.'s nose. Trusting all to Jack, Firio was +on wires, ready for a spring in any direction. + +They were coming to the edge of a depression of an old watercourse that +wound around past the cotton-woods to the ridge itself and included the +basin where Leddy and his followers had tethered their horses. But this +part of it was dry sand. The standing figures around the water-hole had +sunk down. Jack could see them as lumps in a row. A blade of flame from +the setting sun fell on them, revealing the glint of rifle barrels. + +"Firio! Quick--down! P.D., down!" Jack called, dismounting with a leap; +and as though in answer to his warning came the singing of bullets about +their ears. + +P.D. had been trained to sink on all fours at a word and he and Jack +together dropped into the cover of the _arroyo_, below the desert line. +When he looked around Firio was at his side, still holding the reins of +Wrath of God. But Wrath of God's sturdy, plodding nature had little +facility in learning tricks. A tiny stream of blood was flowing down his +forehead and he lay still. At last, all in loyal service, he had reached +the horizon. His bony, homely, good old face seemed singularly peaceful, +as if satisfied with the reward at his journey's end. Jag Ear was +standing beside P.D. and Prather's burro next to him, both unharmed. +Nogales's horse had also been killed, but its rider was safe. Prather was +crawling down the side of the _arroyo_ on his belly, digging his hands +into the dirt, his face white and contorted and his eyes shifting back +and forth in ghastly incomprehension. His horse followed him and sank +down in final surrender to exhaustion. + +By common impulse, Jack and Firio seized the rifles from Jag Ear's pack, +while Nogales, a spectator, squatted beside Prather. + +"What--what does it mean?" Prather gasped, spasmodically. "I--I--was it +Leddy that fired on us?" + +"Yes," said Jack over his shoulder, as he and Firio started up the bank +of the _arroyo_ facing the water-hole. "No doubt of it." + +"It was you they wanted--not me--not me! I--I--" + +"I don't know. At all events, I do not mean they shall rush us!" Jack +answered, as he and Firio hugged the slope with their rifles resting on +top and only their heads showing above it. + +"No! It couldn't be that they recognized me. They will let me by! They +expect me!" + +"Yes, you belong on their side!" Jack called back. + +"I will send out a flag of truce!" said Prather, brightening with +the thought. "You, Nogales, take my handkerchief and go and explain +to Leddy!" + +Nogales seemed agreeable to the suggestion. Indeed, he was very +expeditious in starting. While Jack never took his eye off the sight of +his barrel, Nogales walked across the gleaming interval between the two +parties waving Prather's handkerchief. Leddy rose on his knee watchfully, +rifle in hand, while he spoke with Nogales. Then Nogales started back +with his head thrown up jubilantly, but stopped when he was within +calling distance and sang out, truculently: + +"Leddy get you both! He get everything!" + +He turned on his heel and soon was another lump around the water-hole. + +"That makes nine, Firio!" said Jack. + +He smiled in relief to be rid of Nogales; smiled in happy confidence, as +if he were truly the ancestor's child. + +"_Sí_!" answered Firio, as if he had just as soon there were a regiment +against them. He was happy beyond words. He patted his rifle barrel; he +spread out his big red bandanna beside his elbow and on it nicely +arranged a couple of extra charges of cartridges. + +Prather remained flat on the bottom of the _arroyo_, overwhelmed. It was +some time before he could speak. + +"I--I don't understand! It isn't possible!" he said finally. + +"Everything is possible with Leddy. It seems that there can be peace +between him and me in this valley in only one way," Jack answered. + +"But me! I suppose he found out that I--" Prather stopped without +finishing the sentence. "What am I to do?" he asked Jack in livid appeal. + +"Why, it is three against nine, if you choose!" Jack answered. "You have +a rifle, and it is for your life." + +"My life!" Prather gasped, another wave of fear submerging him. + +"Yes. We have no horses with which to make our escape and we should be +winged as soon as we exposed ourselves. Leddy means that we shall die of +thirst, or die fighting." + +Through all this dialogue Jack had been speaking to the head that lay +between his eye and a target. As Prather reached up a trembling hand to +take his rifle from the back of his burro one of the lumps around the +water-hole rose, possibly to change position. When it became the +silhouette of a kneeling man, Jack fired and the figure plunged forward +like an automaton that had had its back broken. + +"Eight!" whispered Firio. + +"Duck!" Jack told him; for a response instantly came in a volley that +kicked up the dust around their heads. + +But Jack's rifle lay in limp hands. + +"Eight!" he repeated, dazedly. "And I shot to kill--to kill!" + +His face blanched with horror at the thing that he had done. It seemed as +if the strength had been struck out of him. He appeared ready to let +destiny overtake him rather than fire again. Then as in a flash, the +ancestor in him reappeared and in his features was written that very +process of fate which Dr. Bennington had said was in him. Again his hand +was firm on the barrel and his eye riveted on the sight, as he drew +himself up until he lay even with the bank of the _arroyo_. + +The volley from the cotton-woods had swept over Prather's head at the +instant that he had taken hold of his rifle. It dropped from his grasp. +He burrowed in the sand under the pressure of that near and sinister rush +of singing breaths. + +"I can't! I can't!" he said helplessly. + +He was leaden flesh, without the power to move. At his words Jack glanced +back to see a dropped jaw and glassy, staring eyes. + +"You are suffering!" exclaimed Jack. "Are you hit?" + +"No!" Prather managed to say, and reached out for his rifle in clumsy +desperation, as if he were feeling for it in the dark. + +"Take your time!" said Jack encouragingly, as one would to a victim of +stage fright. "There isn't any danger for the moment, while advantage of +position is with us--the sun over our shoulders and in their faces." + +The lumps around the water-hole grew smaller. Evidently, as a result of +the lesson, they were creeping backward on their stomachs to a less +exposed position. Two had quite disappeared, or else the brilliant play +of light had melted them into the golden carpet of reflected sunshine on +which they rested. Directly, Jack saw two figures creeping over the rim +of the pasturage basin. + +"So, that's it!" he said to Firio. + +Firio nodded his understanding of Leddy's plan to take them in flank +under cover of the _arroyo_. + +"We shall have to respond in kind!" said Jack. + +He left his hat where his head had been and began crawling along the side +of the _arroyo_, but paused to call to Prather, who, now that no bullets +were flying, was trying the mechanism of his rifle with a somewhat +steadier hand: + +"Prather, if you could manage to get up there beside Firio and join him +in pouring out a magazine full at the right moment, it would help! If +not, put your hat up there beside mine. You can do that without exposing +yourself." + +Jack's tone was that of one who urges a tired man to take a few more +steps, or an invalid without any appetite to try another sup of broth. It +had no hint of irony. + +"No matter," said Firio. "Leddy know he can't fight. Leddy know there is +only two of us!" His tone was without satire, but its sting was sharper +than satire; that of an Indian shrug over a negligible quantity. It +started Prather on all fours laboriously toward him. + +"I am going to the turn in the _arroyo_ that commands the next turn," +Jack explained. "When I whistle you empty your magazines. Keep your heads +down and fire fast, no matter if not accurately, so as to disturb their +aim at me!" + +"_Sí_!" said Firio. "I know!" No one could deny that he was having a very +good time making war in the company of Señor Jack. "Yes, Mister Prather," +he added, when, after toiling painfully on his belly for the few feet he +had to go, Prather lay with his stark face near Firio's; a face strangely +like that of John Wingfield, Sr. when he saw Jasper Ewold from the +drawing-room doorway. "For your life, Mister Prather! _Sí_! Up a little +more! Chin high as mine, so! Eye on sight, so!" + +Prather obeyed in an abyssmal sort of shame which, for the time being, +conquered his fear, though not his palsy; for his rifle barrel trembled +on its rest. + +Meanwhile, Jack had crept to the bend in the _arroyo_. He was listening. +It would not do to show his head as a warning of his presence. Faintly he +heard men moving in the sand, moving slowly and cautiously. At the moment +he chose as the right one, with rifle cocked and finger on trigger, he +gave his signal. Then he sprang to the top of the bank, fully exposed to +the marksmen at the water-hole. For no half measure would do. He must +have a full view of the bottom of the next bend. There he saw two +crawling figures. He fired twice and dropped down with three or four +stinging whispers in his ears and a second volley overhead as he was +under cover. Again he sprang up over the bank in the temptation to see +the result of his aim. One of the would-be flankers lay prostrate and +still, face downward. The other was disappearing beyond the second bend. + +"Seven, now!" he thought miserably, in comprehension of the whole +business as ridicule in human savagery. "They won't trouble us again +immediately. They will wait on darkness and thirst," he concluded; and +called, as he turned back, to Firio: "It worked like a charm, O son of +the sun! They could not fire at all straight with your bullets flying +about their heads, disturbing their--" His speech ended at sight of +Prather, half rolling, half tumbling down the slope, his hands over his +face, while he uttered a prolonged moan. + +"Bullet hit a rock under sand!" said Firio, as Jack hastened to assist +Prather, who had come to a halt at the very bottom of the _arroyo_ and +lay gasping on his side. Jack took hold of Prather's wrists to draw his +hands away from the wound. + +"My God! Out here, like a rat in a trap!" Prather groaned. "When I have +all life before me! In sight of millions and power--a rat in a trap out +on this damnable desert, as if I were of no more account than a rancher!" + +"Let me see!" said Jack; for Prather was holding his hands tight against +his face, as if he feared that all the blood in his body would pour out +if he removed them. "Let me see! Maybe it is not so bad!" + +Prather let his hands drop and the right one which was over the cheek +with the mole was splashed red between the fingers. On the cheek was a +raw spot, from which ran a slight trickle. The mole had gone. A splinter +of rock, or perhaps a bullet, with its jacket split, ricocheting +sidewise, had torn it clean from the flesh. + +"Not at all dangerous!" said Jack. + +"No?" exclaimed Prather, in utter relief. + +"It will heal in a fortnight!" + +A small medicine case was among the regular supplies that were always +packed on that omnibus of a burro, Jag Ear. While Jack was bandaging the +wound, Firio, who kept watch, had no news to report. + +"Nothing matters! They will get us, anyway!" Prather moaned. The shock of +being hit had quite finished any pretence at concealing his mortal fear +of the outcome. + +"Oh, I wouldn't say that! We already have them down to seven!" said Jack +encouragingly, as he made a pillow of a blanket and bade Prather rest +his head on it. + +But he knew well that they were a seven who had learned wisdom from the +fate of their comrades. From Nogales, Leddy must have heard of the loss +of two horses. At best, but one of the beleaguered three had any means of +escape. Leddy could well afford to curb his impatience as he camped +comfortably by the water-hole, while his own horses grazed. + +The sun was still above the western ridge in the effulgence of its adieu +for the day. Jack was on his knee, with the broad, level glare full on +him, looking at Prather, who was in the shadow; and his reflections were +mixed with that pity which one feels toward another who is lame or blind +or suffers for the want of any sense or faculty that is born to the +average human being. For a man of true courage rarely sees a coward as +anything but a man ailing; he is grateful for nature's kindness to +himself. And the spark of John Wingfield, Knight, skipping generations +before it settled on a descendant, had not chosen John Prather for its +favor. The ancestor was all Jack's. + +Prather, in his agony of mind, had moments of wondering envy as he +watched Jack's changing expression. He could see that Jack, in entire +detachment from his problem of fighting Leddy, was thinking soberly in +the silence of the desert, unconscious in his absorption of the presence +of any other human being. Suddenly his eyes opened wide in the +luminousness of a happy discovery; his lips turned a smile of supreme +satisfaction, and his face seemed to be giving back the light of the sun. + +"It's all right!" he said. "Yes, everything is going to be all right!" + +"How?" asked Prather wistfully, feeling the infection of the confident +ring of Jack's tone. + +"There is one horse left," said Jack. "He is in better condition than +Leddy imagines. When darkness comes you can get away with him and by +morning he will have brought you to water at Las Cascadas, halfway on the +range trail. Then you will be quite safe." + +"Yes! Yes!" Prather half rose, his breath coming fast, his eyes ravenous. + +"And in return you will give Little Rivers back its water rights! Is that +a bargain?" Jack asked. + +"Give up my concession and all it means to me! Give it up absolutely--its +millions!" objected Prather, in an uncontrollable impulse of greed. + +"King Richard III, you remember," Jack declared, with a trace of his old +humor breaking out over the new aspect of the situation, "said he would +give his kingdom for a horse. He could not get the horse and he lost both +his kingdom and his life. If he had been able to make the trade he might +have saved his life and perhaps--who knows?--have won another kingdom." + +"I will save my life!" Prather concluded; but under his breath he added +bitterly: "And you get both the store and Little Rivers!" in the +prehensile instinct which gains one thing only to covet another. + +"You have the papers for the concession with you?" Jack asked. + +"I--I--" + +"Yes!" interposed Jack firmly. + +"Yes!" Prather admitted. + +"And you have pencil and paper to make some sort of transfer that will be +the first legal step in undoing what you have done?" + +"Yes." + +While Prather was occupied with this, Jack found pencil and paper on his +own account and by the light of the sun's last rays and in the happiness +of one who has brought a story to a good end, he wrote to his father: + +"John Prather will tell you how he and I met out on the desert before you +came and of the long talk we had. + +"You wanted a son who would go on building on the great foundation you +had laid. You have one. He said that you wanted to give him the store. +The reason why you might not give it to him no longer exists. The mole is +gone. Of course there will be a scar where the mole was. I, too, shall +have to carry a scar. But the means is in your power to go far toward +erasing his, for his mother, Mrs. Prather, is still living. + +"So everything is clear. Everything is coming out right. John Prather and +I change places, as nature intended that we should. You need have no +apprehensions on my account. Though I had not a cent in the world I could +make my living out here--a very sweet thought, this, to me, with its +promise of something real and practical and worth while, at which I can +make good. I know that you are going to keep the bargain that Prather and +I have made; and think of me as over the pass and very happy as I write +this, in the confidence that at last all accounts have been balanced and +we can both turn to a fresh page in the ledger. JACK." + +When Jack, after he had received the transfer, gave the letter to Prather +to read, Prather was transfixed with incredulity. + +"You mean this?" he gasped blankly, as his surprise became articulate. + +"Yes. You have quite the better of King Richard--you gain both the +kingdom and the horse." + +"The store, yes, the store--mine! Mine--the store!" said Prather, in a +slow, passionate monotone, his fingers trembling with the very triumph of +possession as he thrust the letter into his pocket. "The store, yes, the +store!" he repeated, amazement mixed with exultation. "But--" his keen, +practical mind was recovering its balance; he was on guard again. Between +him and the realization of his inheritance lay the shadow of the fear of +the miles in the night. "But--there is no trick?" he hazarded in +suspicion. + +"No!" + +Jack spoke in such a way that it removed the last doubt for Prather, who +kneaded his palms together in a kind of frenzy, oblivious of all except +the moneyed prospect of the kingdom craved that had become a kingdom won. + +"How long before I start?" he asked. + +"As soon as the first darkness settles and before the moon rises." + +"I shall need some food," Prather went on ingratiatingly. "And they say +wounds bring on fever. Have you any water to drink on the way?" + +"We will fix you up the best we can. I will divide what water remains +between you and P.D. He shall have his share now and you can drink +yours later." + +The sun had set. The afterglow was fading, and in a few minutes, when the +light was quite out of the heavens, Jack announced that it was time for +Prather to start. + +"How shall I know the direction?" Prather asked. + +"Trust P.D. He will find it," said Jack. He held the stirrup for Prather +to mount with the relief of freeing himself at last from the clinging +touch of the phantoms. "You are perfectly safe. In two days you will be +mounting the steps of a Pullman on your way to New York." + +"And you? What--what are you going to do?" Prather inquired hectically, +with a momentary qualm of shame. + +"Why, if Firio and I are to have water to make coffee for breakfast we +must take the water-hole!" Jack answered, as if this were a thing of +minor importance beside seeing Prather safely on his way. "Be sure not to +overwater P.D. after the night's ride, and don't overdo him on the final +stretch, and turn him over to Galway when you arrive. Home, P.D.! Home!" +he concluded, striking that good soldier with the flat of his hand on the +buttocks. And P.D. trotted away into the night. + +Jack listened to the hoof-beats on the soft earth dying away and then +crept up beside Firio on the bank and gazed into the black wall in the +direction of the cotton-woods. A slight glow in the basin, which must be +Leddy's camp-fire, was the only sign of life in the neighborhood. The +silence was profound. He had not spoken a word to Firio. With one +problem forever solved, he was absorbed in another. + +"Leddy drinks, eats, waits!" whispered Firio. "If we try to go they +hunt us down!" + +"Yes," said Jack. + +"And we not go, eh? We stay? We fight?" + +"For water, Firio, yes! Two against seven!" + +"_Sí_!" Firio had no illusions about the situation. "_Sí_!" he repeated +stoically. + +"And, Firio--" Jack's hand slipped with a quick, gripping caress onto +Firio's shoulder. An inspiration had come to the mind of action, just as +a line comes to a poet in a flash; as one must have come to the ancestor +many times after he had gone into a tight place trusting to his wits and +his blade to bring him out. "And, Firio, we are going to change our base, +as the army men say--and change it before the moon rises. Jag Ear, we +shall have to leave you behind," he added, when they had dropped back to +the burro's side. "Just make yourself comfortable. Leddy surely wouldn't +think of killing so valuable a member of the non-combatant class. We will +come for you, by and by. It will be all right!" + +He gave the sliver of ear an affectionate corkscrew twist before he and +Firio, taking all their ammunition, crawled along the bottom of the +_arroyo_ and up the ridge where they settled down comfortably behind a +ledge commanding the water-hole at easy range. + +"It's lucky we learned to shoot in the moonlight!" Jack whispered. + +"_Sí"!_ Firio answered, in perfect understanding. + + + + +XXXVII + +THE END OF THE WEAVING + + +For over a week a private car had stood on a siding at Little Rivers. +Every morning a porter polished the brasswork of the platform in heraldry +of the luxury within. Occasionally a young man with a plaster over a +wound on his cheek would walk up and down the road-bed on the far side of +the car. Indeed, he had worn a path there. He never went into town, and +any glances that he may have cast in that direction spoke his desire to +be forever free of its sight. Not a train passed that he did not wish +himself aboard and away. But as heir-apparent he had no thought of +endangering his new kingdom by going before his father went. He meant to +keep very close to the throne. He had become clingingly, determinedly +filial. At times the gleam of the brasswork would exercise the same +hypnosis over his senses as the scintillation of the jewelry counters of +the store, and he would rub his hands crisply together. + +John Wingfield, Sr. spent little time in the car. Morning and afternoon +and evening he would go over to Dr. Patterson's with the question: "How +is he?" which all Little Rivers was asking. The rules of longevity were +in oblivion and the routine channels of a mind, so used to teeming +detail, had become abysses as dark and void as the canyons of the range. + +On the day of his arrival in Little Rivers he found a town peopled +mostly by women and children. All of the men who could bear arms and get +a horse had departed, and with them Mary. Thereby hangs a story all to +the honor of little Ignacio. After Jack had ridden away with his +insistent refusal of assistance, apprehension among the group that +watched him disappear in the gathering darkness was allayed by reports of +men who had been at the store, where they found the Leddyites hanging +about as usual. True, no one had seen either Pete or Ropey Smith, but +Lang said that they were upstairs playing poker, a favorite relaxation +from the strain of their intellectual life. + +But Ignacio learned from another Indian in Lang's service that Pete and +seven of his best shots had started for Agua Fria about the same time as +Jack, while the rest of the gang that had been left behind were making it +their business to cover the leader's absence. Distrusting Ignacio, they +locked him in a closet off the bar. In the early hours of the morning he +succeeded in escaping with his news, which he carried first to Mary. She +was not asleep when he rapped at her door. It had been a night of +wakefulness for her, recalling the night after her meeting with Jack on +the pass before the duel in the _arroyo_. + +"I for Señor Don't Care, now! I for every devil in him! And they go to +kill him!" was the incoherent way in which he began his announcement. + +In an hour the alarm had travelled from house to house. While the gang +slept at Lang's or in their tents, a solemn cavalcade set forth quietly +into the night, with rifles slung over their shoulders or lying across +the pommels of their saddles, bound to rescue Jack Wingfield. They had +protested against Mary's going with all the old, familiar arguments that +occur to the male at thought of a woman in physical danger. + +"It is the least that any of us can do," she declared. + +"But of what service will you be?" Dr. Patterson asked. + +"No one can say yet," she replied. "And no one shall stop me!" She was +driven by the same impulse that had sent her across the _arroyo_ in face +of the ruffians on the bank to Jack's side after he was wounded. "My pony +can keep up with the best of yours," she added. + +Leddy had eight hours' start on a two-days' journey. It was not in +horse-flesh to gain much on his fast and hardened ponies. There was +little chance that Jack could hold out against such odds as he must face, +even if he had escaped an ambush. So they rode in desperation and in +silence, each too certain of what was in the minds of the others to make +pretence of a hope that was not in the heart. + +Their only stop for rest was at Las Cascadas in the hot hours of midday. +Darkness had fallen when they overtook a solitary horseman coming from +Agua Fria. John Prather drew rein well to one side of the trail. He had +a moment, as they approached, in which to think out his explanation of +his position. + +"It's Prather, and riding P.D.!" Galway announced. + +"Where is Jack Wingfield?" came the merciless question as in one +voice from all. + +"You are his friends! You have come to rescue him!" Prather cried. + +He seemed overcome by his relief. At all events, the wildness of his +exclamation in face of the force barring the trail was without +affectation. + +"There is time? There is hope?" + +"Yes! yes!" gasped Prather, as the men began to surround him. + +"Why are you here? Why on his horse?" + +"Leddy turned on me, too! I was fighting at Wingfield's side! We got two +of them before dark! Then I was wounded and couldn't see to shoot. And I +came for help. And you will be in time! He's in a good position!" + +"I think you are lying!" said Galway. + +"He couldn't help it!" said Bob Worther. + +"How--how would I have his horse if he weren't willing?" protested +Prather, frantically. + +"By stealing it, in keeping with your character!" + +"Yes! On general principles we ought to--" + +"I have a piece of rope!" called a voice from the rear. + +"There isn't any tree. But we can drop him over the wall of a chasm!" + +Spectral figures with set faces appallingly grim in the thin moonlight +pressed close to Prather. + +"My God! No!" he pleaded, throatily. "We fought together, I tell you! We +drew lots to see which one should take the risk of riding through danger +to save the other!" + +"Lying again!" + +"Here's the rope! All we've got to do is to slip a noose over his head!" + +"It's a clean piece of rope, isn't it?" said the Doge, in his mellow +voice. "I don't think it's worth while soiling a clean piece of +rope. Come! Taking his life is no way to save Jack's. Come, we are +losing time!" + +"Right, Doge!" said the man with the rope. "But it is some satisfaction +to give him a scare." + +"And take care of P.D.!" called another. + +"Yes, if you founder Jack's pony you'll hear from us a-plenty!" + +This was their adieu to John Prather, who was left to pursue his way in +safety to his kingdom, while they rode on, following a hard path at the +base of the range. Those with the best horses took the lead, while the +heavier men, including the Doge, whose weight was telling on their +mounts, fell to the rear. Mary was at the head, between Dr. Patterson and +Jim Galway. + +The stars flickered out; the moon grew pale, and for a while the horsemen +rode into a wall of blackness, conscious of progress only by the sound of +hoof-beats which they were relentlessly urging forward. Then dawn flashed +up over the chaos of rocks, pursuing night with the sweep of its +broadening, translucent wings across the valley to the other range. The +tops of the cotton-woods rose out of the sparkling sea, floating free of +any visible support of trunks, and the rescuers saw that they were near +the end of their journey. + +There was a faint sound of a shot; then of another shot and another. +After that, the radiant, baffling silence of daybreak on uninhabited +wastes, when the very active glory of the spreading, intensifying light +ought, one feels, to bring paeans of orchestral splendor. It set +desperation in the hearts of the riders, which was communicated to weary +ponies driven to a last effort of speed. And still no more shots. The +silence spoke the end of some tragedy with the first streaks from the +rising sun clearing a target to a waiting marksman's eye. + +Around the cotton-woods was no sign of human movement; nothing but +inanimate, dark spots which developed into prostrate human forms, in +pantomimic expression of the story of that night's work done in the +moonlight and finished with the first flush of morning. Two of the +outstretched figures were lying head to head a few yards apart on either +side of the water-hole. The one on the side toward the ridge was +recognized as Jack, still as death. Another a short distance behind him, +at the sound of hoof-beats looked up with face blanched despite its dark +skin, the parched lips stretched over the teeth; but in Firio's eyes +there was still fire, as he whispered, "All right!" before he sank back +unconscious. A wound in his shoulder had been bandaged, but the wrist of +his gun hand lay beside a fresh red spot on the earth. + +Jack had a bullet hole in the upper left arm plugged with a bit of +cotton; and a deep furrow across the temple, which was bleeding. His +rigid fingers were still gripping his six-shooter. He lay partly on his +side, facing Leddy, who had rolled over on his back dead. + +Mary and Dr. Patterson dropped from their horses simultaneously. The +doctor pressed his hand over Jack's heart, to find it still beating. + +"Jack!" they whispered. "Jack!" they called aloud. + +He roused slightly, lifting his weary eyelids and gazing at them as if +they were uncertain shadows who wanted some kind of an explanation from +him which he had not the strength to give. + +"We must drink--blaze away, Leddy," he murmured. "I'm coming down after +the stars go out--close--close as you like--we must drink!" + +"No vital hit!" said the doctor; while Mary bringing water assisted him +to bathe the wounds before he dressed them. "No, not from a bullet!" he +added, after the dressing was finished and he had one hand on Jack's hot +brow and the other on his pulse. + +Then he attended to Firio, who was talking incoherently: + +"Take water-hole--boil coffee in the morning--quail for dinner, Señor +Jack--_sí, sí_!" + +When they had moved Jack and Firio into the shadow of the cotton-woods +and forced water down their throats, Firio revived enough to recognize +those around him and to cry out an inquiry about Jack; but Jack himself +continued in a stupor, apparently unconscious of his surroundings and +scarcely alive except for breathing. Yet, when litters of blankets and +rifles tied together had been fashioned and attached to the pack-saddles +of tandem burros, as he was lifted into place for the return he seemed to +understand that he was starting on a journey; for he said, disjointedly: + +"Don't forget Wrath of God--and Jag Ear is thirsty--and bury Wrath of God +fittingly--give him an epitaph! He was gloomy, but it was a good gloom, a +kind of kingly gloom, and he liked the prospect when at last he stuck his +head through the blue blanket of the horizon." + +Those of the party who remained behind for the last duty to the dead +counted its most solemn moment, perhaps, the one that gave Wrath of God +the honorable due of a soldier who had fallen face to the enemy. Bob +Worther wrote the epitaph with a pencil on a bit of wood: "Here lies the +gloomiest pony that ever was. The gloomier he was the better he went and +the better Jack Wingfield liked him;" which was Bob's way of interpreting +Jack's instructions. + +Then Worther and his detail rode as fast as they might to overtake the +slow-marching group in trail of the litters with the question that all +Little Rivers had been asking ever since, "How is he?" A ghastly, +painfully tedious journey this homeward one, made mostly in the night, +with the men going thirsty in the final stretches in order that wet +bandages might be kept on Jack's feverish head; while Dr. Patterson was +frequently thrusting his little thermometer between Jack's hot, +cracking lips. + +"If he were free of this jouncing! It is a terrible strain on him, but +the only thing is to go on!" the doctor kept repeating. + +But when Jack lay white and still in his bedroom and Firio was rapidly +convalescing, the fever refused to abate. It seemed bound to burn out the +life that remained after the hemorrhage from his wounds had ceased. Men +found it hard to work in the fields while they waited on the crisis. John +Wingfield, Sr. sat for hours under Dr. Patterson's umbrella-tree in +moody absorption. He talked to all who would talk to him. Always he was +asking about the duel in the _arroyo_ which was fought in Jack's way. He +could not hear enough of it; and later he almost attached himself to the +one eye-witness of the final duel, which had been fought in Leddy's way. + +When Firio was well enough to walk out he was to be found in a long +chair on Jack's porch, ever raising a warning finger for silence to +anyone who approached and looking out across the yard to Jag Ear, who was +winning back the fat he had lost in a constitutional crisis, and P.D., +who, after bearing himself first and last in a manner characteristic of a +pony who was P.D. but never Q., seemed already none the worse for the +hardships he had endured. The master of twenty millions would sit on the +steps, while Firio occupied the chair and regarded him much as if he were +a blank wall. But at times Firio would humor the persistent inquirer with +a few abbreviated sentences. It was out of such fragments as this that +John Wingfield, Sr. had to piece the story of the fight for the +water-hole. + +"Señor Jack and Mister Prather, they no look alike," said Firio one day, +evidently bound to make an end of the father's company. "Anybody say +that got bad eyes. Mister Prather"--and Firio smiled peculiarly--"I call +him the mole! He burrow in the sand, so! His hand tremble, so! He act +like a man believe himself the only god in the world when he in no +danger, but when he get in danger he act like he afraid he got to meet +some other god!" + +"But Jack? Now, after Prather had gone?" persisted the father greedily. + +"We glad the mole go. It sort of hurt inside to think a man like him. He +make you wonder what for he born." + +John Wingfield, Sr. half rose in a sudden movement, as if he were about +to go, but remained in response to another emotion that was stronger than +the impulse. + +"And Jack? He kept his head! He figured out his chances coolly! Now, +that trick he played by going up on the ridge under cover of darkness?" + +"No trick!" said Firio resentfully, in instinctive defence. "That the +place to fight! Señor Jack he see it." + +"And all through the night you kept firing?" + +"_Sí,_ after moon very bright and over our shoulders in their faces! +_Sí_, at the little lumps that lie so still. When they move quick like +they stung, we know we hit!" + +"Ah, that was it! You hit! You hit! And the other fellows couldn't. You +had the light with you--everything! Jack had seen to that! He used his +head! He--he was strong, strong!" + +Quite unconsciously, John Wingfield, Sr. rubbed his palms together. + +"When you pleased you always rub your hands same as Mister Prather," +observed Firio. + +"Oh! Do I? I--" John Wingfield, Sr. clasped his fingers together +tightly. "Yes, and the finish of the fight--how was that?" + +"Sometimes, when there no firing, Señor Jack and Leddy call out to each +other. Leddy he swear hard, like he fight. Señor Jack he sing back his +answers cheerful, like he fight. Toward morning we both wounded and +only Leddy and one other man alive on his side. When a cloud slip over +the moon and the big darkness before morning come, we creep down from +the ridge and with first light we bang-bang quick--and I no remember +any more." + +"Forced the fighting--forced it right at the end!" cried John Wingfield, +Sr. in the flush of a great pride. + +"The aggressive, that is it--that is the way to win, always!" + +"But Señor Jack no fight just to win!" said Firio. "He no want to fight. +In the big darkness, before we crawl down to the water-hole, he call out +to Leddy to make quits. He almost beg Leddy. But Leddy, he say: 'I never +quit and I get you!' 'Sorry,' says Señor Jack, with the devil out again, +'sorry--and we'll see!' No, Señor Jack no like to fight till you make him +fight and the devil is out. He fight for water; he fight for peace. He no +want just to win and kill, but--but--" bringing his story to an end, +Firio looked hard at the father, his velvety eyes shot with a +comprehending gleam as he shrugged his shoulders--"but you no understand, +you and the mole!" + +John Wingfield, Sr. shifted his gaze hurriedly from the little Indian. +His face went ashen and it was working convulsively as he assisted +himself to rise by gripping the veranda post. + +"Why do you think that?" he asked. + +"I know!" said Firio. + +His lips closed firmly. That was all he had to say. John Wingfield, Sr. +turned away with the unsteady step of a man who is afraid of slipping or +stumbling, though the path was hard and even. + +Out in the street he met the cold nods of the people of a town where his +son had a dominion founded on something that was lacking in his own. And +one of those who nodded to him ever so politely was a new citizen, who +had once been a unit of his own city within a city. + +Peter Mortimer had arrived in Little Rivers only two days after his late +employer. Peter had been like some old tree that everybody thinks has +seen its last winter. But now he waited only on the good word from the +sick-room for the sap of renewed youth to rise in his veins and his +shriveled branches to break into leaf at the call of spring. + +And the good word did come thrilling through the community. The physical +crisis had passed. The fever was burning itself out. But a mental crisis +developed, and with it a new cause for apprehension. Even after Jack's +temperature was normal and he should have been well on the road to +convalescence, there was a veil over his eyes which would not allow him +to recognize anybody. When he spoke it was in delirium, living over some +incident of the past or of sheer imagination. + +Now he was the ancestor, fitting out his ship: + +"No, you can't come! A man who is a malingerer on the London docks would +be a malingerer on the Spanish Main. I don't want bullies and boasters. +Let them stay at home to pick quarrels in the alleys and cheer the Lord +Mayor's procession!" + +Now his frigate was under full sail, sighting the enemy: + +"Suppose they have two guns to our one! That makes it about even! We'll +get the windward side, as we have before! Who cares about their guns once +we start to board!" + +Another time he was on the trail: + +"I'll grow so strong, so strong that he can never call me a weakling +again! He will be proud of me. That is my only way to make good." + +Then he was apprenticed to the millions: + +"All this detail makes me feel as if my brains were a tangled spool of +thread. But I will master it--I will!" + +Again, he was happily telling stories to the children; or tragically +pleading with Leddy that there had been slaughter enough around the +water-hole; or serenely planning the future which he foresaw for himself +when the phantoms were laid: + +"I may not know how to run the store, but I do seem to fit in here. We +can find the capital! We will build the dam ourselves!" + +His body grew stronger, with little appreciable change otherwise. For an +instant he would seem to know the person who was speaking to him; then he +was away on the winds of delirium. + +"His mind is too strong for him not to come out of this all right. It is +only a question of time, isn't it?" insisted the father. + +"There was a far greater capacity in him for suffering in that hellish +fight than there was in Pete Leddy," said Dr. Patterson. "He had +sensitiveness to impressions which was born in him, at the same time that +a will of steel was born in him--the sensitiveness of the mother, +perhaps, and the will of the ancestor. His life hung by a thread when we +found him and his nerves had been twisted and tortured by the ordeal of +that night. And that isn't all. There was more than fighting. Something +that preceded the fight was even harder on him. I knew from his look when +he set out for Agua Fria that he was under a terrible strain; a strain +worse than that of a few hours' battle--the kind that had been weighing +day after day on the will that grimly sustained its weight. And that +wound in the head was very close, very, and it came at the moment when +he collapsed in reaction after that last telling shot. Something snapped +then. There was a fracture of the kind that only nature can set. Will he +come out of this delirium, you ask? I don't know. Much depends upon +whether that strain is over for good or if it is still pressing on his +mind. When he rises from his bed he may be himself or he may ride away +madly into the face of the sun. I don't know. Nobody on earth can know." + +"Yes, yes!" said John Wingfield, Sr. slowly. + +In Jack's wildest moments it was Mary's voice that had the most telling +effect. However low she spoke he seemed always to recognize the tone and +would greet it with a smile and frequently break into verses and scraps +of remembered conversations of his boyhood exile in villa gardens. One +morning, when she and Dr. Patterson had entered the room together, Jack +called out miserably: + +"Just killing, killing, killing! What will Mary say to me, now?" + +He raised his hands, fingers spread, and stared at them with a ghastly +look. She sprang to the bedside and seized them fast in hers, and bending +very close to him, as if she would impart conviction with every quivering +particle of her being, she said: + +"She thinks you splendid! She is glad, glad! It is just what she wanted +you to do. She wished every bullet that you fired luck--luck for your +sake, to speed it straight to the mark!" + +He seemed to understand what she was saying, as one understands that +shade is cool after the broiling torment of the sun. + +"Luck will always come at your command, Mary!" he whispered, repeating +his last words when he left the Ewold garden to go to the wars. + +"And she wants you to rest--just rest--and not worry!" + +This had the effect of a soothing draught. Smilingly he fell back on the +pillow and slept. + +"You put some spirit into that!" said the doctor, after he and Mary had +tiptoed out of the room; "a little of the spirit in keeping with a +dark-eyed girl who lives in the land of the Eternal Painter." + +"All I had!" answered Mary, with simple earnestness. + +At noon Jack was still sleeping. He slept on through the last hours +of the day. + +"The first long stretch he has had," ran the bulletin, from tongue to +tongue, "and real sleep, too--the kind that counts!" + +In the late afternoon, when the coolness and the shadows of evening were +creeping in at the doors and windows, the doctor, Peter Mortimer, the +father, and Firio were on the veranda, while Mrs. Galway was on watch by +the bedside. + +"He's waking!" she came out to whisper. + +The doctor hastened past her into the sick-room. As he entered, Jack +looked up with a bright, puzzled light in his eyes. + +"Just what does this mean?" he asked. "Just how does it happen that I am +here? I thought that I--" + +"We brought you in some days ago," the doctor explained. "And since you +took the water-hole your mind has been enjoying a little vacation, while +we moved your body about as we pleased." + +"I took the water-hole, then! And Firio? Firio? He--" + +"He is just waiting outside to congratulate you on the re-establishment +of the old cordial relations between mind and body," the doctor returned; +and slipped out to call Firio and to announce: "He is right as rain, +right as rain!" news that Mrs. Galway set forth immediately to herald +through the community. + +As for Firio, he strode into Jack's presence with the air of conqueror, +sage, and prophet in one. + +"Is it really you, Firio? Come here, so that I can feel of you and make +sure, you son of the sun!" + +Jack put out his thin, white hand to Firio, and the velvet of Firio's +eyes was very soft, indeed. + +"Did you know when they brought you in?" Jack asked. + +"When burro stumble I feel ouch and see desert and then I drift away +up to sky again," answered Firio. "All right now, eh? Pretty soon +you so strong I have to broil five--six--seven quail a day and still +you hungry!" + +The doctor who had been looking on from the doorway felt a vigorous touch +on the arm and turned to hear John Wingfield, Sr. asking him to make +way. With a grimace approaching a scowl he drew back free of Jack's sight +and held up his hand in protest. "You had better not excite him!" he +whispered. + +"But I am his father!" said John Wingfield, Sr. with something of his +old, masterful manner in a moment of irritation, as he pushed by the +doctor. He paused rather abruptly when his eyes met Jack's. A faint +flush, appearing in Jack's cheeks, only emphasized his wanness and the +whiteness of his neck and chin and forehead. + +"Well, Jack, right as rain, they say! I knew you would come out all +right! It was in the blood that--" and the rest of John Wingfield, Sr.'s +speech fell away into inarticulateness. + +It was a weak, emaciated son, this son whom he saw in contrast to the one +who had entered his office unannounced one morning; and yet the father +now felt that same indefinable radiation of calm strength closing his +throat that he had felt then. Jack was looking steadily in his father's +direction, but through him as through a thin shadow and into the +distance. He smiled, but very faintly and very meaningly. + +"Father, you will keep the bargain I have made," he said, as if this were +a thing admitting of no dispute. "It is fair to the other one, isn't it? +Yes, we have found the truth at last, haven't we? And the truth makes it +all clear for him and for you and for me." + +"You mean--it is all over--you stay out here for good--you--" said John +Wingfield, Sr. gropingly. + +Then another figure appeared in the doorway and Jack's eyes returned from +the distances to rest on it fondly. In response to an impulse that he +could not control, Peter Mortimer was peering timidly into the sick-room. + +"Why, Peter!" exclaimed Jack, happily. "Come farther in, so I can see +more of you than the tip of your nose." + +After a glance of inquiry at the doctor, which received an affirmative +nod, Peter ventured another step. + +"So it's salads and roses, is it, Peter?" Jack continued. "Well, I think +you may telegraph any time, now, that the others can come as soon as they +are ready and their places are filled." + +Thus John Wingfield, Sr. had his answer; thus the processes of fate that +Dr. Bennington had said were in the younger man had worked out their end. +Under the spur of a sudden, powerful resolution, the father withdrew. In +the living-room he met Jasper Ewold. The two men paused, facing each +other. They were alone with the frank, daring features from Velasquez's +brush and with the "I give! I give!" of the Sargent, both reflecting the +afterglow of sunset; while the features of the living--John Wingfield, +Sr.'s, in stony anger, and Jasper Ewold's, serene in philosophy--told +their story without the touch of a painter's genius. + +"You have stolen my son, Jasper Ewold!" declared John Wingfield, Sr. +with the bitterness of one whose personal edict excluded defeat from his +lexicon, only to find it writ broad across the page. "I suppose you think +you have won, damn you, Jasper Ewold!" + +The Doge flushed. He seemed on the point of an outburst. Then he +looked significantly from the portrait of the ancestor to the portrait +of the mother. + +"He was never yours to lose!" was the answer, without passion. + +John Wingfield, Sr. recoiled, avoiding a glance at the walls where the +pictures hung. The Doge stepped to one side to leave the way clear. John +Wingfield, Sr. went out unsteadily, with head bowed. But he had not gone +far before his head went up with a jerk and he struck fist into palm +decisively. Rigidly, ignoring everyone he passed and looking straight +ahead, he walked rapidly toward the station, as if every step meant +welcome freedom, from the earth that it touched. + +His private car was attached to the evening express, and while it started +homeward with the king and the determinedly filial heir-apparent to the +citadel of the push-buttons, through all the gardens of Little Rivers ran +the joyous news that Jack was "right as rain." It was a thing to start a +continual exchange of visits and to keep the lights burning in the houses +unusually late. + +But all was dark and silent out at Bill Lang's store. After their return +from Agua Fria, the rescuing party, Jim Galway leading, had attended to +another matter. The remnants of Pete Leddy's gang, far from offering any +resistance, explained that they had business elsewhere which admitted of +no delay. There was peace in the valley of Little Rivers. Its phantoms +had been laid at the same time as Jack's. + + + + +XXXVIII + +THEIR SIDE OF THE PASS + + +"Persiflage! Persiflage!" cried the Doge. + +He and Jack were in the full tilt of controversy, Jack pressing an +advantage as they came around the corner of the Ewold house. It was like +the old times and better than the old times. For now there was +understanding where then there had been mystery. The stream of their +comradeship ran smoothly in an open country, with no unsounded depths. + +"But I notice that you always say persiflage just as I am getting the +better of the argument!" Jack whipped back. + +"Has it taken you all this time to find that out? For what purpose is +the word in the English vocabulary? But I'll take the other side, which +is the easy one, next time, and then we'll see! Boom! boom!" The Doge +pursed out his lips in mock terrorization of his opponent. "You are +pretty near yourself again, young sir," he added, as he paused at the +opening in the hedge. + +"Yes, strength has been fairly flooding back the last two or three days. +I can feel it travelling in my veins and making the tissues expand. It is +glorious to be alive, O Doge!" + +"Now, do you want me to take the other side on that question so you can +have another unearned victory? I refuse to humor the invalid any longer +and I agree. The proposition that it is glorious to live on such an +afternoon as this is carried unanimously. But I will never agree that you +can grow dates the equal of mine." + +"Not until my first crop is ripe; then there will be no dispute!" + +"That is real persiflage!" the Doge called after Jack. + +Jack had made his first visit to the Doge's garden since he had left it +to meet Prather and Leddy rather brief when he found that Mary was not at +home. She had ridden out to the pass. Her trips to the pass had been so +frequent of late that he had seen little of her during his convalescence. +Yet he had eaten her jelly exclusively. He had eaten it with his bread, +his porridge, his dessert, and with the quail that Firio had broiled. He +had even intimated his willingness to mix it with his soup. She advised +him to stir it into his coffee, instead. + +When he was seated in the long chair on the porch and she called to ask +how he was, they had kept to the domain of nonsense, with never a +reference to sombre memories; but she was a little constrained, a little +shy, and he never gave her cause to raise the barrier, even if she had +been of the mind in face of a possible recurrence of former provocations +while he was weak and easily tired. It was enough for him to hear her +talk; enough to look out restfully toward the gray masses of the range; +enough to know that the desert had brought him oblivion to the past; +enough to see his future as clear as the V of Galeria against the sky, +sharing the life of the same community with her. + +And what else? He was almost in fear of the very question that was never +out of his mind. She might wish him luck in the wars, but he knew her too +well to have any illusions that this meant the giving of the great thing +she had to give, unless in the full spontaneity of spirit. This +afternoon, with the flood of returning strength, the question suddenly +became commanding in a fresh-born suspense. + +As he walked back to the house he met Belvy Smith and some of the +children. Of course they asked for a story, and he continued one about a +battered knight and his Heart's Desire, which he had begun some days +previously. + +"He wasn't a particularly handsome knight or particularly good--inclined +to mischief, I think, when he forgot himself--but he was mightily in +earnest. He didn't know how to take no. Say 'No!' to him and push him off +the mountain top and there he was, starting for the peak again! And he +was not so foolish as he might seem. When he reached the top he was happy +just to get a smile from his Heart's Desire before he was tossed back +again. His fingers were worn clear down to the first joint and his feet +off up to the knees, so he could not hold on to the seams of canyons as +well as before. He would have been a ridiculous spectacle if he weren't +so pitiful. And that wasn't the worst of it. He was pretty well shot to +pieces by the brigands whom he had met on his travels. With every ascent +there was less of him to climb, you see. In fact, he was being worn down +so fast that pretty soon there wouldn't be much left of him except his +wishbone. That was indestructible. He would always wish. And after the +hardest climb of all, here he is very near the top again, and--" + +"And--and--" + +"I'll have to finish this story later," said Jack, sending the youngsters +on their way, while he went his own to call to Firio, as he entered the +yard: "Son of the sun, I feel so strong that I am going for a ride!" + +"You wear the big spurs and the grand chaps?" Firio asked. + +Jack hesitated thoughtfully. + +"No, just plain togs," he answered. "I think we will hang up that +circus costume as a souvenir. We are past that stage of our career. My +devil is dead." + +It was Firio's turn to be thoughtful. + +"_Sí_! We had enough fight! We get old and sober! _Sí_, I know! We settle +down. I am going to begin to shave!" he concluded, stroking the black +down on his boyish lip. + +With the town behind him and the sinking sun over his shoulder, the +battered knight rode toward the foothills and on up the winding path, +oblivious of the Eternal Painter's magic and conscious only that every +step brought him nearer his Heart's Desire. Here was the rock where she +was seated when he had first seen her. What ages had passed since then! +And there, around the escarpment, he saw her pony on the shelf! Dropping +P.D.'s reins, he hurried on impetuously. With the final turn he found +Mary seated on the rock where she had been the day that he had come to +say farewell before he went to battle with the millions. Now as then, she +was gazing far out over that sea of singing, quivering light, and the +crunch of his footsteps awakened her from her revery. + +But how differently she looked around! Her breaths were coming in a happy +storm, her face crimsoning, her nostrils playing in trembling dilation. +In her eyes he saw open gates and a long vista of a fair highway in a +glorious land; and the splendor of her was something near and yielding. +He sank down beside her. Her hands stole into his; her head dropped on +his shoulder; and he felt a warm and palpitating union with the very +breath of her life. + +"What do I see!" cried the Eternal Painter. "Two human beings who have +climbed up as near heaven as they could and seem as happy as if they had +reached it!" + +"We have reached it!" Jack called back. "And we like it, you +hoary-bearded, Olympian impersonality!" + +Thus they watched the sun go down, gilding the foliage of their +Little Rivers, seeing their future in the fulness and richness of the +life of their choice, which should spread the oasis the length of +that valley, and knowing that any excursions to the world over the +pass would only sink their roots deeper in the soil of the valley +that had given them life. + +"Jack, oh, Jack! How I did fight against the thing that was born in me +that morning in the _arroyo_! I was in fear of it and of myself. In fear +of it I ran from you that day you climbed down to the pine. But I +shan't run again--not so far but that I can be sure you can catch me. +Jack, oh, Jack! And this is the hand that saved you from Leddy--the +right hand! I think I shall always like it better than the left hand! +And, Jack, there is a little touch of gray on the temples"--Mary was +running her fingers very, very gently over the wound--"which I like. But +we shall be so happy that it will be centuries before the rest of your +hair is gray! Jack, oh, Jack!" + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Over the Pass, by Frederick Palmer + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OVER THE PASS *** + +***** This file should be named 10932-8.txt or 10932-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/9/3/10932/ + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's +eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII, +compressed (zipped), HTML and others. + +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over +the old filename and etext number. The replaced older file is renamed. +VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving +new filenames and etext numbers. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000, +are filed in directories based on their release date. If you want to +download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular +search system you may utilize the following addresses and just +download by the etext year. + + https://www.gutenberg.org/etext06 + + (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99, + 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90) + +EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are +filed in a different way. The year of a release date is no longer part +of the directory path. The path is based on the etext number (which is +identical to the filename). The path to the file is made up of single +digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename. For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: + https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + + diff --git a/old/10932-8.zip b/old/10932-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2f55236 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10932-8.zip diff --git a/old/10932.txt b/old/10932.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d6c6e1a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10932.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13674 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Over the Pass, by Frederick Palmer + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Over the Pass + +Author: Frederick Palmer + +Release Date: February 4, 2004 [EBook #10932] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OVER THE PASS *** + + + + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + OVER THE PASS + + BY FREDERICK PALMER + + AUTHOR OF THE VAGABOND, DANBURY RODD, ETC. + + 1912 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART I--AN EASY TRAVELLER + +CHAPTER + + I YOUTH IN SPURS + + II DINOSAUR OR DESPERADO + + III JACK RIDES IN COMPANY + + IV HE CARRIES THE MAIL + + V A SMILE AND A SQUARE CHIN + + VI OBLIVION IS NOT EASY + + VII WHAT HAPPENED AT LANG'S + + VIII ACCORDING TO CODE + + IX THE DEVIL IS OUT + + X MARY EXPLAINS + + XI SENOR DON'T CARE RECEIVES + + XII MARY BRINGS TRIBUTE + + XIII A JOURNEY ON CRUTCHES + + XIV "HOW FAST YOU SEW!" + + XV WHEN THE DESERT BLOOMS + + XVI A CHANGE OF MIND + + XVII THE DOGE SNAPS A RUBBER BAND + + XVIII ANOTHER STRANGER ARRIVES + + XIX LOOKING OVER PRECIPICES + + XX A PUZZLED AMBASSADOR + + XXI "GOOD-BY, LITTLE RIVERS!" + + XXII "LUCK, JACK, LUCK!" + + +PART II--HE FINDS HIMSELF + + XXIII LABELLED AND SHIPPED + + XXIV IN THE CITADEL OF THE MILLIONS + + XXV "BUT WITH YOU, YES, SIR!" + + XXVII BY RIGHT OF ANCESTRY + + XXVIII JACK GETS A RAISE + + XXIX A MEETING ON THE AVENUE TRAIL + + XXX WITH THE PHANTOMS + + XXXI PRATHER WOULD NOT WAIT + + XXXII A CRISIS IN THE WINGFIELD LIBRARY + + XXXIII PRATHER SEES THE PORTRAIT + + XXXIV "JOHN WINGFIELD, YOU--" + + +PART III--HE FINDS HIS PLACE IN LIFE + + XXXV BACK TO LITTLE RIVERS + + XXXVI AROUND THE WATER-HOLE + + XXXVII THE END OF THE WEAVING + +XXXVIII THEIR SIDE OF THE PASS + + + + +PART I + +AN EASY TRAVELLER + + + + +I + +YOUTH IN SPURS + +Here time was as nothing; here sunset and sunrise were as incidents +of an uncalendared, everlasting day; here chaotic grandeur was that +of the earth's crust when it cooled after the last convulsive +movement of genesis. + +In all the region about the Galeria Pass the silence of the dry Arizona +air seemed luminous and eternal. Whoever climbed to the crotch of that V, +cut jagged against the sky for distances yet unreckoned by tourist +folders, might have the reward of pitching the tents of his imagination +at the gateway of the clouds. + +Early on a certain afternoon he would have noted to the eastward a speck +far out on a vast basin of sand which was enclosed by a rim of tumbling +mountains. Continued observation at long range would have shown the speck +to be moving almost imperceptibly, with what seemed the impertinence of +infinitesimal life in that dead world; and, eventually, it would have +taken the form of a man astride a pony. + +The man was young, fantastically young if you were to judge by his garb, +a flamboyant expression of the romantic cowboy style which might have +served as a sensational exhibit in a shop-window. In place of the +conventional blue wool shirt was one of dark blue silk. The +_chaparejos_, or "chaps," were of the softest leather, with the fringe +at the seams generously long; and the silver spurs at the boot-heels +were chased in antique pattern and ridiculously large. Instead of the +conventional handkerchief at the neck was a dark red string tie; while +the straight-brimmed cowpuncher hat, out of keeping with the general +effect of newness and laundered freshness, had that tint which only +exposure to many dewfalls and many blazing mid-days will produce in +light-colored felt. + +There was vagrancy in the smile of his singularly sensitive mouth and +vagrancy in the relaxed way that he rode. From the fondness with which +his gaze swept the naked peaks they might have been cities _en fete_ +calling him to their festivities. If so, he was in no haste to let +realization overtake anticipation. His reins hung loose. He hummed +snatches of Spanish, French, and English songs. Their cosmopolitan +freedom of variety was as out of keeping with the scene as their lilt, +which had the tripping, self-carrying impetus of the sheer joy of living. + +Lapsing into silence, his face went ruminative and then sad. With a +sudden indrawing of breath he freed himself from his reverie, and bending +over from his saddle patted a buckskin neck in affectionate tattoo. Tawny +ears turned backward in appreciative fellowship, but without any break in +a plodding dog-trot. Though the rider's aspect might say with the desert +that time was nothing, the pony's expressed a logical purpose. Thus the +speed of their machine-like progress was entirely regulated by the +prospect of a measure of oats at the journey's end. + +When they came to the foot-hills and the rider dismounted and led the +way, with a following muzzle at times poking the small of his back, up +the tortuous path, rounding pinnacles and skimming the edge of abysses, +his leg muscles answered with the readiness of familiarity with climbing. +At the top he saw why the pass had received its name of Galeria from the +Spanish. A great isosceles of precipitous walls formed a long, natural +gallery, which the heaving of the earth's crust had rent and time had +eroded. It lay near the present boundary line of two civilizations: in +the neutral zone of desert expanses, where the Saxon pioneer, with his +lips closed on English _s's_, had paused in his progress southward; and +the _conquistadore_, with tongue caressing Castilian vowels, had paused +in his progress northward. + +At the other side the traveller beheld a basin which was a thousand +feet higher than the one behind him. It approached the pass at a +gentler slope. It must be cooler than the other, its ozone a little +rarer. A sea of quivering and singing light in the afternoon glow, it +was lost in the horizon. + +Not far from the foot-hills floated a patch of foliage, checkered by the +roofs of the houses of an irrigation colony, hanging kitelike at the end +of the silver thread of a river whose waters had set gardens abloom in +sterile expanses. There seemed a refusal of intimacy with the one visible +symbol of its relations with the outer world; for the railroad, with its +lines of steel flashing across the gray levels, passed beyond the outer +edge of the oasis. + +"This beats any valley I've seen yet," and the traveller spoke with the +confidence of one who is a connoisseur of Arizona valleys. + +He paused for some time in hesitancy to take a farewell of the rapturous +vista. A hundred feet lower and the refraction of the light would present +it in different coloring and perspective. With his spell of visual +intoxication ran the consciousness of being utterly alone. But the egoism +of his isolation in the towering infinite did not endure; for the sound +of voices, a man's and a woman's, broke on his ear. + +The man's was strident, disagreeable, persistent. Its timbre was such as +he had heard coming out of the doors of border saloons. The woman's was +quiet and resisting, its quality of youth peculiarly emphasized by its +restrained emotion. + +Now the easy traveller took stock of his immediate surroundings, which +had interested him only as a foothold and vantage-point for the panorama +that he had been breathing in. Here, of all conceivable places, he was in +danger of becoming eavesdropper to a conversation which was evidently +very personal. Rounding the escarpment at his elbow he saw, on a shelf of +decaying granite, two waiting ponies. One had a Mexican saddle of the +cowboy type. The other had an Eastern side-saddle, which struck him as +exotic in a land where women mostly ride astride. And what woman, +whatever style of riding she chose, should care to come to this pass? + +Judging by the direction from which the voices came, the speakers were +hidden by still another turn in the defile. A few more steps brought eye +as well as ear back to the living world with the sight of a girl seated +on a bowlder. He could see nothing of her face except the cheek, which +was brown, and the tip of a chin, which he guessed was oval, and her +hair, which was dark under her hatbrim and shimmering with gold where it +was kissed by the rays of the sun. An impression as swift as a flash of +light could not exclude inevitable curiosity as to the full face; a +curiosity emphasized by the poised erectness of her slender figure. + +The man was bending over her in a familiar way. He was thirty, perhaps, +in the prime of physical vigor, square-jawed, cocksure, a six-shooter +slung at his hip. Though she was not giving way before him, her attitude, +in its steadiness, reflected distress in a bowstrung tremulousness. +Suddenly, at something he said which the easy traveller could not quite +understand, she sprang up aflame, her hand flying back against the rock +wall behind her for support. Then the man spoke so loud that he was +distinctly audible. + +"When you get mad like that you're prettier'n ever," he said. + +It was a peculiar situation. It seemed incredible, melodramatic, unreal, +in sight of the crawling freight train far out on the levels. + +"Aren't you overplaying your part, sir?" the easy traveller asked. + +The man's hand flew to his six-shooter, while the girl looked around in +swift and eager impulse to the interrupting voice. Its owner, the color +scheme of his attire emphasized by the glare of the low sun, expressed in +his pose and the inquiring flicker of a smile purely the element of the +casual. Far from making any movement toward his own six-shooter, he +seemed oblivious of any such necessity. With the first glimpse of her +face, when he saw the violet flame of her anger go ruddy with surprise +and relief, then fluid and sparkling as a culminating change of emotion, +he felt cheap for having asked himself the question--which now seemed so +superficial--whether she were good-looking or not. She was, undoubtedly, +yes, undoubtedly good-looking in a way of her own. + +"What business is it of yours?" demanded the man, evidently under the +impression that he was due to say something, while his fingers still +rested on his holster. + +"None at all, unless she says so," the deliverer answered. "Is it?" he +asked her. + +After her first glance at him she had lowered her lashes. Now she raised +them, sending a direct message beside which her first glance had been +dumb indifference. He was seeing into the depths of her eyes in the +consciousness of a privilege rarely bestowed. They gave wing to a +thousand inquiries. He had the thrill of an explorer who is about to +enter on a voyage of discovery. Then the veil was drawn before his ship +had even put out from port. It was a veil woven with fine threads of +appreciative and conventional gratitude. + +"It is!" she said decisively. + +"I'll be going," said the persecutor, with a grimace that seemed mixed +partly of inherent bravado and partly of shame, as his pulse slowed down +to normal. + +"As you please," answered that easy traveller. "I had no mind to exert +any positive directions over your movements." + +His politeness, his disinterestedness, and his evident disinclination to +any kind of vehemence carried an implication more exasperating than an +open challenge. They changed melodrama into comedy. They made his +protagonist appear a negligible quantity. + +"There's some things I don't do when women are around," the persecutor +returned, grudgingly, and went for his horse; while oppressive silence +prevailed. The easy traveller was not looking at the girl or she at him. +He was regarding the other man idly, curiously, though not contemptuously +as he mounted and started down the trail toward the valley, only to draw +rein as he looked back over his shoulder with a glare which took the easy +traveller in from head to foot. + +"Huh! You near-silk dude!" he said chokingly, in his rancor which had +grown with the few minutes he had had for self-communion. + +"If you mean my shirt, it was sold to me for pure silk," the easy +traveller returned, in half-diffident correction of the statement. + +"We'll meet again!" came the more definite and articulate defiance. + +"Perhaps. Who can tell? Arizona, though a large place, has so few people +that it is humanly very small." + +Now the other man rose in his stirrups, resting the weight of his body on +the palm of the hand which was on the back of his saddle. He was rigid, +his voice was shaking with very genuine though dramatic rage drawn to a +fine point of determination. + +"When we do meet, you better draw! I give you warning!" he called. + +There was no sign that this threat had made the easy traveller tighten a +single muscle. But a trace of scepticism had crept into his smile. + +"Whew!" He drew the exclamation out into a whistle. + +"Whistle--whistle while you can! You won't have many more chances! Draw, +you tenderfoot! But it won't do any good--I'll get you!" + +With this challenge the other settled back into the saddle and proceeded +on his way. + +"Whew!" The second whistle was anything but truculent and anything but +apologetic. It had the unconscious and spontaneous quality of the delight +of the collector who finds a new specimen in wild places. + +From under her lashes the girl had been watching the easy traveller +rather than her persecutor; first, studiously; then, in the confusion of +embarrassment that left her speechless. + +"Well, well," he concluded, "you must take not only your zoology, but +your anthropology as you find it!" + +His drollness, his dry contemplation of the specimen, and his +absurdly gay and unpractical attire, formed a combination of elements +suddenly grouped into an effect that touched her reflex nerves after +the strain with the magic of humor. She could not help herself: she +burst out laughing. At this, he looked away from the specimen; looked +around puzzled, quizzically, and, in sympathetic impulse, began +laughing himself. Thus a wholly unmodern incident took a whimsical +turn out of a horror which, if farcical in the abstract, was no less +potent in the concrete. + +"Quite like the Middle Ages, isn't it?" he said. + +"But Walter Scott ceased writing in the thirties!" she returned, quick to +fall in with his cue. + +"The swooning age outlasted him--lasted, indeed, into the era of +hoop-skirts; but that, too, is gone." + +"They do give medals," she added. + +"For rescuing the drowning only; and they are a great nuisance to carry +around in one's baggage. Please don't recommend me!" + +Both laughed again softly, looking fairly at each other in +understanding, twentieth-century fashion. She was not to play the +classic damsel or he the classic rescuer. Yet the fact of a young man +finding a young woman brutally annoyed on the roof of the world, five +or six miles from a settlement--well, it was a fact. Over the bump of +their self-introduction, free of the serious impression of her +experience, she could think for him as well as for herself. This struck +her with sudden alarm. + +"I fear I have made you a dangerous enemy," she said. "Pete Leddy is the +prize ruffian of our community of Little Rivers." + +"I thought that this would be an interesting valley," he returned, in +bland appreciation of her contribution of information about the habits of +the specimen. + + + + +II + +DINOSAUR OR DESPERADO + + +She faced a situation irritating and vitalizing, and inevitably, under +its growing perplexity, her observation of his appearance and +characteristics had been acute with feminine intuition, which is so +frequently right, that we forget that it may not always be. She imagined +him with a certain amiable aimlessness turning his pony to one side so as +not to knock down a danger sign, while he rode straight over a precipice. + +What would have happened if Leddy had really drawn? she asked herself. +Probably her deliverer would have regarded the muzzle of Leddy's gun in +studious vacancy before a bullet sent him to kingdom come. All +speculation aside, her problem was how to rescue her rescuer. She felt +almost motherly on his account, he was so blissfully oblivious to +realities. And she felt, too, that under the circumstances, she ought to +be formal. + +"Now, Mister--" she began; and the Mister sounded odd and stilted in her +ears in relation to him. + +"Jack is my name," he said simply. + +"Mine is Mary," she volunteered, giving him as much as he had given +and no more. "Now, sir," she went on, in peremptory earnestness, "this +is serious." + +"It _was_," he answered. "At least, unpleasant." + +"It is, _now_. Pete Leddy meant what he said when he said that he +would draw." + +"He ought to, from his repeated emphasis," answered Jack, in agreeable +affirmation. + +"He has six notches on his gun-handle--six men that he has killed!" +Mary went on. + +"Whew!" said Jack. "And he isn't more than thirty! He seems a hard worker +who keeps right on the job." + +She pressed her lips together to control her amusement, before she asked +categorically, with the precision of a school-mistress: + +"Do you know how to shoot?" + +He was surprised. He seemed to be wondering if she were not making +sport of him. + +"Why should I carry a six-shooter if I did not?" he asked. + +This convinced her that his revolver was a part of his play cowboy +costume. He had come out of the East thinking that desperado etiquette of +the Bad Lands was _opera bouffe_. + +"Leddy is a dead shot. He will give you no chance!" she insisted. + +"I should think not," Jack mused. "No, naturally not; otherwise there +might have been no sixth notch. The third or the fourth, even the second +object of his favor might have blasted his fair young career as a +wood-carver. Has he set any limit to his ambition? Is he going to make it +an even hundred and then retire?" + +"I don't know!" she gasped. + +"I must ask," he added, thoughtfully. + +Was he out of his head? Certainly his eye was not insane. Its bluish-gray +was twinkling enjoyably into hers. + +"You exasperated him with that whistle. It was a deadly insult to his +desperado pride. You are marked--don't you see, marked?" she persisted. +"And I brought it on! I am responsible!" + +He shook his head in a denial so unmoved by her appeal that she was sure +he would send Job into an apoplectic frenzy. + +"Pardon me, but you're contradicting your own statement. You just said it +was the whistle," he corrected her. "It's the whistle that gives me Check +Number Seven. You haven't the least bit of responsibility. The whistle +gets it all, just as you said." + +This was too much. Confuting her with her own words! Quibbling with his +own danger in order to make her an accomplice of murder! She lost her +temper completely. That fact alone could account for the audacity of her +next remark. + +"I wonder if you really know enough to come in out of the rain!" +she stormed. + +"That's the blessing of living in Arizona," he returned. "It is such a +dry climate." + +She caught herself laughing; and this only made her the more intense a +second later, on a different tack. Now she would plead. + +"Please--please promise me that you will not go to Little Rivers +to-night. Promise that you will turn back over the pass!" + +"You put me between the devil and the dragon. What you ask is impossible. +I'll tell you why," he went on, confidentially. "You know this is the +land of fossil dinosaurs." + +"I had a brute on my hands," she thought; "now I have the Mad Hatter and +the March Hare in collaboration!" + +"There is a big dinosaur come to life on the other side," he proceeded. +"I just got through the pass in time. I could feel his breath on my +back--a hot, gun-powdery breath! It was awful, simply awful and horrible, +too. And just as I had resigned myself to be his entree, by great luck +his big middle got wedged in the bottom of the V, and his scales scraped +like the plates of a ship against a stone pier!" + +To her disgust she was laughing again. + +"If I went back now out of fear of Pete Leddy," he continued, "that +dinosaur would know that I was such insignificant prey he would not even +take the trouble to knock me down with a forepaw. He would swallow me +alive and running! Think of that slimy slide down the red upholstery of +his gullet, not to mention the misery of a total loss of my dignity and +self-respect!" + +He had spoken it all as if he believed it true. He made it seem +almost true. + +"I like nonsense as much as anybody," she began, "and I do not forget +that you did me a great kindness." + +"Which any stranger, any third person coming at the right moment might +have done," he interrupted. "Sir Walter's age has passed." + +"Yes, but Pete Leddy belongs still farther back. We may laugh at his +ruffianly bravado, but no one may laugh at a forty-four calibre bullet! +Think what you are going to make me pay for your kindness! I must pay +with memory of the sound of a shot and the fall of a body there in the +streets of Little Rivers--a nightmare for life! Oh, I beg of you, though +it is fun for you to be killed, consider me! Don't go down into that +valley! I beg of you, go back over the pass!" + +There was no acting, no suspicion of a gesture. She stood quite still, +while all the power of her eyes reflected the misery which she pictured +for herself. The low pitch of her voice sounded its depths with that +restraint which makes for the most poignant intensity. As she reached her +climax he had come out of his languid pose. He was erect and rigid. She +saw him as some person other than the one to whom she had begun her +appeal. He was still smiling, but his smile was of a different sort. +Instead of being the significant thing about him in expression of his +casualness, it seemed the softening compensation for his stubbornness. + +"I'd like to, but it is hardly in human nature for me to do that. I +can't!" And he asked if he might bring up her pony. + +"Yes," she consented. + +She thought that the faint bow of courtesy with which he had accompanied +the announcement of his decision he would have given, in common +politeness, to anyone who pointed at the danger sign before he rode over +the precipice. + +"May I ride down with you, or shall I go ahead?" he inquired, after he +had assisted her to mount. + +"With me!" she answered, quickly. "You are safe while you are with me." + +The decisive turn to her mobile lips and the faint wrinkles of a frown, +coming and going in various heraldry, formed a vividly sentient and +versatile expression of emotions while she watched his silhouette against +the sky as he turned to get his own pony. + +"Come, P.D.--come along!" he called. + +In answer to his voice an equine face, peculiarly reflective of trail +wisdom, bony and large, particularly over the eyes, slowly turned toward +its master. P.D. was considering. + +"Come along! The trail, P.D.!" And P.D. came, but with democratic +independence, taking his time to get into motion. "He is never fast," +Jack explained, "but once he has the motor going, he keeps at it all day. +So I call him P.D. without the Q., as he is never quick." + +"Pretty Damn, you mean!" she exclaimed, with a certain spontaneous pride +of understanding. Then she flushed in confusion. + +"Oh, thank you! It was so human of you to translate it out loud! It isn't +profane. Look at him now. Don't you think it is a good name for him?" +Jack asked, seriously. + +"I do!" + +She was laughing again, oblivious of the impending tragedy. + + + + +III + +JACK RIDES IN COMPANY + + +Let not the Grundy woman raise an eyebrow of deprecation at the informal +introduction of Jack and Mary, or we shall refute her with her own +precepts, which make the steps to a throne the steps of the social +pyramid. If she wishes a sponsor, we name an impeccable majesty of the +very oldest dynasty of all, which is entirely without scandal. We remind +her of the ancient rule that people who meet at court, vouched for by +royal favor, need no introduction. + +These two had met under the roof of the Eternal Painter. His palette is +somewhere in the upper ether and his head in the interplanetary spaces. +His heavy eyebrows twinkle with star-dust. Dodging occasional flying +meteors, which harass him as flies harass a landscapist out of doors on a +hot day, he is ever active, this mighty artist of the changing desert +sky. So fickle his moods, so versatile his genius, so quick to creation +his fancy, that he never knows what his next composition will be till the +second that it is begun. + +No earthly rival need be jealous of him. He will never clog the +galleries. He always paints on the same canvas, scraping off one picture +to make room for another. And you do not mind the loss of the old. You +live for the new. + +His Majesty has no artistic memory. He is as young as he was the day +that he flung out his first tentative lunette after chaos. He is the +patron saint of all pilgrims from the city's struggle, where they found +no oases of rest. He melts "pasts" and family skeletons and hidden +stories of any kind whatsoever into the blue as a background with the +abandoned preoccupation of his own brushwork. His lieges, who seek +oblivion in the desert, need not worry about the water that will never +run over the millwheel again, or dwell in prophecy on floods to come. The +omnipotence of the moment transports and soothes them. + +"Time is nothing!" says the Eternal Painter. "If you feel important, +remember that man's hectic bustling makes but worm-work on the planet. +Live and breathe joyfully and magnificently! Do not strain your eyes over +embroidery! Come to my open gallery! And how do you like the way I set +those silver clouds a-tumbling? Do you know anything better under the +dome of any church or capitol? Shall I bank them? Line them with purple? +It is done! But no! Let us wipe it all out, change the tint of our +background, and start afresh!" + +With his eleven hundred million billionth sunset, or thereabouts, His +Majesty held a man and a woman who had met on the roof of the world in +thrall. He was lurid at the outset, dipping his camel's hair in at the +round furnace door sinking toward the hills, whose red vortex shot +tongues of flame into canyons and crevasses and drove out their lurking +shadows with the fire of its inquisition. The foliage of Little Rivers +became a grove of quivering leaves of gold, set on a vast beaten platter +of gold. And the man and the woman, like all things else in the +landscape, were suffused in this still, Parnassian, penetrating +brilliancy, which ought to make even a miser feel that his hoarded eagles +and sovereigns are ephemeral dross. + +"I love it all--all the desert!" said Mary Ewold. + +"And I, too!" + +"I have for six years." + +"I for five." + +The sentences had struck clearly as answering chimes, impersonally, in +their preoccupied gazing. + +"It gave me life!" he added. + +"And it gave me life!" + +Then they looked at each other in mutual surprise and understanding; each +in wonder that the other had ever been anything but radiant of +out-of-doors health. That fleck on the lungs which brought a doctor's +orders had long ago been healed by the physician of the ozone they were +breathing. + +"And you remained," he said. + +"And you, also," she answered. + +Their own silence seemed to become a thing apart from the silence of the +infinite. It was as if both recognized a common thought that even the +Eternal Painter could not compel oblivion of the past to which they did +not return; of the faith of cities to which they had been bred. But it is +one of the Eternal Painter's rules that no one of his subjects should ask +another of his subjects why he stays on the desert. Jack was the first to +speak, and his voice returned to the casual key. + +"Usually I watch the sunset while we make camp," he said. "I am very late +to-night--late beyond all habit; and sunset and sunrise do make one a +creature of habit out here. Firio and my little train will grow impatient +waiting for me." + +"You mean the Indian and the burro with the silver bells that came over +the pass some time before you?" + +Of course they belonged to him, she was thinking, even as she made the +inquiry. This play cowboy, with his absurdly enormous silver spurs, would +naturally put bells on his burro. + +"Yes, I sent Firio with Wrath of God and Jag Ear on ahead and told him to +wait at the foot of the descent. Wrath of God will worry--he is of a +worrying nature. I must be going." + +In view of the dinosaur nonsense she was already prepared for a variety +of inventional talk from him. As they started down from the pass in +single file, she leading, the sun sank behind the hills, leaving the +Eternal Painter, unhindered by a furnace glare in the centre of the +canvas, to paint with a thousand brushes in the radiant tints of the +afterglow. + +"You don't like that one, O art critics!" we hear him saying. "Well, here +is another before you have adjusted your _pince-nez,_ and I will brush it +away before you have emitted your first Ah! I do not criticise. I +paint--I paint for the love of it. I paint with the pigments of the +firmament and the imagination of the universe." + +The two did not talk of that sky which held their averted glances, while +knowing hoofs that bore their weight kept the path. For how can you talk +of the desert sky except in the banality of exclamations? It is _lese +majeste_ to the Eternal Painter to attempt description. + +At times she looked back and their eyes met in understanding, as true +subjects of His Majesty, and then they looked skyward to see what changes +the Master's witchery had wrought. In supreme intoxication of the +senses, breathing that dry air which was like cool wine coming in long +sips to the palate, they rode down the winding trail, till, after a +surpassing outburst, the Eternal Painter dropped his brush for the night. + +It was dusk. Shadows returned to the crevasses. Free of the magic of the +sky, with the curtains of night drawing in, the mighty savagery of the +bare mountains in their disdain of man and imagination reasserted itself. +It dropped Mary Ewold from the azure to the reality of Pete Leddy. She +was seeing, the smoking end of a revolver and a body lying in a pool of +blood; and there, behind her, rode this smiling stranger, proceeding so +genially and carelessly to the fate which she had provided for him. + +With the last turn, which brought them level with the plain, they came +upon an Indian, a baggage burro, and a riding-pony. The Indian sprang up, +grinning: his welcome and doffing a Mexican steeple-hat. + +"I must introduce you all around," Jack told Mary. + +She observed in his manner something new!--a positive enthusiasm for his +three retainers, which included a certain well-relished vanity in their +loyalty and character. + +"Firio has Sancho Panza beaten to a frazzle," Jack said. "Sancho was fat +and unresourceful; even stupid. Fancy him broiling a quail on a spit! +Fancy what a lot of trouble Firio could have saved Don Quixote de la +Mancha! Why, confound it, he would have spoiled the story!" + +Firio was a solid grain, to take Jack's view, winnowed out of bushels of +aboriginal chaff; an Indian, all Indian, without any strain of Spanish +blood in the primitive southern strain. + +"And Firio rides Wrath of God," Jack continued, nodding to a pony with a +low-hung head and pendant lip, whose lugubrious expression was +exaggerated by a scar. "He looks it, don't you think?--always miserable, +whether his nose is in the oats or we run out of water. He is our sad +philosopher, who has just as dependable a gait as P.D. I have many +theories about the psychology of his ego. Sometimes I explain it by a +desire both to escape and to pursue unhappiness, which amounts to a +solemn kind of perpetual motion. But he has a positively sweet nature. +There is no more malice in his professional mournfulness than in the +cheerful humor of Jag Ear." + +"It is plain to see which is Jag Ear," she observed, "and how he earned +his name." + +Every time a burro gets into the corn, an Indian master cuts off a bit +of long, furry ear as a lesson. Before Jag Ear passed into kindlier +hands he had been clipped closer than a Boston terrier. Only a single +upstanding fragment remained in token of a graded education which had +availed him nothing. + +"There's no curtailing Jag Ear's curiosity," said Jack. "To him, +everything is worth trying. That is why he is a born traveller. He +has been with me from Colorado to Chihuahua, on all my wanderings +back and forth." + +While he spoke, Firio mounted Wrath of God and, with Jag Ear's bells +jingling, the supply division set out on the road. Jack and Mary +followed, this time riding side by side, pony nose to pony nose, in an +intimacy of association impossible in the narrow mountain trail. It was +an intimacy signalized by silence. There was an end to the mighty +transports of the heights; the wells of whimsicality had dried up. The +weight of the silence seemed balancing on a brittle thread. All the +afternoon's events aligned themselves in a colossal satire. In the half +light Jack became a gaunt and lonely figure that ought to be confined in +some Utopian kindergarten. + +Mary could feel her temples beating with the fear of what was waiting for +him in Little Rivers, now a dark mass on the levels, just dark, without +color or any attraction except the mystery that goes with the shroud of +night. She knew how he would laugh at her fears; for she guessed that he +was unafraid of anything in the world which, however, was no protection +from Pete Leddy's six-shooter. + +"I--I have a right to know--won't you tell me how you are going to defend +yourself against Pete Leddy?" she demanded, in a sudden outburst. + +"I hadn't thought of that. Certainly, I shall leave it to Pete himself to +open hostilities. I hadn't thought of it because I have been too busy +thinking out how I was going to break a piece of news to Firio. I have +been an awful coward about it, putting it off and putting it off. I had +planned to do it on my birthday two weeks ago, and then he gave me these +big silver spurs--spent a whole month's wages on them, think of that! I +bought this cowboy regalia to go with them. You can't imagine how that +pleased him. It certainly was great fun." + +Mary could only shake her head hopelessly. + +"Firio and Jag Ear and Wrath of God and old P.D. here--we've sort of +grown used to one another's foolishness. Now I can't put it off any +longer, and I'd about as soon be murdered as tell him that I am going +East in the morning." + +"You mean you are going to leave here for good?" She mistrusted her +own hearing. She was dazzled by this sudden burst of light through +the clouds. + +"Yes, by the first train. This is my last desert ride." + +Why had he not said so at first? It would not only have saved her from +worry, but from the humiliation of pleading with a stranger. Doubtless he +had enjoyed teasing her. But no matter. The affair need not last much +longer, now. She told herself that, if necessary, she would mount guard +over him for the remaining twelve hours of his stay. Once he was aboard +the Pullman he would be out of danger; her responsibility would be over +and the whole affair would become a bizarre memory; an incident closed. + +"Back to New York," he said, as one who enters a fog without a +compass. "Back to fight pleosaurs, dinosaurs, and all kinds of +monsters," he added, with a cheeriness which rang with the first false +note she had heard from him. "I don't care," he concluded, and broke +into a Spanish air, whose beat ran with the trickling hoof-beats of +the ponies in the sand. + +"That is it!" she thought. "That explains. He just does not care about +anything." + +Ahead, the lamps were beginning to twinkle in the little settlement which +had sent such a contrast in citizenship as Mary Ewold and Pete Leddy out +to the pass. They were approaching a single, isolated building, from the +door of which came a spray of light and the sound of men's voices. + +"That is Bill Lang's place," Mary explained. "He keeps a store, with a +bar in the rear. He also has the post-office, thanks to his political +influence, and this is where I have to stop for the mail when I return +from the pass." + +She had not spoken with any sense of a hint which it was inevitable he +should accept. + +"Let me get it for you;" and before she had time to protest, he had +dismounted, drawing rein at the edge of the wooden steps. + +She rode past where his pony was standing. When he entered the door, his +tallness and lean ease of posture silhouetted in the light, she could +look in on the group of idling male gossips. + +"Don't!" + +It was a half cry from her, hardly audible in an intensity which she knew +was futile in the surge of her torturing self-incrimination. Why had she +not thought that it would be here that Pete Leddy was bound to wait for +anyone coming in by the trail from Galeria? The loungers suddenly dropped +to the cover of boxes and barrels, as a flicker of steel shot upward, and +behind the gleaming rim of a revolver muzzle held rigid was a brown hand +and Leddy's hard, unyielding face. + +What matter if the easy traveller could shoot? He was caught like a man +coming out of an alley. He had no chance to draw in turn. In the click of +a second-hand the thing would be over. Mary's eyes involuntarily closed, +to avoid seeing the flash from the revolver. She listened for the report; +for the fall of a body which should express the horror she had visualized +for the hundredth time. A century seemed to pass and there was no sound +except the beat of her heart, which ran in a cataract throb to her +temples; no sound except that and what seemed to be soft, regular steps +on the bare floor of the store. + +"Coward!" she told herself, with the agony of her suspense +breaking. "He saved you from inexpressible humiliation and you are +afraid even to look!" + +She opened her eyes, prepared for the worst. Had she gone out of her +head? Could she no longer trust her own eyesight? What she saw was +inconceivable. The startled faces of the loungers were rising from +behind the boxes and barrels. Pete Leddy's gun had dropped to his side +and his would-be victim had a hand on Pete's shoulder. Jack was talking +apparently in a kindly and reasoning tone, but she could not make out +his words. + +One man alone evidently had not taken cover. It was Jim Galway, a +rancher, who had been standing at the mail counter. To judge by his +expression, what Jack was saying had his approval. + +With a nod to Leddy and then a nod to the others, as if in amicable +conclusion of the affair, Jack wheeled around to the counter, disclosing +Leddy's face wry with insupportable chagrin. His revolver was still in +his hand. In the swift impulse of one at bay who finds himself released, +he brought it up. There was murder, murder from behind, in the catlike +quickness of his movement; but Jim Galway was equally quick. He threw his +whole weight toward Leddy in a catapult leap, as he grasped Leddy's wrist +and bore it down. Jack faced about in alert readiness. Seeing that Galway +had the situation pat, he put up his hand in a kind of questioning, +puzzled remonstrance; but Mary noticed that he was very erect. He spoke +and Galway spoke in answer. Evidently he was asking that Leddy be +released. To this Galway consented at length, but without drawing back +until he had seen Leddy's gun safe in the holster. + +Then Leddy raised himself challengingly on tiptoes to Jack, who turned to +Galway in the manner of one extending an invitation. On his part, Leddy +turned to Ropey Smith, another of Little Rivers' ruffians. After this, +Leddy went through the door at the rear; the loungers resumed their seats +on the cracker barrels and gazed at one another with dropped jaws, while +Bill Lang proceeded with his business as postmaster. + + + + +IV + +HE CARRIES THE MAIL + + +When the suspense was over for Mary, the glare of the store lamp went +dancing in grotesque waves, and abruptly, uncannily, fell away into the +distant, swimming glow of a lantern suffused with fog. She swayed. Only +the leg-rest kept her from slipping off the pony. Her first returning +sense of her surroundings came with the sound of a voice, the same +careless, pleasant voice which she had heard at Galeria asking Pete Leddy +if he were not overplaying his part. + +"You were right," said the voice. "It was the whistle that made him +so angry." + +Indistinctly she associated a slowly-shaping figure with the voice and +realized that she had been away in the unknown for a second. Yes, it was +all very well to talk about Sir Walter being out of fashion, but she had +been near to fainting, and in none of the affectation of the hoop-skirt +age, either. Had she done any foolish thing in expression of a weakness +that she had never known before? Had she extended her hand for support? +Had he caught her as she wobbled in the saddle? No. She was relieved to +see that he was not near enough for that. + +"By no stretch of ethics can you charge yourself with further +responsibility or fears," he continued. "Pete and I understand each other +perfectly, now." + +But in his jocularity ran something which was plain, if unspoken. It was +that he would put an end to a disagreeable subject. His first words to +her had provided a bridge--and burned it--from the bank of the +disagreeable to the bank of agreeable. Her own desire, with full mastery +of her faculties coming swiftly, fell in with his. She wanted to blot out +that horror and scotch a sudden uprising of curiosity as to the exact +nature of the gamble in death through which he had passed. It was enough +that he was alive. + +The blurry figure became distinct, smiling with inquiry in a glance from +her to the stack of papers, magazines, and pamphlets which crowded his +circling arms. He seemed to have emptied the post-office. There had not +been any Pete Leddy; there had been no display of six-shooters. He had +gone in after the mail. Here he was ready to deliver it by the bushel, +while he waited for orders. She had to laugh at his predicament as he +lowered his chin to steady a book on the top of the pile. + +"Oh, I meant to tell you that you were not to bring the second-class +matter!" she told him. "We always send a servant with a basket for that. +You see what comes of having a father who is not only omnivorous, but has +a herbivorous capacity." + +He saw that the book had a row of Italian stamps across the wrapper. +Unless that popular magazine stopped slipping, both the book and a heavy +German pamphlet would go. He took two hasty steps toward her, in mock +distress of appeal. + +"I'll allow salvage if you act promptly!" he said. + +She lifted the tottering apex just in time to prevent its fall. + +"I'll take the book," she said. "Father has been waiting months for +it. We can separate the letters and leave the rest in the store to be +sent for." + +"The railroad station is on the other side of the town, isn't it?" he +asked. + +"Yes." + +"I shall camp nearby, so it will be no trouble to leave my burden at your +door as I pass." + +"He does have the gift of oiling the wheels in either, big or little +moments," she thought, as she realized how simple and considerate had +been his course from the first. He was a stranger going on his way, +stopping, however, to do her or any other traveller a favor _en route_. + +"Firio, we're ready to hear Jag Ear's bells!" he called. + +"_Si_!" answered Firio. + +All the while the Indian had kept in the shadow, away from the spray of +light from the store lamp, unaware of the rapid drama that had passed +among the boxes and barrels. He had observed nothing unusual in the young +lady, whose outward manifestation of what she had, witnessed was the +closing of her eyes. + +It was out of the question that Jack should mount a horse when both +arms were crowded with their burden. He walked beside Mary's stirrup +leather in the attitude of that attendant on royalty who bears a crown +on a cushion. + +"Little Rivers is a new town, isn't it?" he asked. + +"Yes, the Town Wonderful," she answered. "Father founded it." + +She spoke with an affection which ran as deep into the soil as young +roots after water. If on the pass she had seemed a part of the desert, +of great, lonely distances and a far-flung carpet of dreams, here she +seemed to belong to books and gardens. + +"I wish I had time to look over the Town Wonderful in the morning, but my +train goes very early, I believe." + +After his years of aimless travelling, to which he had so readily +confessed, he had tied himself to a definite hour on a railroad +schedule as something commanding and inviolable. Such inconsistency +did not surprise her. Had she not already learned to expect +inconsistencies from him? + +"Oh, it is all simple and primitive, but it means a lot to us," she said. + +"What one's home and people mean to him is pretty well all of one's own +human drama," he returned, seriously. + +The peace of evening was in the air and the lights along the single +street were a gentle and persistent protest of human life against the +mighty stretch of the enveloping mantle of night. From the cottages of +the ranchers came the sound of voices. The twang of a guitar quivering +starward made medley with Jag Ear's bells. + +Here, for a little distance, the trail, in its long reach on the desert, +had taken on the dignity of the urban name of street. On either side, +fronting the cottages, ran the slow waters of two irrigation ditches, +gleaming where lamp-rays penetrated the darkness. The date of each +rancher's settlement was fairly indicated by the size of the +quick-growing umbrella and pepper-trees which had been planted for shade. +Thus all the mass of foliage rose like a mound of gentle slope toward the +centre of the town, where Jack saw vaguely the outlines of a rambling +bungalow, more spacious if no more pretentious than its neighbors in its +architecture. At a cement bridge over the ditch, leading to a broad +veranda under the soft illumination of a big, wrought-iron lantern, Mary +drew rein. + +"This is home," she said; "and--and thank you!" + +He could not see her face, which was in the shadow turned toward him, as +he looked into the light of the lantern from the other side of her pony. + +"And--thank you!" + +It was as if she had been on the point of saying something else and +could not get the form of any sentence except these two words. Was there +anything further to say except "Thank you"? Anything but to repeat +"Thank you"? + +There he stood, this stranger so correctly introduced by the Eternal +Painter, with his burden, waiting instructions in this moment of awkward +diffidence. He looked at her and at the porch and at his bundle of mail +in a quizzical appeal. Then she realized that, in a peculiar lapse of +abstraction, she had forgotten about his encumberment. + +Before she could speak there was a sonorous hail from the house; a hail +in keeping with the generous bulk of its owner, who had come through the +door. He was well past middle-age, with a thatch of gray hair half +covering his high forehead. In one hand he held the book that he had been +reading, and in the other a pair of big tortoise-shell glasses. + +"Mary, you are late--and what have we here?" + +He was beaming at Jack as he came across the bridge and he broke into +hearty laughter as he viewed Jack's preoccupation with the +second-class matter. + +"At last! At last we have rural free delivery in Little Rivers! We are +the coming town! And your uniform, sir"--Jasper Ewold took in the cowboy +outfit with a sweeping glance which warmed with the picturesque +effect--"it's a great improvement on the regulation; fit for free +delivery in Little Rivers, where nobody studies to be unconventional in +any vanity of mistaking that for originality, but nobody need be +conventional." + +He took some of the cargo in his own hands. With the hearty breeze of his +personality he fairly blew Jack onto the porch, where magazines and +pamphlets were dropped indiscriminately in a pile on a rattan settee. + +"You certainly have enough reading matter," said Jack. "And I must be +getting on to camp." + +For he had no invitation to stay from Mary and the conventional fact +that he had to recognize is that a postman's call is not a social call. +As he turned to go he faced her coming across the bridge. An Indian +servant, who seemed to have materialized out of the night, had taken +charge of her pony. + +"To camp! Never!" said Jasper Ewold. "Sir Knight, slip your lance in the +ring of the castle walls--but having no lance and this being no castle, +well, Sir Knight in _chaparejos_--that is to say, Sir Chaps--let me +inform you"--here Jasper Ewold threw back his shoulders and tossed his +mane of hair, his voice sinking to a serious basso profundo--"yes, inform +you, sir, that there is one convention, a local rule, that no stranger +crosses this threshold at dinner-time without staying to dinner." There +was a resonance in his tone, a liveliness to his expression, that was +infectious. + +"But Firio and Jag Ear and Wrath of God wait for me," Jack said, entering +with real enjoyment into the grandiose style. + +"High sounding company, sir! Let me see them!" demanded Jasper Ewold. + +Jack pointed to his cavalcade waiting in the half shadows, where the +lamp-rays grew thin. Wrath of God's bony face was pointed lugubriously +toward the door; Jag Ear was wiggling his fragment of ear. + +"And Moses on the mountain-top says that you stay!" declared +Jasper Ewold. + +Jack looked at Mary. She had not spoken yet and he waited on her word. + +"Please do!" she said. "Father wants someone to talk to." + +"Yes, Sir Chaps, I shall talk; otherwise, why was man given a tongue in +his head and ideas?" + +Refusal was out of the question. Accordingly, Firio was sent on to make +camp alone. + +"Now, Sir Chaps, now, Mr.--" began Jasper Ewold, pausing blankly. "Why, +Mary, you have not given me his city directory name!" + +"Mr.--" and Mary blushed. She could only pass the, blame back to the +Eternal Painter's oversight in their introduction. + +"Jack Wingfield!" said Jack, on his own account. + +"Jack Wingfield!" repeated Jasper Ewold, tasting the name. + +A flicker of surprise followed by a flicker of drawn intensity ran over +his features, and he studied Jack in a long glance, which he masked just +in time to save it from being a stare. Jack was conscious of the +scrutiny. He flushed slightly and waited for some word to explain it; +but none came. Jasper Ewold's Olympian geniality returned in a +spontaneous flood. + +"Come inside, Jack Wingfield," he said. "Come inside, Sir Chaps--for that +is how I shall call you." + +The very drum-beat of hospitality was in his voice. It was a wonderful +voice, deep and warm and musical; not to be forgotten. + + + + +V + +A SMILE AND A SQUARE CHIN + + +When a man comes to the door book in hand and you have the testimony of +the versatility and breadth of his reading in half a bushel of mail for +him, you expect to find his surroundings in keeping. But in Jasper +Ewold's living-room Jack found nothing of the kind. + +Heavy, natural beams supported the ceiling. On the gray cement walls were +four German photographs of famous marbles. The Venus de Milo looked +across to the David of Michael Angelo; the Flying Victory across to +Rodin's Thinker. In the centre was a massive Florentine table, its broad +top bare except for a big ivory tusk paper-knife free from any mounting +of silver. On the shelf underneath were portfolios of the reproductions +of paintings. + +An effect which at first was one of quiet spaciousness became impressive +and compelling. Its simplicity was without any of the artificiality that +sometimes accompanies an effort to escape over-ornamentation. No one +could be in the room without thinking through his eyes and with his +imagination. Wherever he sat he would look up to a masterpiece as the +sole object of contemplation. + +"This is my room. Here, Mary lets me have my way," said Jasper Ewold. +"And it is not expensive." + +"The Japanese idea of concentration," said Jack. + +Jasper Ewold, who had been watching the effect of the room on Jack, as he +watched it on every new-comer, showed his surprise and pleasure that this +young man in cowboy regalia understood some things besides camps and +trails; and this very fact made him answer in the vigorous and enjoyed +combatancy of the born controversialist. + +"Japanese? No!" he declared. "The little men with their storks and vases +have merely discovered to us in decoration a principle which was Greek in +a more majestic world than theirs. It was the true instinct of the +classic motherhood of our art before collectors mistook their residences +for warehouses." + +"And the books?" Jack asked, boyishly. "Where are they? Yes, what do you +do with all the second-class matter?" + +The question was bait to Jasper Ewold. It gave him an opportunity for +discourse. + +"When I read I want nothing but a paper-cutter close at hand--a good, big +paper-cutter, whose own weight carries it through the leaves. And I want +to be alone with that book. If I am too lazy to go to the library for +another, then it is not worth reading. When I get head-achy with print +and look up, I don't want to stare at the backs of more books. I want +something to rest and fill the eye. I--" + +"Father," Mary admonished him, "I fear this is going to be long. Why not +continue after Mr. Wingfield has washed off the dust of travel and we are +at table?" + +"Mary is merely jealous. She wants to hurry you to the dining-room, which +was designed to her taste," answered her father, with an affectation of +grand indignation. "The dust of travel here is clean desert dust--but I +admit that it is gritty. Come with me, Sir Chaps!" + +He bade Jack precede him through a door diagonally opposite the one by +which he had entered from the veranda. On the other side Jack found +himself surrounded by walls of books, which formed a parallelogram around +a great deal table littered with magazines and papers. Here, indeed, the +printed word might riot as it pleased in the joyous variety and chaos of +that truly omnivorous reader of herbivorous capacity. Out of the library +Jack passed into Jasper Ewold's bedroom. It was small, with a soldier's +cot of exaggerated size that must have been built for his amplitude of +person, and it was bare of ornament except for an old ivory crucifix. + +"There's a pitcher and basin, if you incline to a limited operation for +outward convention," said Jasper Ewold; "and through that door you will +find a shower, if you are for frank, unlimited submersion of the +altogether." + +"Have I time for the altogether?" Jack asked. + +"When youth has not in this house, it marks a retrocession toward +barbarism for Little Rivers which I refuse to contemplate. Take your +shower, Sir Chaps, and"--a smile went weaving over the hills and valleys +of Jasper Ewold's face--"and, mind, you take off those grand boots or +they will get full of water! You will find me in the library when you are +through;" and, shaking with subterranean enjoyment of his own joke, he +closed the door. + +Cool water from the bowels of the mountains fell on a figure as slender +as that of the great Michael's David pictured in the living-room; a +figure whose muscles ran rippling with leanness and suppleness, without +the bunching over-development of the athlete. He bubbled in shivery +delight with the first frigid sting of the downpour; he laughed in +ecstasy as he pulled the valve wide open, inviting a Niagara. + +While he was still glowing with the rough intimacy of the towel, he +viewed the trappings thrown over the chair and his revolver holster on +the bureau in a sense of detachment, as if in the surroundings of +civilization some voice of civilization made him wish for flannels in +which to dine. Then there came a rap at the door, and an Indian appeared +with an envelope addressed in feminine handwriting. On the corner of the +page within was a palm-tree--a crest to which anybody who dwelt on the +desert might be entitled; and Jack read: + +"DEAR MR. WINGFIELD: + +"Please don't tell father about that horrible business on the pass. It +will worry him unnecessarily and might interfere with my afternoon rides, +which are everything to me. There is not the slightest danger in the +future. After this I shall always go armed. + +"Sincerely yours, + +"MARY EWOLD." + +The shower had put him in such lively humor that his answer was born in a +flash from memory of her own catechising of him on Galeria. + +"First, I must ask if you know how to shoot," he scribbled beneath her +signature. + +The Indian seemed hardly out of the doorway before he was back +with a reply: + +"I do, or I would not go armed," it said. + +She had capped his satire with satire whose prick was, somehow, +delicious. He regarded the sweep of her handwriting with a lingering +interest, studying the swift nervous strokes before he sent the note back +with still another postscript: + +"Of course I had never meant to tell anybody," he wrote. "It is not a +thing to think of in that way." + +This, he thought, must be the end of the correspondence; but he was +wrong. The peripatetic go-between reappeared, and under Jack's last +communication was written, "Thank you!" He could hardly write "Welcome!" +in return. It was strictly a case of nothing more to say by either +duelist. In an impulse he slipped the sheet, with its palm symbolic of +desert mystery and oasis luxuriance, into his pocket. + +"Here I am in the midst of the shucks and biting into the meat of the +kernel," said Jasper Ewold, as Jack entered the library to find him +standing in the midst of wrappings which he had dropped on the floor; +"yes, biting into very rich meat." + +He held up the book which was evidently the one that had balanced +uncertainly on the pile which Jack had brought from the post-office. + +"Professor Giuccamini's researches! It is as interesting as a novel. But +come! You are hungry!" + +Book in hand, and without removing his tortoise-shell spectacles, he +passed out into the garden at the rear. There a cloth was laid under +a pavilion. + +"In a country where it never rains," said the host, "where it is eternal +spring, walls to a house are conventions on which to stack books and hang +pictures. Mary has chosen nature for her decorative effect--cheaper, +even, than mine. In the distance is Galeria; in the foreground, what was +desert six years ago." + +The overhead lamp deepened to purple the magenta of the bougainvillea +vines running up the pillars of the pavilion; made the adjacent rows of +peony blossoms a pure, radiant white; while beyond, in the shadows, was a +broad path between rows of young palms. + +Mary appeared around a hedge which hid the open-air kitchen. The girl of +the gray riding-habit was transformed into a girl in white. Jack saw her +as a domestic being. He guessed that she had seen that the table was set +right; that she had had a look-in at the cooking; that the hands whose +boast it was that they could shoot, had picked the jonquils in the +slender bronze vase on the table. + +"Father, there you are again, bringing a book to the dining-room against +the rules," she warned him; "against all your preachments about reading +at meals!" + +"That's so, Mary," said Jasper Ewold, absently, regarding the book as if +some wicked genius had placed it in his hand quite unbeknown to him. +"But, Mary, it is Professor Giuccamini at last! Giuccamini that I have +waited for so long! I beg your pardon, Sir Chaps! When I have somebody to +talk to I stand doubly accused. Books at dinner! I descend into dotage!" + +In disgust he started toward the house with the book. But in the very +doorway he paused and, reopening the book, turned three or four pages +with ravenous interest. + +"Giuccamini and I agree!" he shouted. "He says there is no doubt that +Burlamacchi and Pico were correct. Cosmo de' Medici did call Savonarola +to his death-bed, and I am glad of it. I like good stories to turn out +true! But here I have a listener--a live listener, and I ramble on about +dead tyrants and martyrs. I apologize--I apologize!" and he disappeared +in the library. + +"Father does not let me leave books in the living-room, which is his. +Why should he bring them to the dining-room, which is mine?" Mary +explained. + +"There must be law in every household," Jack agreed. + +"Yes, somebody fresh to talk to, at, around, and through!" called Jasper +Ewold, as he reappeared. "Yes, and over your head; otherwise I shall not +be flattered by my own conversation." + +"He glories in being an intellectual snob," Mary said. "Please pretend at +times not to understand him." + +"Thank you, Mary. You are the corrective that keeps my paternal +superiority in balance," answered her father, with a comprehending wave +of his hand indicating his sense of humor at the same time as playful +insistence on his role as forensic master of the universe. + +How he did talk! He was a mill to which all intellectual grist was +welcome. Over its wheel the water ran now singing, again with the roar of +a cataract. He changed theme with the relish of one who rambles at will, +and the emotion of every opinion was written on the big expanse of his +features and enforced with gestures. He talked of George Washington, of +Andrea del Sarto, of melon-growing, trimming pepper-trees, the Divina +Commedia, fighting rose-bugs, of Schopenhauer and of Florence--a great +deal about Florence, a city that seemed to hang in his mind as a sort of +Renaissance background for everything else, even for melon-growing. + +"You are getting over my head!" Jack warned him at times, politely. + +"That is the trouble," said Jasper Ewold. "Consider the hardship of +being the one wise man in the world! I find it lonely, inconvenient, +stupefying. Why, I can't even convince Jim Galway that I know more about +dry farming than he!" + +Jack listened raptly, his face glowing. Once, when he looked in his +host's direction suddenly, after speaking to Mary, he found that he was +the object of the same inquiring scrutiny that he had been on the porch. +In lulls he caught the old man's face in repose. It had sadness, then, +the sadness of wreckage; sadness against which he seemed to fence in his +wordy feints and thrusts. + +"Christian civilization began in the Tuscan valley," the philosopher +proceeded, harking back to the book which had arrived by the evening's +mail. "Florence was a devil--Florence was divine. They raised geniuses +and devils and martyrs: the most cloud-topping geniuses, the worst +devils, the most saintly martyrs. But better than being a drone in a +Florence pension is all this"--with a wave of his hand to the garden and +the stars--"which I owe to Mary and the little speck on her lungs which +brought us here after--after we had found that we had not as much money +as we thought we had and an old fellow who had been an idling student, +mostly living abroad all his life, felt the cramp of the material facts +of board-and-clothes money. It made Mary well. It made me know the +fulness of wisdom of the bee and the ant, and it brought me back to the +spirit of America--the spirit of youth and accomplishment. Instead of +dreaming of past cities, I set out to make a city like a true American. +Here we came to camp in our first travelled delight of desert spaces for +her sake; and here we brought what was left of the fortune and started a +settlement." + +The spectator-philosopher attitude of audience to the world's stage +passed. He became the builder and the rancher, enthusiastically dwelling +on the growth of orchards and gardens in expert fondness. As Jack +listened, the fragrance of flowers was in his nostrils and in intervals +between Jasper Ewold's sentences he seemed to hear the rustle of borning +leaf-fronds breaking the silence. But the narrative was not an idyll. +Toil and patience had been the handmaidens of the fecundity of the soil. +Prosperity had brought an entail of problems. Jasper Ewold mentioned them +briefly, as if he would not ask a guest to share the shadows which they +brought to his brow. + +"The honey of our prosperity brings us something besides the bees. It +brings those who would share the honey without work," said he. "It brings +the Bill Lang hive and Pete Leddy." + +At the mention of the name, Jack's and Mary's glances met. + +"You have promised not to tell," hers was saying. + +"I will not," his was answering. + +But clearly he had grasped the fact that Little Rivers was getting out of +its patron's hands, and every honest man in that community wanted to be +rid of Pete Leddy. + +"I should think your old friend, Cosmo de' Medici, would have found a +way," Jack suggested. + +"Cosmo is for talk," said Mary. "At heart father is a Quaker." + +"Some are for lynching," said Jasper Ewold, thoughtfully. "Begin to +promote order with disorder and where will you end?" he inquired, +belligerently. "This is not the Middle Ages. This is the Little Rivers +of peace." + +Then, after a quotation from Cardinal Newman, which seemed pretty +far-fetched to deal with desert ruffians, he was away again, setting out +fruit trees and fighting the scale. + +"And our Date Tree Wonderful!" he continued. "This year we get our first +fruit, unless the book is wrong. You cannot realize what this first-born +of promise means to Little Rivers. Under the magic of water it completes +the cycle of desert fecundity, from Scotch oats and Irish potatoes to the +Arab's bread. Bananas I do not include. Never where the banana grows has +there been art or literature, a good priesthood, unimpassioned +law-makers, honest bankers, or a noble knighthood. It is just a little +too warm. Here we can build a civilization which neither roasts us in +summer nor freezes us in winter." + +There was a fluid magnetism in the rush of Jasper Ewold's junketing +verbiage which carried the listener on the bosom of a pleasant stream. +Jack was suddenly reminded that it must be very late and he had far +overstayed the retiring hour of the desert, where the Eternal Painter +commands early rising. + +"Going--going so soon!" protested Jasper Ewold. + +"So late!" Jack smiled back. + +To prove that it was, he called attention to the fact, when they passed +through the living-room to the veranda, that not a light remained in any +ranch-house. + +"I have not started my talk yet," said Jasper. "But next time you come I +will really make a beginning--and you shall see the Date Tree Wonderful." + +"I go by the morning train," Jack returned. + +"So! so!" mused Jasper. "So! so!" he objected, but not gloomily. "I get a +good listener only to lose him!" + +But Jack was hardly conscious of the philosopher's words. In that +interval he had still another glimpse of Mary's eyes without the veil and +saw deeper than he had before; saw vast solitudes, inviting yet offering +no invitation, where bright streams seemed to flash and sing under the +sunlight and then disappear in a desert. That was her farewell to the +easy traveller who had stopped to do her a favor on the trail. And he +seemed to ask nothing more in that spellbound second; nor did he after +the veil had fallen, and he acquitted himself of some spoken form of +thanks for an evening of happiness. + +"A pleasant journey!" Mary said. + +"Luck, Sir Chaps, luck!" called Jasper Ewold. + +Jack's easy stride, as he passed out into the night, confirmed the last +glimpse of his smiling, whimsical "I don't care" attitude, which never +minded the danger sign on the precipice's edge. + +"He does not really want to go back to New York," Mary remarked, and was +surprised to find that she had spoken her thought aloud. + +"I hardly agree with that opinion," said her father absently, his +thoughts far afield from the fetter of his words. "But of one thing I am +sure, John Wingfield! A smile and a square chin!" + + + + +VI + +OBLIVION IS NOT EASY + + +"A smile and a square chin!" Mary repeated, as they went back into the +living-room. + +"Yes, hasn't he both, this Wingfield?" asked her father. + +"This Wingfield"--on the finish of the sentence there was a halting, +appreciable accent. He moved toward the table with the listlessness of +some enormous automaton of a man to whom every step of existence was a +step in a treadmill. There was a heavy sadness about his features which +rarely came, and always startled her when it did come with a fear that +they had so set in gloom that they would never change. He raised his hand +to the wick screw of the lamp, waiting for her to pass through the room +before turning off the flame which bathed him in its rays, giving him the +effect of a Rodinesque incarnation of memory. + +Any melancholy that beset him was her own enemy, to be fought and +cajoled. Mary slipped to his side, dropping her head on his shoulder and +patting his cheek. But this magic which had so frequently rallied him +brought only a transient, hazy smile and in its company what seemed a +random thought. + +"And you and he came down the pass together? Yes, yes!" he said. His tone +had the vagueness of one drawing in from the sea a net that seemed to +have no end. + +Had Jack Wingfield been more than a symbol? Had he brought something +more than an expression of culture, manner, and ease of a past which +nothing could dim? Had he suggested some personal relation to that past +which her father preferred to keep unexplained? These questions crowded +into her mind speculatively. They were seeking a form of conveyance when +she realized that she had been adrift with imaginings. He was getting +older. She must expect his preoccupation and his absent-mindedness to +become more exacting. + +"Yes, yes!" His voice had risen to its customary sonority; his eyes were +twinkling; all the hard lines had become benignant wrinkles of Olympian +charm. "Yes, yes! You and this funny tourist! What a desert it is! I +wonder--now, I wonder if he will go aboard the Pullman in that stage +costume. But come, come, Mary! It's bedtime for all pastoral workers and +subjects of the Eternal Painter. Off you go, or we shall be playing +blind-man's-buff in the dark!" He was chuckling as he turned down the +wick. "His enormous spurs, and Jag Ear and Wrath of God!" he said. + +Her fancy ran dancing rejoicingly with his mood. + +"Don't forget the name of his pony!" she called merrily from the stairs. +"It's P.D." + +"P.D.!" said her father, with the disappointment of one tempted by a good +morsel which he finds tasteless. "There he seems to have descended to +alphabetic commonplace. No imagery in that!" + +"He is a slow, reliable pony," put in Mary, "without the Q." + +"Pretty Damn, without the Quick! Oh, I know slang!" + +Jasper Ewold burst into laughter. It was still echoing through the house +when she entered her room. As it died away it seemed to sound hollow and +veiled, when the texture of sunny, transparent solidity in his laugh was +its most pronounced characteristic. + +Probably this, too, was imagination, Mary thought. It had been an +overwrought day, whose events had made inconsiderable things supreme over +logic. She always slept well; she would sleep easily to-night, because it +was so late. But she found herself staring blankly into the darkness and +her thoughts ranging in a shuttle play of incoherency from the moment +that Leddy had approached her on the pass till a stranger, whom she never +expected to see again, walked away into the night. What folly! What folly +to keep awake over an incident of desert life! But was it folly? What +sublime egoism of isolated provincialism to imagine that it had been +anything but a great event! Naturally, quiet, desert nerves must still be +quivering after the strain. Inevitably, they would not calm instantly, +particularly as she had taken coffee for supper. She was wroth about the +coffee, though she had taken less than usual that evening. + +She heard the clock strike one; she heard it strike two, and three. And +he, on his part--this Sir Chaps who had come so abruptly into her life +and evidently set old passions afire in her father's mind--of course he +was sleeping! That was the exasperating phlegm of him. He would sleep on +horseback, riding toward the edge of a precipice! + +"A smile and a square chin--and dreamy vagueness," she kept repeating. + +The details of the scene in the store recurred with a vividness which +counting a flock of sheep as they went over a stile or any other trick +for outwitting insomnia could not drive from her mind. Then Pete Leddy's +final look of defiance and Jack Wingfield's attitude in answer rose out +of the pantomime in merciless clearness. + +All the indecisiveness of the interchange of guesses and rehearsed +impressions was gone. She got a message, abruptly and convincingly. This +incident of the pass was not closed. An ultimatum had been exchanged. +Death lay between these two men. Jack had accepted the issue. + +The clock struck four and five. Before it struck again daylight would +have come; and before night came again, what? To lie still in the torment +of this new experience of wakefulness with its peculiar, half-recognized +forebodings, had become unbearable. She rose and dressed and went down +stairs softly, candle in hand, aware only that every agitated fibre of +her being was whipping her to action which should give some muscular +relief from the strain of her overwrought faculties. She would go into +the garden and walk there, waiting for sunrise. But at the edge of the +path she was arrested by a shadow coming from the servants' +sleeping-quarters. It was Ignacio, the little Indian who cared for her +horse, ran errands, and fought garden bugs for her--Ignacio, the +note-bearer. + +"Senorita! senorita!" he exclaimed, and his voice, vibrant with something +stronger than surprise, had a certain knowing quality, as if he +understood more than he dared to utter. "Senorita, you rise early!" + +"Sometimes one likes to look at the morning stars," she remarked. + +But there were no stars; only a pale moon, as Ignacio could see +for himself. + +"Senorita, that young man who was here and Pete Leddy--do you know, +senorita?" + +"The young man who came down from the pass with me, you mean?" she asked, +inwardly shamed at her simulation of casual curiosity. + +"Yes, he and Leddy--bad blood between them'" said Ignacio. "You no know, +senorita? They fight at daybreak." + +The pantomime in the store, Jack's form disappearing with its easy step +into the night, analyzed in the light of this news became the natural +climax of a series of events all under the spell of fatality. + +"Come, Ignacio!" she said. "We must hurry!" And she started around the +house toward the street. + + + + +VII + +WHAT HAPPENED AT LANG'S + + +While Jack had been playing the pioneer of rural free delivery in Little +Rivers, Pete Leddy, in the rear of Bill Lang's store, was refusing all +stimulants, but indulging in an unusually large cud of tobacco. + +"Liquor ain't no help in drawing a bead," he explained to the loungers +who followed him through the door after Jack had gone. + +If Pete did not want to drink it was not discreet to press him, +considering the mood he was in. The others took liberal doses, which +seemed only to heighten the detail of the drama which they had witnessed. +To Mary it had been all pantomime; to them it was dynamic with language. +It was something beyond any previous contemplation of possibility in +their cosmos. + +The store had been enjoying an average evening. All present were +expressing their undaunted faith in the invincibility of James J. +Jeffries, when a smiling stranger appeared in the doorway. He was dressed +like a regular cowboy dude. His like might have appeared on the stage, +but had never been known to get off a Pullman in Arizona. And the instant +he appeared, up flashed Pete Leddy's revolver. + +The gang had often discussed when and how Pete would get his seventh +victim, and here they were about to be witnesses of the deed. Instinct +taught them the proper conduct on such occasions. The tenderfoot was as +good as dead; but, being a tenderfoot and naturally a bad shot and prone +to excitement, he might draw and fire wild. They ducked with the avidity +of woodchucks into their holes--all except Jim Galway, who remained +leaning against the counter. + +"I gin ye warning!" they heard Pete say, and closed their eyes +involuntarily--all except Jim Galway--with their last impression the +tenderfoot's ingenuous smile and the gleam on Pete's gun-barrel. They +waited for the report, as Mary had, and then they heard steps and looked +up to see that dude tenderfoot, still smiling, going straight toward the +muzzle pointed at his head, his hands at his side in no attempt to draw. +The thing was incredible and supernatural. + +"Pete is letting him come close first," they thought. + +But there, unbelievable as it was, Pete was lowering his revolver and +the tenderfoot's hand was on his shoulder in a friendly, explanatory +position. Pete seemed in a trance, without will-power over his trigger +finger, and Pete was the last man in the world that you would expect +to lose his nerve. Jim Galway being the one calm observer, whose +vision had not been disturbed by precipitancy in taking cover, let us +have his version. + +"He just walked over to Pete--that's all I can say--walked over to him, +simple and calm, like he was going to ask for a match. All I could think +of and see was his smile right into that muzzle and the glint in his +eyes, which were looking into Pete's. Someway you couldn't shoot into +that smile and that glint, which was sort of saying, 'Go ahead! I'm +leaving it to you and I don't care!'--just as if a flash of powder was +all the same to him as a flash of lightning." + +The desert had given Jack life; and it would seem as if what the desert +had given, it might take away. He was not going to humble himself by +throwing up his arms or standing still for execution. He was on his way +into the store and he continued on his way. If something stopped him, +then he would not have to take the train East in the morning. + +"Now if you want to kill me, Pete Leddy," the astonished group heard this +stranger say, "why, I'm not going to deny you the chance. But I don't +want you to do it just out of impulse, and I know that is not your own +reasoned way. You certainly would want sporting rules to prevail and that +I should have an equal chance of killing you. So we will go outside, +stand off any number of paces you say, let our gun-barrels hang down even +with the seams of our trousers, and wait for somebody to say 'one, two, +three--fire!'" + +Not once had that peculiar smile faded from Jack's lips or the glint in +his eyes diverted from its probe of Leddy's eyes. His voice went well +with the smile and with an undercurrent of high voltage which seemed the +audible corollary of the glint. Every man knew that, despite his gay +adornment, he was not bluffing. He had made his proposition in deadly +earnest and was ready to carry it out. Pete Leddy shuffled and bit the +ends of his moustache, and his face was drawn and white and his shoulder +burning under the easy grip of Jack's hand. From the bore of the +unremitting glance that had confounded him he shifted his gaze +sheepishly. + +"Oh, h--l!" he said, and the tone, in its disgust and its attempt to +laugh off the incident, gave the simplicity of an exclamation from his +limited vocabulary its character. "Oh, h--l! I was just trying you out as +a tenderfoot--a little joke!" + +At this, all the crowd laughed in an explosive breath of relief. The +inflection of the laugh made Pete go red and look challengingly from face +to face, with the result that all became piously sober. + +"Then it is all right? I meant in no way to wound your feelings or even +your susceptibilities," said Jack; and, accepting the incident as closed, +he turned to the counter and asked for the Ewold mail. + +Free from that smile and the glint of the eyes, Pete came to in a torrent +of reaction. He, with six notches on his gun-handle, had been trifled +with by a grinning tenderfoot. Rage mounted red to his brow. No man who +had humiliated him should live. He would have shot Jack in the back if it +had not been for Jim Galway, lean as a lath, lantern-jawed, with deep-set +blue eyes, his bearing different from that of the other loungers. Jim had +not joined in the laugh over Pete's explanation; he had remained +impassive through the whole scene; but the readiness with which he +knocked Leddy's revolver down showed that this immovability had let +nothing escape his quiet observation. + +When Jack looked around and understood what had passed, his face +was without the smile. It was set and his body had stiffened free +of the counter. + +"I'll take the gun away from him. It's high time somebody did," +said Galway. + +"I think you had better, if that is the only way that he knows how to +fight," said Jack. "I have wondered how he got the six. Presumably he +murdered them." + +"To their faces, as I'll get you!" Leddy answered. "I'll play your way +now, one, two, three--fire!" + +Galway, convinced that this stranger did not know how to shoot, +turned to Jack: + +"It's not worth your being a target for a dead shot," he said. + +"In the morning, yes," answered Jack; and he was smiling again in a way +that swept the audience with uncanniness. "But to-night I am engaged. +Make it early to-morrow, as I have to take the first train East." + +"Well, are you going to let me go?" Leddy asked Jim, while he looked in +appeal to the loungers, who were his men. + +"Yes, by all means," Jack told Galway. "And as I shall want a man with +me, may I rely on you? Four of us will be enough, with a fifth to give +the word." + +"Ropey Smith can go with me," said Leddy. + +It scarcely occurred to them to give the name of duel to this meeting, +which Jack held was the only fair way when one felt that he must have +satisfaction from an adversary in the form of death. An _arroyo_ a mile +from town was chosen and the time dawn, for a meeting which was to +reverse the ethics of that boasted fair-play in which the man who first +gets a bead is the hero. + +"It seems a mediaeval day for me," Jack said, when the details were +concluded. "Good-night, gentlemen," he added, after Bill Lang, with +fingers that bungled from agitation, had filled his arms with +second-class matter. + +Jim Galway resumed his position, leaning against the counter watchfully +as the gang filed out to the rear to wet up, and in his right hand, which +was in his pocket, nestled an automatic pistol. + +"I'd shot Pete Leddy dead--'twas the first real fair chance within the +law--so help me, God! I would," he thought, "if there had been time to +spare, and save that queer tenderfoot's life. And me a second in a +regular duel! Well, I'll be--but it ain't no regular duel. One of 'em is +going to drop--that is, the tenderfoot is. I don't just know how to line +him up. He beats me!" + + + + +VIII + +ACCORDING TO CODE + + +It was the supreme moment of night before dawn. A violet mist shrouded +everything. The clamminess of the dew touched Mary's forehead and her +hand brushed the moisture-laden hedge as she left the Ewold yard. She +remembered that Jack had said that he would camp near the station, so +there was no doubt in which direction she should go. Hastening along the +silent street, it was easy for her to imagine that she and Ignacio were +the only sentient beings, abroad in a world that had stopped breathing. + +Softly, impalpably, with both the graciousness of a host and the +determinedness of an intruder who will not be gainsaid, the first rays of +morning light filtered into the mist. The violet went pink. From pale +pink it turned to rose-pink; to the light of life which was as yet as +still as the light of the moon. The occasional giant cactus in the open +beyond the village outskirts ceased to be spectral. + +For the first time Mary Ewold was in the presence of the wonder of +daybreak on the desert without watching for the harbinger of gold in the +V of the pass, with its revelation of a dome of blue where unfathomable +space had been. For the first time daybreak interested her only in +broadening and defining her vision of her immediate surroundings. + +When the permeating softness suddenly yielded to full transparency, +spreading from the fanfare of the rising sun come bolt above the range, +and the mist rose, she left the road at sight of two ponies and a burro +in a group, their heads together in drooping fellowship. She knew them at +once for P.D., Wrath of God, and Jag Ear. Nearby rose a thin spiral of +smoke and back of it was a huddled figure, Firio, preparing the morning +meal. Animals and servant were as motionless as the cactus. Evidently +they did not hear her footsteps. They formed a picture of nightly +oblivion, unconscious that day had come. Firio's face was hidden by his +big Mexican hat; he did not look up even when she was near. She noted the +two blanket-rolls where the two comrades of the trail had slept. She saw +that both were empty and knew that Jack had already gone. + +"Where is Mr. Wingfield?" she demanded, breathlessly. + +Firio was not startled. To be startled was hardly in his Indian nature. +The hat tipped upward and under the brim-edge his black eyes gleamed, as +the sandy soil all around him gleamed in the dew. He shrugged his +shoulders when he recognized the lady speaking as the one who had delayed +him at the foot of the pass the previous afternoon. Thanks to her, he had +been left alone without his master the whole evening. + +"He go to stretch his legs," answered Firio. + +Apparently, Sir Chaps had been disinclined to disturb the routine of camp +by telling Firio anything about the duel. + +"Where did he go? In which direction?" Mary persisted. + +Firio moved the coffee-pot closer to the fire. This seemed to require +the concentration of all his faculties, including that of speech. He was +a fit servant for one who took duels so casually. + +"Where? Where?" she repeated. + +"Where? Have you no tongue?" snapped Ignacio. + +Firio gazed all around as if looking for Jack; then nodded in the +direction of rising ground which broke at the edge of a depression about +fifty yards away. Her impatience had made the delay of a minute seem +hours, while the brilliance of the light had now become that of broad +day. She forgot all constraint. She ran, and as she ran she listened for +a shot as if it were something inevitable, past due. + +And then she uttered a muffled cry of relief, as the scene in a +depression which had been the bed of an ancient river flashed before her +with theatric completeness. In the bottom of it were five men, two +moving and three stationary. Jim Galway and Ropey Smith were walking +side by side, keeping a measured step as they paced off a certain +distance, while Bill Lang and Pete Leddy and Jack stood by. Leddy and +Lang were watching the process inflexibly. Jack was in the costume which +had flushed her curiosity so vividly on the pass and he appeared the +same amused, disinterested and wondering traveller who had then come +upon strange doings. + +She stopped, her temples throbbing giddily, her breaths coming in gasps; +stopped to gain mastery of herself before she decided what she would do +next. On the opposite bank of the _arroyo_ was a line of heads, like +those of infantry above a parapet, and she comprehended that, in the +same way that news of a cock-fight travels, the gallery gods of Little +Rivers had received a tip of a sporting event so phenomenal that it +changed the sluggards among them into early risers. They were making +themselves comfortable lying flat on their stomachs and exposing as +little as possible of their precious bodies to the danger of that +tenderfoot firing wild. + +It was a great show, of which they would miss no detail; and all had +their interest whetted by some possible new complication of the plot when +they saw the tall, familiar figure of Jasper Ewold's daughter standing +against the skyline. She felt the greedy inquiry of their eyes; she +guessed their thoughts. + +This new element of the situation swept her with a realization of the +punishment she must suffer for that chance meeting on Galeria and then +with resentful anger, which transformed Jack Wingfield's indifference to +callous bravado. + +Must she face that battery of leers from the town ruffians while she +implored a stranger, who had been nothing to her yesterday and would be +nothing tomorrow, to run away from a combat which was a creation of his +own stubbornness? She was in revolt against herself, against him, and +against the whole miserable business. If she proceeded, public opinion +would involve her in a sentimental interest in a stranger. She must live +with the story forever, while to an idle traveller it was only an +adventure at a way-station on his journey. + +She had but to withdraw in feigned surprise from the sight of a scene +which she had come upon unawares and she would be free of any association +with it. For all Little Rivers knew that she was given to random walks +and rides. No one would be surprised that she was abroad at this early +hour. It would be ascribed to the nonsense which afflicted the Ewolds, +father and daughter, about sunrises. + +Yes, she had been in a nightmare. With the light of day she was seeing +clearly. Had she not warned him about Leddy? Had not she done her part? +Should she submit herself to fruitless humiliation? Go to him in as much +distress as if his existence were her care? If he would not listen to her +yesterday, why should she expect him to listen to her now? + +She would return to her garden. Its picture of content and isolation +called her away from the stare of the faces on the other bank. She turned +on her heel abruptly, took two or three spasmodic steps and stopped +suddenly, confronted with another picture--one of imagination--that of +Jack Wingfield lying dead. The recollection of a voice, the voice that +had stopped the approach of Leddy's passion-inflamed face to her own on +the pass, sounded in her ears. + +She faced around, drawn by something that will and reason could not +overcome, to see that Jim Galway and Ropey Smith had finished their task +of pacing off the distance. The two combatants were starting for their +stations, their long shadows in the slant of the morning sunlight +travelling over the sand like pursuing spectres. Leddy went with the +quick, firm step which bespoke the keenness of his desire; Jack more +slowly, at a natural gait. His station was so near her that she could +reach him with a dozen steps. And he was whistling--the only sound in a +silence which seemed to stretch as far as the desert--whistling gaily in +apparent unconsciousness that the whole affair was anything but play. +The effect of this was benumbing. It made her muscles go limp. She sank +down for very want of strength to keep erect; and Ignacio, hardly +observed, keeping close to her dropped at her side. + +"Ignacio, tell the young man, the one who was our guest last evening, +that I wish to see him!" she gasped. + +With flickering, shrewd eyes Ignacio had watched her distress. He craved +the word that should call him to service and was off with a bound. His +rushing, agitated figure was precipitated into a scene hard set as men on +a chess-board in deadly serenity. Leddy and Jack, were already facing +each other. + +"Senor! Senor!" Ignacio shouted, as he ran. "Senor Don't Care of the Big +Spurs--wait!" + +The message which he had to give was his mistress's and, therefore, +nobody else's business. He rose on tiptoes to whisper it into Jack's +ear. Jack listened, with head bent to catch the words. He looked over to +Mary for an instant of intent silence and then raised his empty left +hand in signal. + +"Sorry, but I must ask for a little delay!" he called to Leddy. His tone +was wonderful in its politeness and he bowed considerately to his +adversary. + +"I thought it was all bluff!" Leddy answered. "You'll get it, +though--you'll get it in the old way if you haven't the nerve to take it +in yours!" + +"Really, I am stubbornly fond of my way," Jack said. "I shall be only a +minute. That will give you time to steady your nerves," he added, in the +encouraging, reassuring strain of a coach to a man going to the bat. + +He was coming toward Mary with his easy, languid gait, radiant of casual +inquiry. The time of his steps seemed to be reckoned in succeeding +hammer-beats in her brain. He was coming and she had to find reasons to +keep him from going back; because if it had not been for her he would be +quite safe. Oh, if she could only be free of that idea of obligation to +him! All the pain, the confusion, the embarrassment was on her side. His +very manner of approach, in keeping with the whole story of his conduct +toward her, showed him incapable of such feelings. She had another +reaction. She devoutly wished that she had not sent for him. + +Had not his own perversity taken his fate out of her hands? If he +preferred to die, why should it be her concern? Should she volunteer +herself as a rescuer of fools? The gleaming sand of the _arroyo_ rose in +a dazzling mist before her eyes, obscuring him, clothing him with the +unreality of a dream; and then, in physical reality, he emerged. He was +so near as she rose spasmodically that she could have laid her hand on +his shoulder. His hat under his arm, he stood smiling in the bland, +questioning interest of a spectator happening along the path, even as he +had in her first glimpse of him on the pass. + +"I don't care! Go on! Go on!" she was going to say. "You have made sport +of me! You make sport of everything! Life itself is a joke to you!" + +The tempest of the words was in her eyes, if it did not reach her +tongue's end. It was halted by the look of hurt surprise, of real pain, +which appeared on his face. Was it possible, after all, that he could +feel? The thought brought forth the passionate cry of her mission after +that sleepless night. + +"I beg of you--I implore you--don't!" + +Had anyone told her yesterday that she would have been begging any man +in melodramatic supplication for anything, she would have thought of +herself as mad. Wasn't she mad? Wasn't he mad? Yet she broke into +passionate appeal. + +"It is horrible--unspeakable! I cannot bear it!" + +A flood of color swept his cheeks and with it came a peculiar, feminine, +almost awkward, gentleness. His air was that of wordless humility. He +seemed more than ever an uncomprehending, sure prey for Leddy. + +"Don't you realize what death is?" she asked. + +The question, so earnest and searching, had the contrary effect on him. +It changed him back to his careless self. He laughed in the way of one +who deprecates another's illusion or passing fancy. This added to her +conviction that he did not realize, that he was incapable of realizing, +his position. + +"Do you think I am about to die?" he asked softly. + +"With Pete Leddy firing at you twenty yards away--yes! And you pose--you +pose! If you were human you would be serious!" + +"Pose?" He repeated the word. It startled him, mystified him. "The +clothes I bought to please Firio, you mean?" he inquired, his face +lighting. + +"No, about death. It is horrible--horrible! Death for which I am +responsible!" + +"Why, have you forgotten that we settled all that?" he asked. "It was not +you. It was the habit I had formed of whistling in the loneliness of the +desert. I am sorry, now, that I did not stick to singing, even at the +expense of a sore throat." + +Now he called to Leddy, and his voice, high-pitched and powerful, seemed +to travel in the luminous air as on resilient, invisible wires. + +"Leddy, wasn't it the way I whistled to you the first time we met that +made you want satisfaction? You remember"--and he broke into a whistle. +His tone was different from that to Leddy on the pass; the whistle was +different. It was shrill and mocking. + +"Yes, the whistle!" yelled Leddy. "No man can whistle to me like that +and live!" + +Jack laughed as if he appreciated all the possibilities of humor inherent +in the picture of the bloodthirsty Leddy, the waiting seconds and the +gallery. He turned to Mary with a gesture of his outstretched hands: + +"There, you see! I brought it on myself." + +"You are brutal! You are without feeling--you are ridiculous--you--" she +stormed, chokingly. + +And in face of this he became reasoning, philosophical. + +"Yes, I admit that it is all ridiculous, even to farce, this little +_comedie humaine_. But we must remember that beside the age of the desert +none of us last long. Ridiculous, yes; but if I will whistle, why, then, +I must play out the game I've started." + +He was looking straight into her eyes, and there was that in his gaze +which came as a surprise and with something of the effect of a blade out +of a scabbard. It chilled her. It fastened her inactive to the earth with +a helplessness that was uncanny. It mixed the element of fear for him +with the element of fear of him. + +"Remember I am of age--and I don't mind," he added, with the faintest +glint of satire in his reassurance. + +He was walking away, with a wave of his hand to Leddy; he was going +over the precipice's edge after thanking the danger sign. He did not +hasten, nor did he loiter. The precipice resolved itself into an +incident of a journey of the same order as an ankle-deep stream +trickling across a highway. + + + + +IX + +THE DEVIL IS OUT + + +She had done her best and she had failed. What reason was there for her +to remain? Should she endure witnessing in reality the horror which she +had pictured so vividly in imagination? A flash of fire! The fall of a +careening figure to the earth! Leddy's grin of satisfaction! The +rejoicing of his clan of spectators over the exploit, while youth which +sang airs to the beat of a pony's hoofs and knew the worship of the +Eternal Painter lay dead! + +What reason to remain except to punish herself! She would go. But +something banished reason. She was held in the leash of suspense, staring +with clearness of vision in one second; staring into a mist the next; +while the coming and going of Ignacio's breaths between his teeth was the +only sound in her ears. + +"Senor Don't Care of the Big Spurs will win!" he whispered. + +"He will?" she repeated, like one marvelling, in the tautness of every +nerve and muscle, that she had the power of speech. + +She peered into Ignacio's face. Its Indian impassivity was gone. His lips +were twitching; his eyes were burning points between half-closed lids. + +"Why?" she asked. "How?" + +"I know. I watch him. I have seen a mountain lion asleep in a tree. His +paw is like velvet. He smiles. There seems no fight in him. I know. There +is a devil, a big devil, in Senor Don't Care. It sleeps so much it very +terrible when it awakes. And Pete Leddy--he is all the time awake; all +the time too ready. Something in him will make his arm shake when the +moment to shoot comes and something in Senor Don't Care--his devil--will +make his arm steady." + +Could Ignacio be right? Did Jack really know how to shoot? Was he +confident of the outcome? Were his smiles the mask of a conviction that +he was to kill and not to be killed? After all, had his attitude toward +her been merely acting? Had she undergone this humiliation as the fish on +the line of the mischievous play of one who had stopped over a train in +order to do murder? No! If he were capable of such guile he knew that +Leddy could shoot well and that twenty yards was a deadly range for a +good shot. He was taking a chance and the devil in him was laughing at +the chance, while it laughed at her for thinking that he was an innocent +going to slaughter in expression of a capricious sense of chivalry. + +"He will win--he will win if Leddy plays fair!" Ignacio repeated. + +Now she was telling herself that it was solely for the sake of her +conscience that she wanted to see Senor Don't Care survive; solely for +the sake of her conscience that she wanted to see him go aboard the train +safe. After that, she could forget ever having owed this trifler the +feeling of gratitude for a favor done. Literally, he must live in order +to be a dead and unremembered incident of her existence. + +And Jack was back at his station, with the bright sunlight heightening +the colors of his play cowboy attire, his weight on the ball of his right +foot thrown well ahead of the other, his head up, but the whole effect +languid, even deferential. He seemed about to take off his hat to the +joyous sky of a fair day in May. His shadow expressed the same feeling as +his pose, that of tranquil youth with its eyes on the horizon. Leddy had +the peculiar slouch of the desperado, which is associated with the spread +of pioneering civilization by the raucous criers of red-blooded +individualism. If Jack's bearing was amateurish, then Pete's was +professional in its threatening pose; and his shadow, like himself, had +an unrelieved hardness of outline. + +Both drew their guns from their holsters and lowered them till the +barrels lay even with the trousers seams. They awaited the word to fire +which Bill Lang, who stood at an angle equidistant from the two men, +was to give. + +"Wait!" Jack called, in a tone which indicated that something had +recurred to him. Then a half laugh from him fell on the brilliant, +shining, hard silence with something of the sound of a pebble slipping +over glare ice. + +"Leddy, it has just occurred to me that we are both foolish--honestly, we +are!" he said. "The idea when Arizona is so sparsely settled of our +starting out to depopulate it in such a premeditated manner on such a +beautiful morning, and all because I was such an inept whistler! Why, if +I had realized what a perfectly bad whistler I was I would never have +whistled again. If my whistle hurt your feelings I am sorry, and I--" + +"No, you don't!" yelled Leddy. "I've waited long enough! It's +fight, you--" + +"Oh, all right! You are so emphatic," Jack answered. His voice was still +pleasant, but shot with something metallic. The very shadow of him seemed +to stiffen with the stiffening of his muscles. + +"Ready!" called Bill Lang. + +The ruling passion that had carved six notches on his gun-handle +overwhelmed Pete Leddy. At least, let us give him the benefit of the +doubt and say that this and not calculation was responsible for his +action. Before the word for preparation was free of Lang's lips, and +without waiting for the word to fire, his revolver came up in a swift +quarter-circle. He was sure of his aim at that range with a ready draw. +Again and again he had thus hit his target in practice and six times he +had winged his man by such agile promptness. + +With the flash from the muzzle all the members of the gallery rose on +hands and knees. They were as sure that there was to be a seventh notch +as of their identity. There was no question in their minds but Pete had +played a smart trick. They had known from the first that he would win. +And the proof of it was in the sudden, uncontrollable movement of the +adversary. + +Jack whirled half round. He was falling. But even as he fell he was still +facing his adversary. He plunged forward unsteadily and came to rest on +his left elbow. A trickle of blood showed on the chap of his left leg, +which had tightened as his knee twisted under him. Leddy's rage had been +so hot that for once his trigger finger had been too quick. He had aimed +too low. But he was sure that he had done for his man and he looked +triumphantly toward the gallery gods whose hero he was. They had now +risen to their feet. In answer to their congratulations he waved his +left hand, palm out, in salutation. His gun-hand had dropped back to his +trousers seam. + +Even as it dropped, Jack's revolver had risen, his own gun-hand steadied +in the palm of his left hand, which had an elbow in the sand for a rest. +Victor and spectators, in their preoccupation with the relief and elation +of a drama finished, had their first warning of what was to come in a +voice that did not seem like the voice of the tenderfoot as they had +heard it, but of another man. And Leddy was looking at a black hole in a +rim of steel which, though twenty yards away, seemed hot against his +forehead, while he turned cold. + +"Now, Pete Leddy, do not move a muscle!" Jack told him. "Pete Leddy, +you did not play my way. I still have a shot due, and I am going to +kill you!" + +Jack's face seemed never to have worn a smile. It was all chin, and thin, +tightly-pressed lips, and solid, straight nose, bronze and unyielding. + +"And I am going to kill you!" + +This was surely the devil of Ignacio's imagery speaking in him--a cold, +passionless, gray-eyed devil. Though they had never seen him shoot, +everybody felt now that he could shoot with deadly accuracy and that +there was no play cowboy in his present mood. He had the bead of death +on Leddy and he would fire with the first flicker of resistance. His +call seemed to have sunk the feet of everyone beneath the sand to +bed-rock and riveted them there. Lang and the two seconds were as +motionless as statues. + +Mary recalled Leddy's leer at her on the pass, with its intent of +something more horrible than murder. Savagery rose in her heart. It was +right that he should be killed. He deserved his fate. But no sooner was +the savagery born--born, she felt, of the very hypnosis of that carved +face--than she cast it out shudderingly in the realization that she had +wished the death of a fellow human being! She looked away from Jack; and +then it occurred to her that he must be bleeding. He was again a +companion of the trail, his strength ebbing away. Her impulse was +retarded by no fear of the gallery now. It brought her to her feet. + +"But first drop your revolver!" she heard Jack call, as she ran. + +She saw it fall from Leddy's trembling hand, as a dead leaf goes free of +a breeze-shaken limb. All the fight was out of him. The courage of six +notches was not the courage to accept in stoicism the penalty of foul +play. And that black rim was burning his forehead. + +"Galway, you have a gun?" Jack asked. + +"Yes," Galway answered, mechanically. His presence of mind, which had +been so sure in the store, was somewhat shaken. He had seen men killed, +but never in such deliberate fashion. + +"Take it out'" + +There was a quality in the command like frosty madness, which one +instinctively obeyed. The half-prostrate figure of the tenderfoot seemed +to dominate everything--men, earth, and air. + +Mary had a glimpse of Galway drawing an automatic pistol from his pocket +when she dropped at Jack's side. She knew that Jack had not heard or seen +her approach. All his will was flowing out along a pistol's sight, even +as his blood was flowing out on the sand in a broadening circle of red. + +It was well that she had come. Her fingers were splashed as she felt for +the artery, which she closed by leaning her whole weight on the thumb. + +Ignacio had followed her and immediately after him came Firio, who had +been startled in his breakfast preparations by the sound of a shot and +had set out to investigate its cause. He was as changed as his master; a +twitching, fierce being, glaring at her and at the wound and then +prolongedly and watchfully at Pete Leddy. + +"Can you shoot to kill?" Jack asked Galway, in a piercing summons. + +"Yes," drawled Galway. + +"Then up with your gun--quick! There! A bead on Ropey Smith!" + +Galway had the bead before Ropey could protest. + +"Give Ropey ten seconds to drop his gun or we will care for him at the +same time as Pete'" Jack concluded. + +Ropey did not wait the ten seconds. He was over-prompt for the +same reasons of temperament that made Pete Leddy prefer his own +way of fighting. + +"I take it that we can count on the neutrality of our spectators. They +cannot be interested in the success of either side," Jack observed, with +dry humor, but still methodically. "All they ask is a spectacle." + +"Yes, you bet!" came a voice from the gallery, undisguisedly eager +to concur. + +"Now, Pete and Ropey," Jack began, and broke off. + +There was a poignant silence that waited on the processes of his mind. +Not only was there no sound, but to Mary there seemed no movement +anywhere in the world, except the pulse of the artery trying to drive its +flood past the barrier of her thumb. Jack kept his bead unremittingly on +Pete. It was Firio who broke the silence. + +"Kill him! He is bad! He hates you!" said Firio. + +"_Si, si_! If you do not kill him now, you must some time," said Ignacio. + +Mary felt that even if Jack heard them he would not let their advice +influence him. On the bank before she had hastened to him a strange and +awful visitor in her heart had wished for Leddy's death. Now she wished +for him to go away unharmed. She wished it in the name of her own +responsibility for all that had happened. Yet her tongue had no urging +word to offer. She waited in a supernatural and dreadful curiosity on +Jack's decision. It was as if he were to answer one more question in +explanation of the mystery of his nature. Could he deliberately shoot +down an unarmed man? Was he that hard? + +"I am thinking just how to deal with you, Pete and Ropey," Jack +proceeded. "As I understand it, you have not been very useful citizens of +Little Rivers. You can live under one condition--that you leave town and +never return armed. Half a minute to decide!" + +"I'll go!" said Pete. + +"I'll go!" said Ropey. + +"And keep your words?" + +"Yes!" they assented. + +But neither moved. The fact that Jack had not yet lowered his +revolver made them cautious. They were obviously over-anxious to play +safe to the last. + +"Then go!" called Jack. + +Pete and Ropey slouched away, leaving behind Ropey's gun, which was +unimportant as it had only one notch, and Pete's precious companion of +many campaigns with its six notches, lying on the sand. + +"And, gentlemen," Jack called to the spectators, "our little +entertainment is over now. I am afraid that you will be late for +breakfast." + +Apparently it came as a real inspiration to all at once that they might +be, for they began to withdraw with a celerity that was amazingly +spontaneous. Their heads disappeared below the skyline and only the +actors were left. Pete and Ropey--Bill Lang following--walked away along +the bed of the _arroyo_, instead of going over the bank. Pete paused when +he was out of range. The old threat was again in his pose. + +"I'm not through with you, yet!" he called. + +"Why, I hope you are!" Jack answered. + +He let his revolver fall with a convulsion of weakness. Mary wondered if +he were going to faint. She wondered if she herself were not going to +faint, in a giddy second, while the red spot on the sand shaped itself in +revolving grotesquery. But the consciousness that she must not lift her +weight from the artery was a centering idea to keep her faculties in some +sort of equilibrium. + +He was looking around at her, she knew. Now she must see his face after +this transformation in him which had made her fears of his competency +silly imaginings; after she had linked her name with his in an +overwhelming village sensation. She was stricken by unanalyzable emotions +and by a horror of her nearness to him, her contact with his very blood, +and his power. She was conscious of a glimpse of his turning profile, +still transfixed with the cool purpose of action. Then they were gazing +full at each other, eyes into eyes, directly, questioningly. He was +smiling as he had on the pass; as he had when he stood with his arms +full of mail waiting for the signal to deposit his load. His devil had +slipped back into his inner being. + +He spoke first, and in the voice that went with his vaguest mood; the +voice in which he had described his escape from the dinosaur whose scales +had become wedged in the defile at the critical moment. + +"You have a strong thumb and it must be tired, as well as all +bluggy," he said, falling into a childhood symbol for taking the +whole affair in play. + +Could he be the same man who had said, "I am going to kill you!" so +relentlessly? He had eased the situation with the ready gift he had for +easing situations; but, at the same time, he had made those unanalyzable +emotions more complex, though they were swept into the background for the +moment. He glanced down at his leg with comprehending surprise. + +"Now, certainly, you are free of all responsibility," he added. "You kept +the strength in me to escape the fate you feared. Jim Galway will make a +tourniquet and relieve you." + +The first available thing for tightening the tourniquet was the barrel +of Pete Leddy's gun and the first suggestion for material came from her. +It was the sash of her gown, which Galway knotted with his strong, +sunburned fingers. + +When she could lift her numbed thumb from its task and rose to her feet +she had a feeling of relief, as if she were free of magnetic bonds and +uncanny personal proximity. The incident was closed--surely closed. She +was breathing a prayer of thanks when a remark from Galway to Jack +brought back her apprehension. + +"I guess you will have to postpone catching to-day's train," he said. + +Certainly, Jack must remain until his wound had healed and his strength +had returned. And where would he go? He could not camp out on the desert. +As Jasper Ewold had the most commodious bungalow it seemed natural that +any wounded stranger should be taken there. The idea chilled her as an +insupportable intrusion. Jack hesitated a moment. He was evidently +considering whether he could not still keep to his programme. + +"Yes, Jim, I'm afraid I shall have to ask you for a cot for a few days," +he said, finally. + +Again he had the right thought at the right moment. Had he surmised what +was passing in her mind? + +"Seeing that you've got Pete Leddy out of town, I should say that you +were fairly entitled to a whole bed," Jim drawled. "These two Indians +here can make a hustle to get some kind of a litter." + +Now she could go. That was her one crying thought: She could go! And +again he came to her rescue with his smiling considerateness. + +"You have missed your breakfast, I'll warrant," he said to her. "Please +don't wait. You were so brave and cool about it all, and--I--" A faint +tide of color rose to his cheeks, which had been pale from loss of blood. +For once he seemed unable to find a word. + +Mary denied him any assistance in his embarrassment. + +"Yes," she answered, almost bluntly. Then she added an excuse: "And you +should have a doctor at once. I will send him." + +She did not look at Jack again, but hastened away. When she was over the +bank of the _arroyo_ out of sight she put her fingers to her temples in +strong pressure. That pulse made her think of another, which had been +under her thumb, and she withdrew her fingers quickly. + +"It is the sun! I have no hat," she said to herself, "and I didn't +sleep well." + + + + +X + +MARY EXPLAINS + + +Dr. Patterson was still asleep when Mary rapped at his door. Having +aroused him to action by calling out that a stranger had been wounded in +the _arroyo_, she did not pause to offer any further details. With her +eyes level and dull, she walked rapidly along the main street where +nobody was yet abroad, her one thought to reach her room uninterrupted. +As she approached the house she saw her father standing on the porch, his +face beaming with the joy of a serenely-lived moment as he had his +morning look at the Eternal Painter's first display for the day. She had +crossed the bridge before he became conscious of her presence. + +"Mary! You are up first! Out so early when you went to bed so late!" he +greeted her. + +"I did not sleep well," she explained. + +"What, Mary, you not sleep well!" All the preoccupation with the +heavens went from his eyes, which swept her from head to foot. "Mary! +Your hand is covered with blood! There is blood on your dress' What +does this mean?" + +She looked down and for the first time saw dark red spots on her skirt. +The sight sent a shiver through her, which she mastered before she spoke. + +"Oh, nothing--or a good deal, if you put it in another way. A real +sensation for Little Rivers!" she said. + +"But you are not telling!" + +"It is such a remarkable story, father, it ought not to be spoiled by +giving away its plot," she said, with assumed lightness. "I don't feel +equal to doing full justice to it until after I've had my bath. I will +tell you at breakfast. That's a reason for your waiting for me." + +And she hastened past him into the house. + +"Was it--was it something to do with this Wingfield?" he called excitedly +after her. + +"Yes, about the fellow of the enormous spurs--Senor Don't Care, as +Ignacio calls him," she answered from the stair. + +Some note underneath her nonchalance seemed to disturb, even to distress +him. He entered the house and started through the living-room on his way +to the library. But he paused as if in answer to a call from one of the +four photographs on the wall, Michael Angelo's young David, in the +supple ease of grace. The David which Michael made from an imperfect +piece of marble! The David which sculptors say is ill-proportioned! The +David into which, however, the master breathed the thing we call genius, +in the bloom of his own youth finding its power, even as David found his +against Goliath. + +This David has come out of the unknown, over the hills, with the dew of +morning freshness on his brow. He is unconscious of self; of everything +except that he is unafraid. If all other aspirants have failed in downing +the old champion, why, he will try. + +Now, Jasper Ewold frowned at David as if he were getting no answer to a +series of questions. + +"I must make a change. You have been up a long time, David," he +thought; for he had many of these photographs which he kept in a +special store-room subject to his pleasure in hanging. "Yes, I will +have a Madonna--two Madonnas, perhaps, and a Velasquez and a Rembrandt +next time." + +In the library he set to reading Professor Giuccamini; but he found +himself disagreeing with the professor. + +"I want your facts which you have dug out of the archives," he said, +speaking to the book as if it were alive. "I don't want your opinions. +Confound it!" he threw Giuccamini on the table. "I'll make my own +opinions! Nothing else to do out here on the desert. Time enough to +change them as often as I want, too." + +He went into the garden--the garden which, next to Mary, was the most +intimate thing in his affections. Usually, every new leaf that had burst +forth over night set itself in the gelatine of his mind like so many +letterpress changes on a printed page to a proof-reader. This time, +however, a new palm leaf, a new spray of bougainvillea blossoms, a bud +on the latest rose setting which he had from Los Angeles, said "Good +morning," without any response from him. + +He paced back and forth, his hands clasped behind him, his head bowed +moodily, and his shoulders drawn together in a way that made him seem +older and more portly. With each turn he looked sharply, impatiently, +toward the door of the house. + +Never had Mary so felt the charm of her room as on this morning; never +had it seemed so set apart from the world and so personal. It was the +breadth of the ell and the size of her father's library and bedroom +combined. The windows could hardly be called windows in a Northern sense, +for there was no glass. It was unnecessary to seal up the source of +light and air in a dry climate, where a blanket at night supplied all the +extra warmth one's body ever required. The blinds swung inward and the +shades softened the light and added to the privacy which the screen of +the growing young trees and creeping vines were fast supplying. Here she +could be more utterly alone than on the summit of the pass itself. She +paused in the doorway, surveying familiar objects in the enjoyed triumph +of complete seclusion. + +While she waited for the water to run into the bowl, she looked fixedly +at the stains of a fluid which had been so warm in its touch. It was only +blood, she told herself. It would wash off, and she held her hands in the +water and saw the spread of the dye through the bowl in a moment of +preoccupation. Then she scrubbed as vigorously as if she were bent on +removing the skin itself. After she had held up her dripping fingers in +satisfied inspection, the spots on her gown caught her eye. For a moment +they, too, held her staring attention; then she slipped out of the gown +precipitately. + +With this, her determined haste was at an end. She was about to enjoy the +feminine luxury of time. The combing of her hair became a delightful and +leisurely function in the silky feel of the strands in her fingers and +the refreshing pull at the roots. The flow of the bath water made the +music of pleasurable anticipation, and immersion set the very spirit of +physical life leaping and tingling in her veins. And all the while she +was thinking of how to fashion a narrative. + +When she started down-stairs she was not only refreshed but remade. She +was going to breakfast at the usual hour, after the usual processes of +ushering herself from the night's rest into the day's activities. There +had been no stealthy trip out to the _arroyo_; no duel; no wound; no +Senor Don't Care. She had only a story which involved all these elements, +a most preposterous story, to tell. + +"Now you shall hear all about it!" she called to her father as soon as +she saw him; "the strangest, most absurd, most amusing affair"--she piled +up the adjectives--"that has ever occurred in Little Rivers!" + +She began at once, even before she poured his coffee, her voice a trifle +high-pitched with her simulation of humor. And she was exactly veracious, +avoiding details, yet missing nothing that gave the facts a pleasant +trail. She told of the meeting with Leddy on the pass and of the arrival +of the gorgeous traveller; of Jack's whistle; of Pete's challenge. + +Jasper Ewold listened with stoical attentiveness. He did not laugh, even +when Jack's vagaries were mentioned. + +"Why didn't you tell me last night?" was his first question. + +"To be honest, I was afraid that it would worry you. I was afraid that +you would not permit me to go to the pass alone again. But you will?" She +slipped her hand across the table and laid her fingers appealingly on the +broad back of his heavily tanned hand, from which the veins rose in +bronze welts. "And he was nice about it in his ridiculous, big-spurs +fashion. He said that it was all due to the whistle." + +"Go on! Go on! There must be more!" her father insisted impatiently. + +She gave him the pantomime of the store, not as a bit of tragedy--she was +careful about that--but as something witnessed by an impersonal +spectator and narrator of stories. + +"He walked right toward a muzzle, this Wingfield?" Jasper asked, his +brows contracting. + +"Why, yes. I told you at the start it was all most preposterous," +she answered. + +"And he was not afraid of death--this Wingfield!" Jasper repeated. + +He was looking away from her. The contraction of his brows had become a +scowl of mystification. + +"Why do you always speak of him as 'this Wingfield,'" she demanded, "as +if the town were full of Wingfields and he was a particular one?" + +He looked around quickly, his features working in a kind of confusion. +Then he smiled. + +"I was thinking of the whistle," he explained. "Well, we'll call him this +Sir Chaps, this Senor Don't Care, or whatever you please. As for his +walking into the gun, there is nothing remarkable in that. You draw on a +man. You expect him to throw up his hands or reach for his gun. He does +nothing but smile right along the level of the sight into your eyes. It +was disturbing to Pete's sense of etiquette on such occasions. It threw +him off. There are similar instances in history. A soldier once put a +musket at Bonaparte's head. Some of Caesar's legionaries once pressed +their swords at his breast. Such old hands in human psychology had the +presence of mind to smile. And the history of the West is full of +examples which have not been recorded. Go on, Mary!" + +"Ignacio says he has a devil in him," she added. + +"That little Indian has a lot of primitive race wisdom. Probably he is +right," her father said soberly. + +"It explains what followed," she proceeded. + +She was emphatic about the reason for her part. She went out to the +_arroyo_ on behalf of her responsibility for a human life. + +"But why did you not rouse me? Why did you go alone?" he asked. + +"I didn't think--there wasn't time--I was upset and hurried." + +She proceeded in a forced monotone which seemed to allow her hardly a +single full breath. + +"And I am going to kill you!" she repeated, shuddering, at the close of +the narrative. + +"When he said that did his face change completely? Did it seem like the +face of another man? Yes, did it seem as if there were one face that +could charm and another that could kill?" Jasper's words came slowly and +with a drawn exactness. They formed the inquiry of one who expected +corroboration of an impression. + +"Yes." + +"You felt it--you felt it very definitely, Mary?" + +"Yes." + +She was living over the moment of Jack's transformation from silk to +steel. The scene in the _arroyo_ became burning clear. Under the strain +of the suppression of her own excitement, concentrated in her purpose to +make all the realism of the duel an absurdity, she did not watch keenly +for the signs of expression by which she usually knew what was passing +in her father's mind. But she was not too preoccupied to see that he was +relieved over her assent that there was a devil in Jack Wingfield, which +struck her as a puzzle in keeping with all that morning's experience. +It added to the inward demoralization which had suddenly dammed her +power of speech. + +"Ignacio saw it, too, so I was interested," Jasper added quickly, +in a more natural tone, settling back into his chair. His agitation +had passed. + +So that was it. Her father's dominant, fine old egoism was rejoicing in +another proof of his excellence as a judge of character. + +"Finis! The story is told!" he continued softly. + +All told! And it had been a success. Mary caught her breath in a gay, +high-pitched exclamation of realization that she had not to go on with +explanations. + +"Our singular cavalier is safe!" she said. "My debt is paid. I need not +worry any further lest someone who did me a favor should suffer for it!" + +"True! true!" + +Jasper's outburst of laughter when he had paused in turning down the wick +of the lamp the previous evening had been as a forced blast from the +brasses. Anyone with strong lungs may laugh majestically; but it takes +depth of feeling and years rich with experience to express the +gratification that now possessed him. He stretched his hands across the +table to her and the laugh that came then came as a cataract of +spontaneity. + +"Exactly, Mary! The duel provided the way to pay a debt," he said. "Why, +it is you who have done our Big Spurs a favor! He has a wound to show to +his friends in the East! I am proud that you could take it all so coolly +and reasonably." + +She improved her opportunity while he held her hands. + +"I will go armed next time, and I do know how to shoot, so you won't +worry"--she put it that way, rather than openly ask his consent--"if I +ride out to the pass?" + +"Mary, I have every reason to believe that you know how to take care of +yourself," he answered. + +And that very afternoon she rode out to Galeria, starting a little +earlier than usual, returning a little later than usual, in +jubilant mood. + +"Everything is the same!" she had repeated a dozen times on the road. +"Everything is the same!" she told herself before she fell asleep; +and her sleep was long and sweet, in nature's gratitude for rest +after a storm. + +The sunlight breaking through the interstices of the foliage of a poplar, +sensitive to a slight breeze, came between the lattices in trembling +patchwork on the bed, flickering over her face and losing itself in the +strands of her hair. + +"Everything is the same!" she said, when her faculties were cleared of +drowsiness. + +For the second time she gave intimate, precious thanks for a simple thing +that had never occurred to her as a blessing before: for the seclusion +and silence of her room, free from all invasion except of her own +thoughts. The quicker flow of blood that came with awaking, the expanding +thrill of physical strength and buoyancy of life renewed, brought with it +the moral courage which morning often brings to flout the compromises of +the confusion of the evening's weariness. The inspiriting, cool air of +night electrified by the sun cleared her vision. She saw all the pictures +on the slate of yesterday and their message plainly, as something that +could not be erased by any Buddhistic ritual of reiterated phrase. + +"No, everything is not the same, not even the ride--not yet!" she +admitted. "But time will make it so--time and a sense of humor, which I +hope I have." + + + + +XI + +SENOR DON'T CARE RECEIVES + + +Jack lounged in an armchair in the Galway sitting-room with his bandaged +leg bolstered on a stool after Dr. Patterson had fished a bit of lead +out of the wound. Tribute overflowed from the table to the chairs and +from the chairs to the floor; pineapples, their knobby jackets all +yellow from ripening in the field, with the full succulency of root-fed +and sun-drawn flavor; monstrous navel oranges, leaden with the weight of +juice, richer than cloth of gold and velvet soft; and every fruit of the +fertile soil and benignant climate; and jellies, pies, and custards. But +these were only the edibles. There were flowers in equal abundance. They +banked the windows. + +"It's Jasper Ewold's idea to bring gifts when you call," explained Jim +Galway. "Jasper is always sowing ideas and lots of them have sprung up +and flourished." + +Jack had not been in Little Rivers twenty-four hours, and he had played a +part in its criminal annals and become subject to all the embarrassment +of favors of a royal bride or a prima donna who is about to sail. In a +bower, amazed, he was meeting the world of Little Rivers and its wife. +Men of all ages; men with foreign accent; men born and bred as farmers; +men to whom the effect of indoor occupation clung; men still weak, but +with red corpuscles singing a song of returning health in their +arteries--strapping, vigorous men, all with hands hardened by manual +labor and in their eyes the far distances of the desert, in contrast to +the sparkle of oasis intimacy. + +Women with the accent of college classrooms; women who made plural nouns +the running mates of singular verbs; women who were novices in +housework; women drilled in drudgery from childhood--all expanding, all +dwelling in a democracy that had begun its life afresh in a new land, +and all with the wonder of gardens where there had been only sagebrush +in their beings. + +There was something at odds with Jack's experience of desert towns in the +picture of a bronzed rancher, his arms loaded with roses, saying, in +boyish diffidence: + +"Mister, you fit him fair and you sure fixed him good. Just a few +roses--they're so thick over to our place that they're getting a pest. +Thought mebbe they'd be nice for you to look at while you was tied up to +a chair nursing Pete's soovenir!" + +One visitor whose bulk filled the doorway, the expansion of his smile +spreading over a bounteous rotundity of cheek, impressed himself as a +personality who had the distinction in avoirdupois that Jim Galway had in +leanness. In his hand he had five or six peonies as large as saucers. + +"Every complete community has a fat man, seh!" he announced, with a +certain ample bashfulness in keeping with his general amplitude and a +musical Southern accent. + +"If it wants to feel perfectly comfortable it has!" said Jack, by way +of welcome. + +"Well, I'm the fat man of Little Rivers, name being Bob Worther!" +said he, grinning as he came across the room with an amazingly quick, +easy step. + +"No rivals?" inquired Jack. + +"No, seh! I staked out the first claim and I've an eye out for any +new-comers over the two hundred mark. I warn them off! Jasper Ewold is up +to two hundred, but he doesn't count. Why, you ought to have seen me, +seh, before I came to this valley!" + +"A living skeleton?" + +"No, seh! Back in Alabama I had reached a point where I broke so many +chairs and was getting so nervous from sudden falls in the midst of +conversation, when I made a lively gesture that I didn't dare sit down +away from home except at church, where they had pews. I weighed three +hundred and fifty!" + +"And now?" + +"I acknowledge two hundred and forty, including my legs, which are very +powerful, having worked off that extra hundred. I've got the boss job +for making a fat man spider-waisted--inspector of ditches and dams. Any +other man would have to use a horse, but I hoof it, and that's economy +all around. And being big I grow big things. Violets wouldn't be much +more in my line than drawnwork. I've got this whole town beat on +peonies and pumpkins. Being as it's a fat man's pleasure to cheer +people up, I dropped in to bring you a few peonies and to say that, +considering the few well-selected words you spoke to Pete Leddy on this +town's behalf, I'm prepared to vote for you for anything from coroner +to president, seh!" + +Later, after Bob had gone, a small girl brought a spray of gladiolus, +their slender stems down to her toe-tips and the opening blossoms half +hiding her face. Jack insisted on having them laid across his knee She +was not a fairy out of a play, as he knew by her conversation. + +"Mister, did you yell when you was hit?" she asked. + +Jack considered thoughtfully. It would not do to be vagarious under such +a shrewd examination; he must be exact. + +"No, I don't think I did. I was too busy." + +"I'll bet you wanted to, if you hadn't been so busy. Did it hurt much?" + +"Not so very much." + +"Maybe that was why you didn't yell. Mother says that all you can see is +a little black spot--except you can't see it for the bandages. Is that +the way yours is?" + +"I believe so. In fact, I'll tell you a secret: That's the fashion +in wounds." + +"Mother will be glad to know she's right. She sets a lot by her opinion, +does mother. Say, do you like plums?" + +Jack already had a peck of plums, but another peck would not add much to +the redundancy as far as he was concerned. + +"I'll bring you some. We've got the biggest plums in Little Rivers--oh, +so big! Bigger'n Mr. Ewold's! I'll bring some right away." She paused, +however, in the doorway. "Don't you tell anybody I said they were +bigger'n Mr. Ewold's," she went on. "It might hurt his feelings. He's +what they call the o-rig-i-nal set-tler, and we always agree that he +grows the biggest of everything, because--why, because he's got such a +big laugh and such a big smile. Mother says sour-faced people oughtn't to +have a face any bigger'n a crab apple; but Mr. Ewold's face couldn't be +too big if it was as big as all outdoors! Good-by. I reckon you won't be +s'prised to hear that I'm the dreadful talker of our family." + +"Wait!" Jack called. "You haven't told me your name." + +"Belvedere Smith. Father says it ain't a name for living things. But +mother is dreadfully set in her ideas of names, and she doesn't like it +because people call me Belvy; but they just naturally will." + +"Belvedere, did you ever hear of the three little blue mice"--Jack was +leaning toward her with an air of fascinating mystery--"that thought they +could hide in the white clover from the white cat that had two black +stripes on her back?" + +There was a pellmell dash across the room and her face, with wide-open +eyes dancing in curiosity, was pressed close to his: + +"Why did the cat have two black stripes? Why? why?" + +"Just what I was going to tell," said the pacifier of desperadoes. + +"They were off on a tremendous adventure, with anthills for mountains +and clover-stems for the tree-trunks of forests in the path. Tragedy +seemed due for the mice, when a bee dropped off a thistle blossom for a +remarkable reason--none other than that a hummingbird cuffed him in the +ear with his wing--and the bee, looking for revenge with his stinger on +the first vulnerable spot, stung the cat right in the Achilles tendon of +his paw, just as that paw was about to descend with murderous purpose. +The cat ran away crying, with both black stripes ridges of fur sticking +up straight, while the rest of the fur lay nice and smooth; and the +mice giggled so that their ears nearly wiggled off their heads. So all +ended happily." + +"He does beat all!" thought Mrs. Galway, who had overheard part of the +nonsense from the doorway. "Wouldn't it make Pete Leddy mad if he could +hear the man who took his gun away getting off fairy stuff like that!" + +Mrs. Galway had brought in a cake of her own baking. She was +slightly jealous of the neighbors' pastry as entering into her own +particular field of excellence. Jack saw that the supply of cake in +the Galway pantry must be as limitless as the pigments on the +Eternal Painter's palette. + +"The doctor said that I was to have a light diet," he expostulated; "and +I am stuffed to the brim." + +"I'll make you some floating island," said Mrs. Galway, refusing to +strike her colors. + +"That isn't filling and passes the time," Jack admitted. + +"Jim says if you had to Fletcherize on floating island you would starve +to death and your teeth would get so used to missing a step on the stairs +that they would never be able to deal with real victuals at all." + +"Mrs. Galway," Jack observed sagely, dropping his head on the back of the +chair, "I see that it has occurred to you and Jim that it is an excellent +world and full of excellent nonsense. I am ready to eat both fluffy isles +and the yellow sea in which they float. I am ready to keep on getting +hungry with my efforts, even though you make it continents and oceans!" + +From his window he had a view, over the dark, polished green of Jim's +orange trees, of the range, brown and gray and bare, holding steady +shadows of its own and host to the shadows of journeying clouds, with the +pass set in the centre as a cleft in a forbidding barrier. In the yard +Wrath of God, Jag Ear, and P.D. were tethered. Deep content illumined the +faces of P.D. and Jag Ear; but Wrath of God was as sorrowful as ever. A +cheerful Wrath of God would have excited fears for his health. + +"Yet, maybe he is enjoying his rest more than the others," Jack told +Firio, who kept appearing at the window on some excuse or other. "Perhaps +he takes his happiness internally. Perhaps the external signs are only +the last stand of a lugubriousness driven out by overwhelming forces of +internal joy." + +"_Si, si_!" said Firio. + +"Firio, you are eminently a conversationalist," said Jack. "You agree +with any foolishness as if it were a new theory of ethics. You are an +ideal companion. I never have to listen to you in order that I may in +turn have my say." + +"_Si_," said Firio. He leaned on the windowsill, his black eyes shining +with ingenuous and flattering appeal: "I will broil you a quail on a +spit," he whispered. "It's better than stove cooking." + +"Don't talk of that!" Jack exclaimed, almost sharply. The suggestion +brought a swift change to sadness over his face and drew a veil of +vagueness over his eyes. "No, Firio, and I'll tell you why: the odor of a +quail broiled on a spit belongs at the end of a day's journey, when you +camp in sight of no habitation. You should sit on a dusty blanket-roll; +you should eat by the light of the embers or a guttering candle. No, +Firio, we'll wait till some other day. And it's not exactly courtesy to +our hostess to bring in provender from the outside." + +The trail had apparently taught Firio all the moods of his master. He +knew when it was unwise to persist. + +"_Si_!" he whispered, and withdrew. + +Jack looked at Galeria and then back quickly, as if resisting its call. +He smiled half wryly and readjusted his position in the chair. Over the +hedge he could see the heads and shoulders of passers-by. Jim Galway had +come into the room, when Jasper Ewold's broad back and great head hove +in sight with something of the steady majesty of progress of a +full-rigged ship. + +"The Doge!" Jack exclaimed, brightening. + +Jim was taken unawares. Was it the name of a new kind of semi-tropical +fruit not yet introduced into Arizona? + +"Not the Doge of Venice--hardly, when Mr. Ewold's love runs to Florence! +The Doge of Little Rivers!" + +"Why, the Doge--of course!" Jim was "on" now and grinning. "I didn't +think of my history at first. That's a good one for Jasper Ewold!" + +"O Doge of Little Rivers, I expected you in a gondola of state!" said +Jack, with a playfully grandiloquent gesture, as Jasper's abundance +filled the doorway. "But it is all the more compliment to me that you +should walk." + +"Doge, eh?" Jasper tasted the word. "Pooh!" he said. "Persiflage! +persiflage! I saw at once yesterday that you had a weakness for it." + +"And Miss Ewold? How is she?" Jack asked. Remembering the promise +that Mary had exacted from him, he took care not to refer to her part +in the duel. + +His question fell aptly for what Jasper had to say. Being a man used to +keeping the gate ever open to the full flood of spontaneity, he became +stilted in the repetition of anything he had thought out and rehearsed. +He was overcheerful, without the mellowness of tone which gave his cheer +its charm on the previous evening. + +"She's not a bit the worse. Why, she went for a ride out to the pass this +afternoon as usual! I've had the whole story, from the pass till the +minute that Jim put the tourniquet on your leg. She recognizes the great +kindness you did her." + +"Not a kindness--an inevitable interruption by any passer-by," +Jack put in. + +"Naturally she felt that it was a kindness, a service, and when she knew +you were in danger she acted promptly for herself, with a desert girl's +self-reliance. When it was all over she saw the whole thing in its proper +perspective, as an unpleasant, preposterous piece of barbarism which had +turned out fortunately." + +"Oh, I am glad of that!" Jack exclaimed, in relief that spoke rejoicing +in every fibre. "I had worried. I had feared lest I had insisted too much +on going on. But I had to. And I know that it was a scene that only men +ought to witness--so horrible I feared it might leave a disagreeable +impression." + +"Ah, Mary has courage and humor. She sees the ridiculous. She laughs at +it all, now!" + +"Laughs?" asked Jack. "Yes, it was laughable;" and he broke into +laughter, in which Jasper joined thunderously. + +Jasper kept on laughing after Jack stopped, and in genuine relief to find +that the affair was to be as uninfluencing a chapter in the easy +traveller's life as in Mary's. + +"Our regret is that we may have delayed you, sir," Jasper proceeded. "You +may have had to postpone an important engagement. I understand that you +had planned to take the train this morning." + +"When one has been in the desert for a long time," Jack answered, "a few +days more or less hardly matter in the time of his departure. In a week +Dr. Patterson says that I may go. Meanwhile, I shall have the pleasure +of getting acquainted with Little Rivers, which, otherwise, I should +have missed." + +"I am glad!" Jasper Ewold exclaimed with dramatic quickness. "Glad that +your wound is so slight--glad that you need not be shut up long when you +are due elsewhere." + +What books should he bring to the invalid to while away the time? "The +Three Musketeers" or "Cyrano"? Jack seemed to know his "Cyrano" so well +that a copy could be only a prompt. He settled deeper in his chair and, +more to the sky than to Jasper Ewold, repeated Cyrano's address to his +cadets, set to a tune of his own. His body might be in the chair, with a +bandaged leg, but clearly his mind was away on the trail. + +"Yes, let me see," he said, coming back to earth. "I should like the +'Road to Rome,' something of Charles Lamb, Aldrich's 'Story of a Bad +Boy,' Heine---but no! What am I saying? Bring me any solid book on +economics. I ought to be reading economics. Economics and Charles Lamb, +that will do. Do you think they could travel together?" + +"All printed things can, if you choose. I'll include Lamb." + +"And any Daudet lying loose," Jack added. + +"And Omar?" + +"I carry Omar in my head, thank you, O Doge!" + +"Sir Chaps of the enormous spurs, you have a broad taste for one who +rides over the pass of Galeria after five years in Arizona," said the +Doge as he rose. He was covertly surveying that soft, winning, dreamy +profile which had turned so hard when the devil that was within came to +the surface. + +"I was fed on books and galleries in my boyhood," Jack said; but +with a reticence that indicated that this was all he cared to tell +about his past. + + + + +XII + +MARY BRINGS TRIBUTE + + +Every resident except the cronies of Pete Leddy considered it a duty, +once a day at least, to look over the Galway hedge and ask how Senor +Don't Care was doing. That is, everyone with a single exception, which +was Mary. Jack had never seen her even pass the house. It was as if his +very existence had dropped out of her ken. The town remarked the anomaly. + +"You have not been in lately," Mrs. Galway reminded her. + +"My flowers have required a lot of attention; also, I have been riding +out to the pass a good deal," she answered, and changed the subject to +geraniums, for the very good reason that she had just been weeding her +geranium bed. + +Mrs. Galway looked at her strangely and Mary caught the glance. She +guessed what Mrs. Galway was thinking: that she had been a little +inconsiderate of a man who had been wounded in her service. + +"Probably it is time I bore tribute, too," she said to herself. + +That afternoon she took down a glass of jelly from the pantry shelves and +set forth in the line of duty, frowning and rehearsing a presentation +speech as she went. With every step toward the Galway cottage she was +increasingly confused and exasperated with herself for even thinking of a +speech. As she drew near she heard a treble chorus of "ohs!" and "ahs!" +and saw Jack on the porch surrounded by children. + +"It's dinosaur foolishness again!" she thought, pungently. + +He was in the full fettle of nonsense, his head a little to one side and +lowered, while he looked through his eyebrows at his hearers, measuring +the effect of his words. She thought of that face when he called to +Leddy, "I am going to kill you!" and felt the pulse of inquiry beat over +all that lay in this man's repertory between the two moods. + +"Then, counting each one in his big, deep, bass voice, like this," he was +saying, "that funny little dwarf kept dropping oranges out of the tree on +the big giant, who could not wiggle and was squeaking in protest in his +little, old woman's voice. Every orange hit him right on the bridge of +his nose, and he was saying: 'You know I never could bear yellow! It +fusses me so.'" + +"He doesn't need any jelly! I am going on!" Mary thought. + +Then Jack saw a slim, pliant form hastening by and a brown profile under +hair bare of a hat, with eyes straight ahead. Mary might have been a unit +of marching infantry. The story stopped abruptly. + +"Yes--and--and--go on!" cried the children. + +Jack held up his hand for silence. + +"How do you do?" he called, and she caught in his tone and in her first +glimpse of his face a certain mischievousness, as if he, who missed no +points for idle enjoyment of any situation, had a satisfaction in taking +her by surprise with his greeting. This put her on her mettle with the +quickness of a summons to fence. She was as nonchalant as he. + +"And you are doing well, I learn," she answered. + +"Oh, come in and hear it, Miss Ewold! It's the best one yet!" cried +Belvedere Smith. "And--and--" + +"And--and--" began the chorus. + +Mary went to the hedge. She dropped the glass of jelly on the thick +carpet of the privet. + +"I have just brought my gift. I'll leave it here. Belvy will bring it +when the story is over. I am glad you are recovering so rapidly." + +"And--and--" insisted the chorus. + +"You oughtn't to miss this story. It's a regular Jim dandy!" +Belvedere shouted. + +"Yes, won't you come in?" Jack begged in serious urgency. "I pride +myself that it is almost intellectual toward the close." + +"I have no doubt," she said, looking fairly at him from under her hand, +which she held up to shade her face, so he saw only the snap of her eyes +in the shadow. "But I am in a hurry." + +And he was looking at a shoulder and a quarter profile as she +turned away. + +"Did you make the jelly yourself?" he called. + +"Yes, I am not afraid of the truth--I did!" she answered with a backward +glance and not stopping. + +"Oh, bully!" he exclaimed with great enthusiasm, in which she detected a +strain of what she classified as impudence. + +"But all the time the giant was fumbling in his pocket for his green +handkerchief. You know the dwarf did not like green. It fussed him just +as much as yellow fussed the giant. But it was a narrow pocket, so narrow +that he could only get his big thumb in, and very deep. So, you see--" +and she heard the tale proceeding as she walked on to the end of the +street, where she turned around and came back across the desert and +through the garden. + +On the way she found it amusing to consider Jack judicially as a human +exhibit, stripped of all the chimera of romance with which Little Rivers +had clothed his personality. If he had not happened to meet her on the +pass, the townspeople would have regarded this stranger as an invasion of +real life by a character out of a comic opera. She viewed the specimen +under a magnifying glass in all angles, turning it around as if it were a +bronze or an ivory statuette. + +1. In his favor: Firstly, children were fond of him; but his extravagance +of phrase and love of applause accounted for that. Secondly, Firio was +devoted to him. Such worshipful attachment on the part of a native Indian +to any Saxon was remarkable. Yet this was explained by his love of color, +his foible for the picturesque, his vagabond irresponsibility, and, +mostly, by his latent savagery--which she would hardly have been willing +to apply to Ignacio's worshipful attachment to herself. + +2. Against him: Everything of any importance, except in the eyes of +children and savages; everything in logic. He would not stand analysis at +all. He was without definite character. He was posing, affected, pleased +with himself, superficial, and theatrical, and interested in people only +so long as they amused him or gratified his personal vanity. + +"I had the best of the argument in leaving the jelly on the hedge, and +that is the last I shall hear of it," she concluded. + +Not so. Mrs. Galway came that evening, a bearer of messages. + +"He says it is the most wonderful jelly that ever was," said Mrs. Galway. +"He ate half the glass for dinner and is saving the rest for +breakfast--I'm using his own words and you know what a killing way he has +of putting things--saving it for breakfast so that he will have something +to live through the night for and in the morning the joy of it will not +be all a memory. He wants to know if you have any more of the same kind." + +"Yes, a dozen glasses," Mary returned. "Tell him we are glad of the +opportunity of finishing last year's stock, and I send it provided he +eats half a glass with every meal." + +"I don't know what his answer will be to that," said Mrs. Galway, +contracting her brow studiously at Mary. "But he would have one quick. He +always has. He's so poetic and all that, we're planning to go to the +station to see him off and pelt him with flowers; and Dr. Patterson is +going to fashion a white cat out of white carnations, with deep red ones +for the black stripes, for the children to present." + +"Hurrah!" exclaimed Mary blithely, and went for the jelly. + +She was spared further bulletins on the state of health of the wounded +until her father returned from his daily call the next morning. She was +in the living-room and she knew by his step on the porch, vigorous yet +light, that he was uplifted by good news or by the anticipation of the +exploitation of some new idea--a pleasure second only to that of the +idea's birth. Such was his elation that he broke one of his own rules by +tossing some of the books loaned to Jack onto the broad top of the table +of the living-room, which was sacred to the isolation of the ivory +paper-knife. + +"He has named the date!" shouted the Doge. "He goes by to-morrow's train! +It will be a gala affair, almost an historical moment in the early +history of this community. I am to make a speech presenting him with the +freedom of the whole world. Between us we have hit on a proper modern +symbol of the gift. He slips me his Pullman ticket and I formally offer +it to him as the key to the hospitality of the seven seas, the two +hemispheres, and the teeming cities that lie beyond the range. It will be +great fun, with plenty of persiflage. And, Mary, they suggest that you +write some verses--ridiculous verses, in keeping with the whole +nonsensical business." + +"You mean that I am to stand on the platform and read poetry dedicated to +him?" she demanded. + +"Poetry, Mary? You grow ambitious. Not poetry--foolish doggerel. Or +someone will read it for you." + +He had not failed to watch the play of her expression. She had received +all his nonsense, announced in his best style of simulated forensic +grandeur, with a certain unchanging serenity which was unamused: which +was, indeed, barely interested. + +"And someone else shall write it, for I don't think of any verses," +she said, with a slight shrug of the shoulder. "Besides, I shall not +be there." + +"Not be there! People will remark your absence!" + +"Will they?" she asked, thoughtfully, as if that had not occurred to her. +"No, they will be too occupied with the persiflage. I am going to ride +out to the pass in the morning very early--before daybreak." + +"But"--he was positively frolicsome as he caught her hands and waved +them back and forth, while he rocked his shoulders--"when you are +stubborn, Mary, have your way. I will make your excuses. And I to work +now. It is the hour of the hoe," as he called all hours except those of +darkness and the hot midday. + +For Jasper Ewold was no idler in the affairs of his ranch or of the town. +Few city men were so busy. His everlasting talk was incidental, like the +babbling of a brook which, however, keeps steadily flowing on; and the +stored scholarship of his mind was supplemented by long evenings with no +other relaxation but reading. Now as he went down the path he broke into +song; and when the Doge sang it was something awful, excusable only by +the sheer happiness that brought on the attack. + +Mary had important sewing, which this morning she chose to do in her room +rather than in her favorite spot in the garden. She closed the shutters +on the sunny side and sat down by the window nearest the garden, +peculiarly sensible of the soft light and cool spaciousness of an inner +world. The occasional buzz of a bee, the flutter of the leaves of the +poplar, might have been the voice of the outer world in Southern Spain or +Southern Italy, or anywhere else where the air is balmy. + +And to-morrow! Out to Galeria in the fervor of a pilgrim to some shrine, +with the easy movement of her pony and the rigid lines of the pass +gradually drawing nearer and the sky ever distant! She would be mistress +of her thoughts in all the silent glamour of morning on the desert. She +would hear the train stop at the station, its heavy effort as it pulled +out, and watch it winding over the flashing steel threads in a clamor of +stridency and harshness, which grew fainter and fainter. And she would +smile as it disappeared around a bend in the range. She would smile at +him, at the incident, just as carelessly as he had smiled when he told of +the dinosaur. + + + + +XIII + +A JOURNEY ON CRUTCHES + + +The sun became benign in its afternoon slant. Little Rivers was beginning +to move after its siesta, with the stretching of muscles that would grow +more vigorous as evening approached and freshened life came into the air +with the sprinkle of sunset brilliance. + +To Jack the hour palpably brought a reminder of the misery of the moment +when a thing long postponed must at last be performed. The softness of +speculative fancy faded from his face. His lips tightened in a way that +seemed to bring his chin into prominence in mastery of his being. As he +called Firio, his voice unusually high-pitched, he did not look out at +P.D. and Wrath of God and Jag Ear. + +Firio came with the eagerness of one who is restless for action. He +leaned on the windowsill, his elbows spread, his chin cupped in his +hands, his Indian blankness of countenance enlivened by the glow of his +eyes, as jewels enliven dull brown velvet. + +"Firio, I have something to tell you." + +"_Si_!" + +There was a laboring of Jack's throat muscles, and then he forced out the +truth in a few words. + +"Firio," he said, "this is my trail end. I am going back to New York +to-morrow." + +"_Si_!" answered Firio, without a tremor of emotion; but his eyes glowed +confidently, fixedly, into Jack's. + +"There will be money for you, and--" + +"_Si_!" said Firio mechanically, as if repeating the lines of a lesson. + +Was this Indian boy prepared for the news? Or did he not care? Was he +simply clay that served without feeling? The thought made Jack wince. He +paused, and the dark eyes, as in a spell, kept staring into his. + +"And you get P.D. and Wrath of God and Jag Ear and, yes, the big spurs +and the chaps, too, to keep to remember me by." + +Firio did not answer. + +"You are not pleased? You--" + +"_Si_! I will keep them for you. You will want them; you will come back +to all this;" and suddenly Firio was galvanized into the life of a single +gesture. He swept his arm toward the sky, indicating infinite distance. + +"No, I shall never come back! I can't!" Jack said; and his face had set +hard, as if it were a wall about to be driven at a wall. "I must go and I +must stay." + +"_Si_!" said Firio, resuming his impassiveness, and slipped around the +corner of the house. + +"He does care!" Jack cried with a smile, which, however, was not the +smile of gardens, of running brooks, and of song. "I am glad--glad!" + +He picked up his crutches and went out to the three steeds of +trail memory: + +"And _you_ care--_you_ care!" he repeated to them. + +He drew a lugubrious grimace in mockery at Wrath of God. He tickled the +sliver of the donkey's ear, whereat Jag Ear wiggled the sliver in +blissful unconsciousness that he had lost any of the ornamental equipment +of his tribe. + +"You are like most of us; we don't see our deformities, Jag Ear," Jack +told him. "And if others were also blind to them, why, we should all be +good-looking!" + +His arm slipped around P.D.'s neck and he ran a finger up and down P.D.'s +nose with a tickling caress. + +"You old plodder!" he said. "You know a lot. It's good to have the love +of any living thing that has been near me as long as you have." + +This preposterous being was preposterously sentimental over a pair of +ponies and an earless donkey. When Mrs. Galway, who had watched him from +the window, came out on the porch she saw that he was on his way through +the gate in the hedge to the street. + +"Look here! Did the doctor say you might?" she called. + +"No, my leg says it!" Jack answered, gaily. "Just a little walk! +Back soon." + +It was his first enterprise in locomotion outside the limits of Jim +Galway's yard since he had been wounded. He turned blissful traveller +again. Having come to know the faces of the citizens, now he was to look +into the faces of their habitations. The broad main street, with its rows +of trees, narrowed with perspective until it became a gray spot of desert +sand. Under the trees leisurely flowed those arteries of ranch and +garden-life, the irrigation ditches. Continuity of line in the +hedge-fences was evidently a municipal requirement; but over the hedges +individualism expressed itself freely, yet with a harmony which had been +set by public fashion. + +The houses were of cement in simple design. They had no architectural +message except that of a background for ornamentation by the genius of +the soil's productivity. They waited on vines to cover their sides and +trees to cast shade across their doorways. One need not remain long to +know the old families in this community, where the criterion of local +aristocracy was the size of your plums or the number of crops of alfalfa +you could grow in a year. + +Already Jack felt at home. It was as if he were friends with a whole +world, lacking the social distinctions which only begin when someone +acquires sufficient worldly possessions to give exclusive, formal +dinners. He knew every passer-by well enough to address him or her by the +Christian name. Women called to him from porches with a dozen invitations +to visit gardens. + +"Just a saunter, just a try-out before I take the train. Not going far," +he always answered; yet there was something in his bearing that suggested +a definite mission. + +"We hate to lose you!" called Mrs. Smith. + +"I hate to be lost!" Jack called back; "but that is just my +natural luck." + +"I suppose you've got your work cut out for you back East, same's +everybody else, somewhere or other, 'less they're millionaires, who all +stay in the city and try to run from microbes in their automobiles." + +"Yes, I have work--lots of it," said Jack, ruefully. He shifted his +weight on the crutches, paused and looked at the sky. The Eternal Painter +was dipping his brush lightly and sweeping soft, silvery films, as a kind +of glorified finger-exercise, over an intangible blue. + +"Why care? Why care?" His Majesty was asking. "Why not leave all the +problems of earthly existence to your lungs? Why not lie back and look on +at things and breathe my air? That is enough to keep your whole being in +tune with the Infinite." + +It was his afternoon mood. At sunset he would have another. Then he would +be crying out against the folly of wasting one precious moment in the +eons, because that moment could never return to be lived over. + +Jack kept on until he recognized the cement bridge where he had stopped +when he came from the post-office with Mary. Left bare of its +surroundings, the first habitation in Little Rivers, with the ell which +had been added later, would have appeared a barracks. But Jasper Ewold +had the oldest trees and the most luxuriant hedge and vines as the reward +of his pioneerdom. + +When Jack crossed the bridge and stood in the opening of the hedge there +was no one on the porch in the inviting shade of the prodigal +bougainvillea vines. So he hitched his way up the steps. Feeling that it +was a formal occasion, he searched for the door-bell. There was none. He +rapped on the casing and waited, while he looked at the cool, quiet +interior, with the portrait of David facing him from the wall. + +"David, you seem to be the only one at home," he remarked, for there had +been no answer to his raps; "and you are too busy getting a bead on +Goliath to answer the immaterial questions of a wayfarer." + +Accepting the freedom of the Little Rivers custom on such occasions, he +followed the path to the rear. His head knocked off the dead petals of a +rambler rose blossom, scattering them at his feet. Rounding the corner of +the house, he saw the arbor where he had dined the night of his arrival, +and beyond this an old-fashioned flower garden separated by a path from +a garden of roses. There was a sound of activity from the kitchen behind +a trellis screen, but he did not call out for guidance. He would trust to +finding his own way. + +When he came to the broad path, its stretch lay under a crochet-work of +shadows from the ragged leaves of two rows of palms which ran to the edge +of an orange grove, and the centre of this path was in a straight line +with the bottom of the V of Galeria. + +Jasper Ewold had laid out his little domain according to a set plan +before the water was first let go in laughing triumph over the parched +earth, and this plan, as one might see on every hand, was expressive of +the training of older civilizations in landscape gardening, which ages of +men striving for harmonious forms of beauty in green and growing things +had tested, and which the Doge, in all his unconventionalism of +personality, was as little inclined to amend as he was to amend the +classic authors. An avenue of palms is the epic of the desert; a +bougainvillea vine its sonnet. + +Between the palms to the right and left Jack had glimpses of a vegetable +garden; of rows of berry bushes; of a grove of young fig-trees; of rows +of the sword-bundles of pineapple tops. Everything except the +old-fashioned flower-bed, with its border of mignonette, and the generous +beds of roses and other flowers of the bountiful sisterhood of petals of +artificial cultivation, spoke of utility which must make the ground pay +as well as please. + +Jack took each step as if he were apprehensive of disturbing the quiet +Midway of the avenue of palms ran a cross avenue, and at the +meeting-point was a circle, which evidently waited till the oranges and +the olives should pay for a statue and surrounding benches. Over the +breadth of the cross avenue lay the glossy canopy of the outstretched +branches of umbrella-trees. A table of roughly planed boards painted +green and green rattan chairs were in keeping with the restful effect, +while the world without was aglare with light. + +Here Mary had brought her sewing for the afternoon. She was working so +intently that she had not heard his approach. He had paused just as his +line of vision came flush with the trunks of the umbrella-trees. For the +first time he saw his companion in adventure in repose, her head bent, +leaving clear the line of her neck from the roots of her hair to the +collar, and the soft light bringing out the delicate brown of her skin. + +There seemed no movement anywhere in the world at the moment, except the +flash of her needle in and out. + + + + +XIV + +"HOW FAST YOU SEW!" + + +And she had not seen him! He was touched with a sense of guilt for +having looked so long; for not having at once called to her; and rather +than give her the shock of calling now, he moved toward her, the scuff +of his limp, pendent foot attracting her attention. Her start at the +sound was followed, when she saw him, with amazement and a flush and a +movement as if she would rise. But she controlled the movement, if not +the flush, and fell back into her chair, picking up her sewing, which +had dropped on the table. + +It was like him, she might well think, to come unexpectedly, without +invitation or announcement. She was alert, ready to take the offensive as +the best means of defence, and wishing, in devout futility, that he had +stayed away. He was smiling happily at everything in cosmos and at her as +a part of it. + +"Good afternoon!" + +"Good afternoon!" + +"That last lot of jelly was better than the first," he said softly. + +"Was it? You must favor vintage jelly!" + +"I came to call--my p.p.c. call--and to see your garden," he added. + +"Is there any particular feature that interests you?" she asked. "The +date-trees? The aviary? The nursery?" + +"No," he answered, "not just yet. It is very cool here under the +umbrella-trees, isn't it? I have walked all the way from the Galways and +I'll rest a while, if I may." + +He was no longer the play cavalier in overornamented _chaparejos_ and +cart-wheel spurs, but a lame fellow in overalls, who was hitching toward +her on crutches, his cowpuncher hat held by the brim and flopping with +every step. But he wore the silk shirt and the string tie, and somehow he +made even the overalls seem "dressy." + +"Pray sit down," she said politely. + +Standing his crutches against the table, he accepted the invitation. She +resumed her sewing, eyes on the needle, lips pressed into a straight line +and head bending low. He might have been a stranger on a bench in a +public park for all the attention she was paying to him. She realized +that she was rude and took satisfaction in it as the only way of +expressing her determination not to reopen a closed incident. + +"It's wonderful--wonderful!" he observed, in a voice of contemplative +awe. + +"What is?" she asked. + +"Why, how fast you sew!" + +"Yes?" she said, as automatically as she stitched. "Your wound is quite +all right? No danger of infection?" + +"I don't blame you!" he burst out. His tone had turned sad and urgent. + +She looked up quickly, with the flare of a frown. His remark had brought +her out of her pose and she became vivid and real. + +"Blame me!" she demanded, sharply, as one who flies to arms. + +But she met a new phase--neither banter, nor fancy, nor unvarying +coolness in the face of fire. He was all contrition and apology. Must she +be the audience to some fresh exhibition of his versatility? + +"I do not blame you for feeling the way that you do," he said. + +"How do you know how I feel?" she asked; and as far as he could see into +her eyes there was nothing but the flash of sword-points. + +"I don't. I only know how I think you feel--how you might well feel," he +answered delicately. "After Pete let his gun drop in the store I should +not have named terms for an encounter. I should have turned to the law +for protection for the few hours that I had to remain in town." + +"But to you that would have been avoiding battle!" she exclaimed. + +"Which may take courage," he rejoined. "What I did was selfish. It was +bravado, with no thought of your position." + +"It is late to worry about that now. What does it matter? I did not want +anyone killed on my account, and no one was," she insisted. "Besides, you +should not be blue," this with a ripple of satire; "it is not quite all +bravado to face Pete Leddy's gun at twenty yards." + +"And it is not courage. Courage is a force of will driving you into +danger for some high purpose. I want you to realize that I am not such a +barbarian that I do not know that I could have kept you out of it all if +I had had proper self-control. Though probably, on the impulse, I would +do the fool thing over again! Yes, that's the worst of it!" + +"There is a devil in him!" Ignacio's words were sounding in her ears. To +how many men had he said, "I am going to kill you?" What other quarrels +had he known in his wanderings from Colorado to Chihuahua? + +"If you really want my opinion, I am glad, so far as I am concerned, that +you did fight," she said lightly. "Aren't you a hero? Isn't the town free +of Leddy? And you take the train in the morning!" + +"Yes." + +The monosyllable was drawn out rather faintly. For the first time since +they had met on the pass she felt she was mistress of the situation. +This time she had not to plead with him in fear for his life. She could +regard him without any sense of obligation, this invader of her garden +retreat who had to put in one more afternoon in a dull desert town +before he was away to that outside world which she might know only +through books and memory. + +She rose exultantly, disregarding any formality that she would owe to the +average guest; for an average guest he was not. Her attitude meant that +she was having the last word; that she was showing her mettle. + +He did not rise. He was staring into the sunlight, as if it were darkness +alive with flitting spectres which baffled identification. + +"Yes, back--back to armies of Leddys!" he said slowly. + +But this she saw as still another pose. It did not make her pause in +gathering up her sewing. She was convinced that there was nothing more +for her to say, except to give their parting an appearance of ease and +unconcern. + +"Is it work you mean? You are not used to that, I take it?" she inquired +a little sarcastically. + +"Yes, call it work," he answered, looking away from the spectres and +back to her. + +"And you have never done any work!" she added. + +"Not much," he admitted, with his old, airy carelessness. He was smiling +at the spectres now, as he had at the dinosaur. + +"As there is nothing particular about the garden that I can show you--" +she was moving away. + +"No, I will be walking back to the house," he said after she had taken a +few steps. "Will you wait on my slow pace?" + +He reached for his crutches, lifted himself to his feet and swung to +her side. She who wished that the interview were over saw that it must +be prolonged. Then suddenly she realized the weakness as well as the +brusqueness of her attitude. She had been about to fly from him as +from something that she feared. It was not necessary. It was foolish, +even cowardly. + +"I thought perhaps you preferred to be alone, you seemed so abstracted," +she said, lamely; and then, as they came out into the sunlight in the +circle, she began talking of the garden as she would to any visitor; of +its beginnings, its growth, and its future, when her father's plans +should have been fulfilled. + +"And in all these years you have never been back East?" he asked. + +"No. We are always planning a trip, but the money which we save for it +goes into more plantings." + +They had been moving slowly toward the house, but now he stopped and his +glance swept the sky and rested on Galeria. + +"It is the best valley of all! I knew it as soon as I saw it from the +pass!" and the rapture of the scene was sounding in every syllable like +chimes out of the distance. She knew that he was far away from the +garden, and delaying, still delaying. If she spoke she felt that he would +not hear what she said. If she went on it seemed certain that she would +leave him standing there like a statue. + +"And there is more land here to make gardens like this?" he asked +slowly, absorbed. + +"Yes, with water and labor and time." + +Though his face was in the full light of the sun, it seemed at times in +shadow; then it glowed, as if between two passions. For an instant it was +grim, the chin coming forward, the brows contracting; then it was +transformed with something that was as a complete surrender to the +transport of irresistible temptation. He looked down at her quickly and +she saw him in the mood of story-telling to the children, suffused with +the radiance of a decision. + +"I prefer the Leddys of Little Rivers to the Leddys of New York," he +said. "I am not going to-morrow! I am going to have land and a home under +the aegis of the Eternal Painter and in sight of Galeria, and worship at +the shrine of fecund peace. Will you and the Doge help me?" he asked with +an enthusiasm that was infectious. "May I go to his school of +agriculture, horticulture, and floriculture?" + +Dumfounded, she bent her head and stared at the ground to hide her +astonishment. + +"You want citizens, industrious young citizens, don't you?" he persisted. + +"Yes, yes!" she said hastily and confusedly. + +"Do you know a good piece of land?" he continued. + +"Yes, several parcels," she answered, recovering her poise and smiling +in mockery. + +"Come on!" he cried. + +He was taking long, jumping steps on his crutches as they went up the +path. + +"You will take me to look at the land, won't you, please--now? I want to +get acquainted with my future estate. I mean to beat the Smiths at plums, +Jim Galway at alfalfa, even rival Bob Worther at pumpkins and peonies. +And you will help me lay out the flower garden, won't you? You see, I +shall have to call in the experts in every line to start with, before I +begin to improve on them and make them all jealous. I may find a kind of +plum that will grow on alfalfa stalks," he hazarded. "What a +horticultural sensation!" + +"And a spineless cactus called the Leddy!" + +His eyes were laughing into hers and hers irresistibly laughed back. She +guessed that he was only joking. He had acted so well in the latest role +that she had actually believed in his sincerity for a moment. He meant to +take the train, of course, but his resourceful capriciousness had +supplied him with a less awkward exit from the garden than she had +provided. He would yet have the last word if she did not watch out--a +last mischievous word at her expense. + +"First, you will have to plow the ground, in the broiling hot sun," she +said tauntingly, when they had passed around to the porch. She was +starting into the house with nervous, precipitate triumph. The last word +was hers, after all. + +"But you are going to show me the land now!" + +His tone was so serious and so hurt that she paused. + +"And"--with the seriousness electrified by a glance that sought for +mutual understanding--"and we are to forget about that duel and the whole +hero-desperado business. I am a prospective settler who just arrived this +afternoon. I came direct to headquarters to inquire about property. The +Doge not being at home, won't you show me around?" + +Again he had said the right thing at the right time, with a delightful +impersonality precluding sentiment. + +"I couldn't be unaccommodating," she admitted. "It is against all Little +Rivers ethics." + +"I feel like a butterfly about to come out of his miserable chrysalis! +Haven't you a walking-stick? I am going to shed the crutches!" + +She became femininely solicitous at once. + +"Are you sure you ought? Did the doctor say you might? Is the +wound healed?" + +"There isn't any wound!" he answered. "That is one of the things which we +are to forget." + +She brought a stick and he laid the crutches on the porch. + +He favored the lame leg, yet he kept up a clipping pace, talking the +while as fast as the Doge himself as they passed through one of the side +streets out onto the cactus-spotted, baking, cracked levels. + +"This is it!" she said finally. "This is all that father and I had to +begin with." + +"Enough!" he answered, and held out his hands, palms open. "With +callouses I will win luxuriance!" + +She showed him the irrigation ditch from which he should draw his water; +she told him of the first steps; She painted all the difficulties in the +darkest colors, without once lessening the glow of his optimism. He was +so overwhelmingly, boyishly happy that she had to be happy with him in +making believe that he was about to be a real rancher. But he should not +have the sport all on his side. He must not think that she accepted this +latest departure of his imagination incarnated by his Thespian gift in +anything but his own spirit. + +"You plowing! You spraying trees for the scale! You digging up weeds! You +stacking alfalfa! You settling down in one place as a unit of co-ordinate +industry! You earning bread by the sweat of your brow! You with +callouses!" Thus she laughed at him. + +Very seriously he held out his hands and ran a finger around a palm and +across the finger-joints: + +"That is where I shall get them," he said. "But not on the thumb. I +believe you get them on the thumb only by playing golf." + +He asked about carpenters and laborers; he chose the site for his house; +he plotted the walks and orchards. She could not refuse her advice. Who +can about the planning of new houses and gardens? He had everything +quite settled except the land grant from the Doge when they started +back; while the sun, with the swift passage of time in such fascinating +diversion, had swung low in its ellipse. When they reached the main +street the Doge was on the porch passing his opinion on the Eternal +Painter's evening work. + +"Some very remarkable purples to-night, I admit, Your Majesty, without +any intention of giving you too good an opinion of yourself; but +otherwise, you are not up to your mark. There must have been a downpour +in the rainy world on the other side of the Sierras that moistened your +pigments. Next thing we know you will be turning water-colorist!" he was +saying, when he heard Jack's voice. + +"Here's a new settler!" Jack called. "I am going to stay in Little Rivers +and win all the prizes." + +"You are joking!" gasped the Doge. + +"Not joking," said Jack. "I want to close the bargain to-night." + +"You bring color and adventure--yes! I did not expect the honor--the +town will be delighted! I am overwhelmed! Will you plow with Pete +Leddy's gun drawn by Wrath of God, sir, and harrow with your spurs drawn +by Jag Ear? Shall you make a specialty of olives? Do you dare to aspire +as high as dates?" + +The Doge's speech had begun incoherently, but steadied into rallying +humor at the close. + +"I haven't seen the date-tree yet," said Jack. "Not until I have can I +judge whether or not I shall dare to rival the lord of the manor in his +own specialty. And there are business details which I must settle with +you, O Doge of this city of slender canals!" + +"O youth, will you tarry with peace between wars?" answered the Doge, in +quick response to the spirit of nonsense as a basis for their new +relations. "Come, and I will show you our noblest product of peace, the +Date-Tree Wonderful!" he said, leading the way to the garden, while Mary +hurried rather precipitately into the house. + +Jasper Ewold was at his best, a glowing husbandman, when he pointed aloft +to the clusters of fruit pendent from the crotches of the stiff +branches, enclosed in cloth bags to keep them free of insects. + +"Do you see strange lettering on the cloth?" he asked. + +"Yes, it looks like Arabic." + +"So it is! Among other futile diversions in a past incarnation I studied +Arabic a little, and I still have my lexicon. Perhaps my construction +might not please the grammarians of classic Bagdad, but the sentiment is +there safe enough in the language of the mother romance world of the +date: 'All hail, first-born of our Western desert fecundity!' It is +calling out to the pass and the range from the wastes where the +sagebrush has had its own way since the great stir that there was in the +world at genesis." + +"With the unlimited authority I have in bestowing titles," said Jack, "I +have a mind to make you an Emir. But it's a pity that you haven't a camel +squatting under your date-tree and placidly chewing his cud." + +"A tempting thought!" declared the Doge unctuously. + +"Bob Worther could ride him on the tours of inspection. I think the +jounce would be almost as good a flesh-reducer as pedestrianism." + +"There you go! You would have the camel wearing bells, with reins of red +leather and a purple saddle-cloth hung with spangles, and Bob--our +excellent Bob--in a turban! Persiflage, sir! A very demoralization of +the faculties with cataracts of verbiage, sir!" declared the Doge as he +started back to the house. "Little Rivers is a practical town," he +proceeded seriously. "We indulge in nonsense only after sunset and when a +stranger appears riding a horse with a profane name. Yes, a practical +town; and I am surprised at your disloyalty to your own burro by +mentioning camels." + +"It rests with you, I believe, to let me have the land and also the +water," said Jack. + +"We grow businesslike!" returned the Doge with a change of manner. + +"Very!" declared Jack. + +"The requirement is that you become a member of the water users' +association and pay your quota of taxes per acre foot; and the price you +pay for your land also goes to the association. But I decide on the +eligibility of the applicant." + +They were in front of the house by this time, and again the Doge gave +Jack that sharp, quick, knowing glance of scrutiny through his heavy, +tufted eyebrows, before he proceeded: + +"The concession for the use of the river for irrigation is mine, +administered by the water users' association as if it were theirs, under +the condition that no one who has not my approval can have membership. +That is, it is practically mine, owing to my arrangement with old Mr. +Lefferts, who lives upstream. He is an eccentric, a hermit. He came here +many years ago to get as far away from civilization as he could, I judge. +That gives him an underlying right. Originally he had two partners, squaw +men. Both are dead. He had made no improvements beyond drawing enough +water for a garden and for his horse and cow. When I came to make a +bargain with him he named an annual sum which should keep him for the +rest of his life; and thus he waived his rights. First, Jim Galway, then +other settlers drifted in. I formed the water users' association. All +taxes and sums for the sale of land go into keeping the dam and ditches +in condition." + +"You take nothing for yourself!" + +"A great deal. The working out of an idea--an idea in moulding a little +community in my old age in a fashion that pleases me; while my own +property, of course, increases in value. At my death the rights go to the +community. But no Utopia; Sir Chaps! Just hard-working, cheerful men and +women in a safe refuge!" + +"And I am young!" exclaimed Jack, with a hopeful smile. "I have good +health. I mean to work. I try to be cheerful. Am I eligible?" + +"Sir Chaps, you--you have done us a great favor. Everybody likes you. Sir +Chaps"--the Doge hesitated for an instant, with a baffling, unspoken +inquiry in his eyes--"Sir Chaps, I like your companionship and your +mastery of persiflage. Jim Galway, who is secretary of the association, +will look after details of the permit and Bob Worther will turn the water +on your land, and the whole town will assist you with advice! Luck, Sir +Chaps, in your new vocation!" + +That evening, while the Doge took down the David and set a fragment from +the frieze of the Parthenon in its place, Little Rivers talked of the +delightful news that it was not to lose its strange story-teller and +duelist. Little Rivers was puzzled. Not once had Jack intimated a thought +of staying. By his own account, so far as he had given any, his wound had +merely delayed his departure to New York, where he had pressing business. +He had his reservation on the Pullman made for the morning express; he +had paid a farewell call at the Ewolds, and apparently then had changed +his mind and his career. These were the only clues to work on, except the +one suggested by Mrs. Galway, who was the wise woman of the community, +while Mrs. Smith was the propagandist. + +"I guess he likes the way Mary Ewold snubs him!" said Mrs. Galway. + +But there was one person in town who was not surprised at Jack's +decision. When Jack sang out as he entered the Galway yard on returning +from the Doge's, "We stay, Firio, we stay!" Firio said: "_Si_, Senor +Jack!" with no change of expression except a brighter gleam than usual in +his velvety eyes. + + + + +XV + +WHEN THE DESERT BLOOMS + + +Perhaps we may best describe this as a chapter of Incidents; or, to use a +simile, a broad, eddying bend in a river on a plateau, with cataracts and +canyons awaiting it on its route to the sea. Or, discarding the simile +and speaking in literal terms, in a search for a theme on which to hang +the incidents, we revert to Mary's raillery at the announcement of an +easy traveller that he was going to turn sober rancher. + +"You plowing! You blistering your hands! You earning your bread by the +sweat of your brow!" + +But there he was in blue overalls, sinking his spade deep for settings, +digging ditches and driving furrows through the virgin soil, while the +masons and carpenters built his ranch house. + +"They are straight furrows, too!" Jack declared. + +"Passably so!" answered Mary. + +"And look at the blisters!" he continued, exhibiting his puffy palms. + +"You seem to think blisters a remarkable human phenomenon, a sensational +novelty to a laboring population!" + +"Now, would you advise pricking?" he asked, with deference to her +judgment. + +"It is so critical in your case that you ought to consult a doctor rather +than take lay advice." + +"Jim Galway says that the thorough way, I mulched my soil before +putting in my first crop of alfalfa is a model for all future settlers," +he ventured. + +She remarked that Jim was always encouraging to new-comers, and remarked +this in a way that implied that some new-comers possibly needed hazing. + +"And I am up at dawn and hard at it for six hours before midday." + +"Yes, it is wonderful!" she admitted, with a mock show of being +overwhelmingly impressed. "Nobody in the world ever worked ten hours a +day before!" + +"I'm doing more than any man that I pay two-fifty. I do perspire, and if +you don't call that earning your bread with the sweat of your brow, why +this is an astoundingly illogical world!" + +"There is a great difference between sporadic display and that continuity +which is the final proof of efficiency," she corrected him. + +"Long, involved sentences often indicate the loss of an argument!" +declared Jack. + +"There isn't any argument!" said Mary with superior disinterestedness. + +By common inspiration they had established a truce of nonsense. She still +called him Jack; he still called her Mary. It was the only point of tacit +admission that they had ever met before he asked her to show a +prospective settler a parcel of land. + +Their new relations were as the house of cards of fellowship: cards of +glass, iridescent and brittle, mocking the idea that there could be +oblivion of the scene in Lang's store, the crack of Leddy's pistol in the +_arroyo_, or the pulse of Jack's artery under her thumb! She was sure +that he could forget these experiences, even if she could not. That was +his character, as she saw it, free of clinging roots of yesterday's +events, living some new part every day. + +In the house of cards she set up a barrier, which he saw as a veil over +her eyes. Not once had he a glimpse of their depths. There was only the +surface gleam of sunbeams and sometimes of rapier-points, merry but +significant. She frequently rode out to the pass and occasionally, when +his day's work was done, he would ride to the foot of the range to meet +her, and as they came back he often sang, but never whistled. Indeed, he +had ceased to whistle altogether. Perhaps he regarded the omission as an +insurance against duels. + +Aside from nonsense they had common interests in cultural and daily life, +from the Eternal Painter's brushwork to how to dress a salad. She did +extend her approval for the generous space which he was allowing for +flower-beds, and advised him in the practical construction of his +kitchen; while the Doge decorated the living-room with Delia Robbias, +which, however, never arrived at the express office. He was a neighbor +always at home in the Ewold house. The Doge revelled in their +disputations, yet never was really intimate or affectionate as he was +with Jim Galway, who knew not the Pitti, the Prado, nor the Louvre, and +could not understand the intoning of Dante in the original as Jack could, +thanks to his having been brought up in libraries and galleries. + +The town, which was not supposed to ask about pasts, could not help +puzzling about his. What was the story of this teller of stories? The +secluded little community was in a poor way to find out, even if the +conscientious feeling about a custom had not been a restraint that kept +wonder free from inquiring hints. They took him for what he was in all +their personal relations; that was the delightful way of Little Rivers, +which inner curiosity might not alloy. His broader experience of that +world over the pass which stretched around the globe and back to the +other range-wall of the valley, seemed only to make him fall more easily +into the simple ways of the fellow-ranchers of the Doge's selection, who +were genuine, hall-marked people, whatever the origin from which the +individual sprang. He knew the fatigue of productive labor as something +far sweeter than the fatigue that comes from mere exercise, and the +neophyte's enthusiasm was his. + +"I'm sitting at the outer edge of the circle," he told Jim Galway. +"But when my first crop is harvested I shall be on the inside--a +real rancher!" + +"You've already got one foot over the circle," said Jim. + +"And with my first crop of dates I'll be in the holy of holies of +pastoral bliss!" + +"Yes, I should say so!" Jim responded, but in a way that indicated +surprise at the thought of Jack's remaining in Little Rivers long enough +for such a consummation. + +When his alfalfa covered the earth with a green carpet Jack was under a +spell of something more than the never-ending marvel of dry seeds +springing into succulent abundance without the waving of any magic wand. + +"I made it out of the desert!" he cried. "It laughs in triumph at the +bare stretches around it, waiting on water!" + +"That is it," said Jim; "waiting on water!" + +"The promise of what might come!" + +"It will come! Some day, Jack, you and I will ride up into the river +canyon and I will show you a place where you can see the blue sky between +precipitous walls two hundred feet high. The abyss is so narrow you can +throw a stone across it." + +"What lies beyond?" asked Jack, his eyes lighting vividly. + +"A great basin which was the bed of an ancient lake before the water wore +its way through." + +"A dam between those walls--and you have another lake!" + +"Yes, and the spring freshets from the northern water-shed all held in a +reservoir--none going to waste! And, Jack, as population spreads the dam +must come." + +"Why, the Doge has a kingdom!" + +"Yes, that's the best of it, the rights being in his hands. He shares +up with everybody and we get it when he dies. That's why we are ready +to accept the Doge's sentiments as kind of gospel. If ornamental hedges +waste water and bring bugs and are contrary to practical ranching +ideas, why--well, why not? It's our Little Rivers to enjoy as we +please. We aren't growing so fast, but we're growing in a clean, +beautiful way, as Jasper Ewold says. What if that river was owned by +one man! What if we had to pay the price he set for what takes the +place of rain, as they do in some places in California? We're going to +say who shall build that dam!" + +"Think of it! Think of it!" Jack half whispered, his imagination in play. +"Plot after plot being added to this little oasis until it extends from +range to range, one sea of green! Many little towns, with Little Rivers +the mother town, spreading its ideas! Yes, think of being in at the +making of a new world, seeing visions develop into reality as, stone by +stone, an edifice rises! I--I--" Jack paused, a cloud sweeping over his +features, his eyes seeming to stare at a wall. His body alone seemed in +Little Rivers, his mind on the other side of the pass. He was in one of +those moods of abstraction that ever made his fellow-ranchers feel that +he would not be with them permanently. + +Indeed, he had whole days when his smile had a sad turn; when, though he +spoke pleasantly, the inspiration of talk was not in him and when Belvy +Smith could not rouse any action in the cat with two black stripes down +its back. But many Little Riversites, including the Doge, had their sad +days, when they looked away at the pass oftener than usual, as if seeing +a life-story framed in the V. His came usually, as Mrs. Smith observed, +when he had a letter from the East. And it was then that he would pretend +to cough to Firio. These mock coughing spells were one of the few +manifestations that made the impassive Firio laugh. + +"Now you know I am not well, don't you, Firio?" he would ask, waggishly, +the very thought seeming to take him out of the doldrums. "I could never +live out of this climate. Why, even now I have a cough, kuh-er!" + +Firio had turned a stove cook. He accepted the humiliation in a spirit of +loyalty. But often he would go out among the sagebrush and return with a +feathery tribute, which he would broil on a spit in a fire made in the +yard. Always when Jack rode out to meet Mary at the foot of the range, +Firio would follow; and always he had his rifle. For it was part of +Jack's seeming inconsistency, emphasizing his inscrutability, that he +would never wear his revolver. It hung beside Pete's on the wall of the +living-room as a second relic. Far from being a quarrel-maker, he was +peaceful to the point of Quakerish predilection. + +"Nobody ever hears anything of Leddy," said Jim; "but he will never +forget or forgive, and one day he will show up unexpectedly." + +"Not armed!" said Jack. + +"Do you think he will keep his word?" + +"I know he will. I asked him and he said he would." + +"You're very simple, Jack. But mind, he can keep his word and still use +a gun outside the town!" + +"So he might!" admitted Jack, laughing in a way that indicated that the +subject was distasteful to him; for he would never talk of the duel. + +Now we come to that little affair of Pedro Nogales. Pedro was a +half-breed, whose God among men was Pete Leddy no less than Jack was +Firio's and the Doge was Ignacio's. In his shanty back of Bill Lang's the +Mexicans and Indians lost their remaining wages in gambling after he had +filled them with _mescal_. It happened that Gonzalez, head man of the +laborers under Bob Worther, who had saved quite a sum, came away +penniless after taking but one drink. Every ounce of Bob's avoirdupois +was in a rage. + +"It's time we cleaned out Pedro's place, seh!" he told Jack; "and you and +Jim Galway have got to help me do it!" + +"I don't like to get into a row," said Jack very soberly. + +"Then I'll undertake the job alone," Bob retorted. "That will be a good +deal worse, for when I get going I lose my temper and I tell you, seh, +I've got a lot to lose! And, Jack, are you going to stand by and see +robbery done by the meanest, most worthless greaser in the valley--and a +good Indian the victim?" + +"Yes, Jack," said Jim, "you've got such a formidable reputation since +your set-to with Leddy that the Indians think you are a regular master of +magic. You're just the one to make Pedro come to terms." + +"A formidable reputation without firing a shot!" admitted Jack +quizzically, and consented. + +"You'll surely want your gun this time!" Bob warned him. + +"No," said Jack. + +"But--" + +"I have hung up my gun!" Jack said decisively. "We'll try to handle this +peacefully. Come on!" + +"Well, we've got our guns, anyway!" Jim put in. + +It was mid-afternoon, a slack hour for Pedro's kind of trade, and the +shanty was empty of customers when the impromptu vigilance committee +entered. Pedro himself was half dozing in the faro dealer's chair. His +small, ferret eyes flashed a spark at the visitors as he rose, but he was +politeness itself. + +"Senores! It is great honor! Be seated, senores!" he said with eloquent +deference. + +The very sight of him set all the ounces in Bob quivering in an outburst: + +"No chairs for us! You fork over Gonzalez's money that you tricked +out of him!" + +"I take Gonzalez's money! I? Senores?" + +"It's a hundred and twenty dollars that he earned honestly, and the +quicker you lay your hands on it the better for you!" Bob roared back. + +Pedro was quite impassive. + +"Senores, if Gonzalez need money--senores, I honest man! Senores, sit +down! We talk!" Pedro dropped back into his chair and his hand, with +cat-like quickness, shot under the faro table. + +Jack had come through the door after Jim and Bob. He was standing a +little behind them, and while they had been watching Pedro's face he had +watched Pedro's movements. + +"Pedro, take your hand out from under the table and without your gun!" +said Jack; and Jim Galway caught a thrill in Jack's voice that he had +heard in the _arroyo_. + +Pedro looked into Senor Don't Care's eyes and saw a bead, though they +were not looking along the glint of a revolver barrel. + +"_Si_, senor!" said Pedro, settling back in the chair with palms out in +intimation of his pacific intentions. + +"Now, Pedro, you have Gonzalez's money, haven't you?" Jack went on, in +the reasoning fashion that he had adopted to Leddy in the store. "And +you aren't going to make yourself or Bob trouble. You are going to +give it back!" + +"_Si_, senor!" said Pedro wincing. + +While he was producing the money and counting it, his furtive glance kept +watch of Jack. Then, as the committee turned to go, he suddenly exclaimed +with angry surprise and disillusion: + +"You got no gun!" + +While Jim and Bob waited for Jack to precede them out of the door Jim had +time to note Pedro's baleful, piercing look at Jack's back. + +"Just as I told you, Jack--and I reckon you saved a big row. You just +put a scare into that hellion with a word, like you had a thousand devils +in you!" said Jim. + +"It's all over!" Jack answered, looking more hurt than pleased over the +congratulations. "Very fortunately over." + +"But," Jim observed, tensely, "Pedro is not only Leddy's bitter +partisan and ready to do his bidding, Pedro's a bit loco, besides--the +kind that hesitates at nothing when he gets a grudge. You've got to +look out for him." + +"Oh, no!" said Jack, in the full swing of a Senor Don't Care mood. + +Jim and Bob began to entertain the feelings of Mary on the pass, when she +thought of Jack as walking over precipices regardless of danger signs. +After all, did he really know how to shoot? If he would not look after +himself, it was their duty to look after him. Jim suggested that the rule +which Jack had made for Leddy should have universal application. No one +whosoever should wear arms in Little Rivers without a permit. The new +ordinance had the Doge's approval; and Jim and Bob, both of whom had +permits, kept watch that it was enforced, particularly in the case of +Pedro Nogales. + +Meanwhile, Jack kept the ten-hour-a-day law. His alfalfa was growing +with prolific rapidity, but Firio had the air of one who waits +between journeys. + +"Never the trail again?" he asked temptingly, one day. + +"Never the trail again!" Jack declared firmly. + +"_Si, si, si_--the trail again!" + +"You think so? Then why do you ask?" + +"To make a question," answered Firio. "The big sadness will be too +strong. It will make you move--_si_!" + +"The big sadness!" Jack exclaimed. He seized Firio by the shoulders and +looked narrowly at him, and Firio met the gaze with soft, puzzling lights +in his eyes. "Ho! ho! A big sadness! How do you know?" he laughed. + +"I learn on the trail when I watch you look at the stars. And Senorita +Ewold, she know; but she think the big sadness a devil. She--" and he +paused. + +"She--yes?" Jack asked. + +"She--" Firio started again. + +Jack suddenly raised his hands from Firio's shoulders in a gesture of +interruption. It was not exactly Firio's place to hazard opinions about +Mary Ewold. + +"Never mind!" he said, rather sharply. + +But Firio proceeded fixedly to finish what he had to say. + +"She has a big sadness, which makes her ride to the pass. She rides out +so she can ride back smiling." + +"Firio, don't mistake your imagination for divination!" Jack warned him. + +As Firio did not understand the meaning of this he said nothing. Probably +he would have said nothing even if he had understood. + +"I'll show you the nature of the big sadness and that the devil is a joy +devil when we harvest our first crop of alfalfa," Jack concluded. "Then I +shall make a holiday! Then I shall be a real rancher and something is +going to happen!" + +"The trail!" exclaimed Firio, and the soft light in his eyes flashed. +"_Si_! The trail and the big spurs and the revolver in the holster!" + +"No!" + +But Firio said "_Si_"! with the supreme confidence of one who holds that +belief in fulfilment will make any wish come true. + + + + +XVI + +A CHANGE OF MIND + + +It was Sunday afternoon; or, to date it by an epochal event, the day +after Jack's alfalfa crop had fallen before the mower. Mary was seated on +the bench under the avenue of umbrella-trees reading a thin edition of +Marcus Aurelius bound in flexible leather. Of late she had developed a +fondness for the more austere philosophers. Jack, whose mood was entirely +to the sonneteers, came softly singing down the avenue of palms and +presented himself before her in a romping spirit of interruption. + +"O expert in floriculture!" he said, "the humble pupil acting as a +Committee of One has failed utterly to agree with himself as to the form +of his new flowerbed. There must be a Committee of Two. Will you come?" + +"Good! I am weary of Marcus. I can't help thinking that he too far +antedates the Bordeaux mixture!" she answered, springing to her feet with +positive enthusiasm. + +He rarely met positive enthusiasm in her and everything in him called for +it at the moment. He found it so inspiring that the problem of the bed +was settled easily by his consent to all her suggestions--a too-ready +consent, she told herself. + +"After all, it is your flower garden," she reminded him. + +"No, every flower garden in Little Rivers is yours!" he declared. + +The way he said this made her frown. She saw him taking a step on the +other side of that barrier over which she mounted guard. + +"Never make your hyperboles felonious!" she warned him. "Besides, if +you are going to be a real Little Riversite you should have opinions of +your own." + +"I haven't any to-day--none except victory!" and he held out his palms, +exhibiting their yellowish plates. "Look! Even corns on the joints!" + +"Yes, they look quite real," she admitted, censoriously. + +"Haven't I made good? Do you remember how you stood here on the very site +of my house and lectured me? I would not work! I would not--" + +"You have worked a little--a little!" she said grudgingly, and showed him +as much of the wondrous sparkle in her eyes as he could see out of the +corners between the lashes. She never allowed him to look into her eyes +if she apprehended any attempt to cross the barrier. But she could see +well enough out of the corners to know that his glances had a kind of +hungry joy and a promise of some new demonstration in his attitude toward +her. She must watch that barrier very shrewdly. + +"Look at my hedge!" he went on. "It is knee-high already, and my +umbrella-trees cast enough shade for anybody, if he will wrap himself +around the trunk. But such things are ornamental. I have a more practical +appeal. Come on!" + +His elation was insistent, superior to any prickling gibes of banter, as +they walked on the mealy earth between rows of young orange settings, +and the sweet odor of drying alfalfa came to their nostrils, borne by a +vagrant breeze. He swept his hand toward the field in a gesture of pride, +his shoulders thrown back in a deep breath of exultation. + +"The callouses win!" And he exhibited them again. + +But she refused even to glance at them this time. + +"You seem to think callouses phenomenal. Most people in Little Rivers +accept them as they do the noses on their faces." + +"They certainly are phenomenal on me. So is my first crop! My first crop! +I'll be up at dawn to stack it--and then I'm no longer a neophyte. I am +an initiate! I'm a real rancher! A holiday is due! I celebrate!" + +He was rhapsodic and he was serious, too. She was provokingly flippant as +an antidote for Marcus Aurelius, whom she was still carrying in the +little flexible leather volume. + +"How celebrate?" she inquired. "By walking through the town with a wisp +of alfalfa in one hand and exhibiting the callouses on the other? or will +you be drawn on a float by Jag Ear--a float labeled, 'The Idler Enjoying +His Own Reform?' We'll all turn out and cheer." + +"Amusing, but not dignified and not to my taste. No! I shall celebrate by +a terrific spree--a ride to the pass!" + +He turned his face toward the range, earnest in its transfixion and +suffused with the spirit of restlessness and the call of the mighty rock +masses, gray in their great ribs and purple in their abysses. She felt +that same call as something fluid and electric running through the air +from sky to earth, and set her lips in readiness for whatever folly he +was about to suggest. + +"A ride to the pass and a view of the sunset from the very top!" he +cried. He looked down at her quickly, and all the force of the call he +had transformed into a sunny, personal appeal, which made her avert her +glance. "My day in the country--my holiday, if you will go with me! Will +you, and gaze out over that spot of green in the glare of the desert, +knowing that a little of it is mine?" + +"Your orange-trees are too young. It's so far away they will hardly +show," she ventured, surveying the distance to the pass judicially. + +"Will you?" + +"Why, to me a ride to the pass is not a thing to be planned a day +beforehand," she said deliberately, still studiously observing Galeria. +"It is a matter of momentary inspiration. Make it a set engagement and it +is but a plodding journey. I can best tell in the morning," she +concluded. "And, by the way, I see you haven't yet tried grafting plums +on the alfalfa stalks." + +"No. I have learned better. It is not consistent. You see, you mow +alfalfa and you pick plums." + +This return to drollery, in keeping with the prescribed order of their +relations, made her look up in candid amusement over the barrier which +for a moment he had been endangering. + +"Honestly, Jack, you do improve," she said, with mock encouragement. "You +seem to have mastered a number of the simple truths of age-old +agricultural experience." + +"But will you? Will you ride to the pass?" + +He had the question launched fairly into her eyes. She could not escape +it. He saw one bright flash, whether of real anger or simply vexation at +his reversion to the theme he could not tell, and her lashes dropped; +she ran the leaf edges of the austere Marcus back and forth in her +fingers, thip-thip-thip. That was the only sound for some seconds, very +long seconds. + +"As I've already tried to make clear to you, it's such a businesslike +thing to ride to the pass unless you have the inspiration," she remarked +thoughtfully to Marcus. "Perhaps I shall get the inspiration on the way +back to the house;" which was a signal that she was going. "And, by the +way, Jack, to return to the object of my coming, if you have ideas of +your own about flowers incorporate them; that is the way to develop your +floricultural talent." + +She turned away, but he followed. He was at her side and proceeding with +her, his head bent toward her, boyishly, eagerly. + +"You see, I have never been out to the pass," he remarked urgently. + +"What! You--" she started in surprise and checked herself. + +"Didn't I come by train?" he asked reprovingly. + +"No!" she answered. Her eyes were level with the road, her voice was a +little unnatural. "No! You came over the pass, Jack." + +It was the first time in the months of his citizenship of Little Rivers +that she had ever hinted anything but belief in the fiction that they had +first met when he asked her to show him a parcel of land. She seemed to +be calling a truth out of the past and grappling with it, while her lips +tightened and she drew in her chin. + +"Then I did come over the pass," he agreed; and after a pause added: +"But there was no Pete Leddy." + +"Yes, oh, yes--there was a Pete Leddy!" + +"But he will not be there this time!" + +And now his voice, in a transport that seemed to touch the cloud heights, +was neither like the voice of the easy traveller on the pass, nor the +voice of his sharp call to Leddy to disarm, nor the voice of the +storyteller. It had a new note, a note startling to her. + +"We shall be on the pass without Leddy and smiling over Leddy and +thanking him for his unwitting service in making me stop in Little +Rivers," he concluded. + +"Yes, he did that," she admitted stoically, as if it were some oppressive +fact for which she could offer no thanks. + +"I want to see our ponies with their bridles hanging loose! I want the +great silence! I want company, with imagination speaking from the sky +and reality speaking from the patch of green out on the sea of gray! +Will you?" + +Their steps ran rhythmically together. His look was eager in +anticipation, while she kept on running the leaves of the austere Marcus +through her fingers. Her lips were half open, as if about to speak, but +were without words; the thin, delicate nostrils trembled. + +"Will you? Will you, because I kept the faith of callouses? Will you go +forth and dream for a day? We'll tell fairy stories! We'll get a pole and +prod the dinosaur through the narrow part of the pass and hear him roar +his awfullest. Will you?" + +Her fingers paused in the pages as if they had found a helpful passage. +The chin tilted upward resolutely and he had a full view of her eyes, +dancing with challenging lights. She was augustly, gloriously +mischievous. + +"Will you go in costume? Will you wear your spurs and the chaps and the +silk shirt?" + +The question said that it was not a time to be serious. It sprinkled the +crest of the barrier with gleaming slivers of glass, which might give +zest to words spoken across it, but would be most sharp to the touch. + +"I will wear my spurs around my wrists, if you say, tie roses in the +fringe of my chaps, bind my hat with a big red silk bandanna, and put +streamers on P.D.'s bits!" + +"That is too enticing for refusal," she answered, playfully. "I +particularly want to hear the dinosaur roar." + +They had come to the opening of the Ewold hedge, and they paused to +consider arrangements. There was no one in sight on the street except Jim +Galway, who was approaching at some distance. + +"Shall we start in the morning and have luncheon at the foot of the +range?" suggested Jack. + +She favored an early afternoon start; he argued for his point of view, +and in their preoccupation with the passage of arms they did not notice +Pedro Nogales slipping along beside the hedge with soft steps, his hand +under his jacket. A gleam out of the bosom of Pedro's jacket, a cry from +Mary, and a knife flashed upward and drove toward Jack's neck. + +Jack had seemed oblivious of his surroundings, his gaze centered on Mary. +Yet he was able to duck backward so that the blade only slit open his +shirt as Pedro, with the misdirected force of his blow, lunged past its +object. Mary saw that face which had been laughing into hers, which had +been so close to hers in its persistent smile of persuasion, struck white +and rigid and a glint like that of the blade itself in the eyes. In a +breath Jack had become another being of incarnate, unthinking physical +power and swiftness. One hand seized Pedro's wrist, the other his upper +arm, and Mary heard the metallic click of the knife as it struck the +earth and the sickening sound of the bone of Pedro's forearm cracking. +She saw Pedro's eyes bursting from their sockets in pain and fear; she +saw Jack's still profile of unyielding will and the set muscles of his +neck and the knitting muscles of his forearm driving Pedro over against +the hedge, as if bent on breaking the Mexican's back in two, and she +waited in frozen apprehension to hear another bone crack, even expecting +Pedro's death cry. + +"The devil is out of Senor Don't Care!" It was the voice of Ignacio, who +had come around the house in time to witness the scene. + +"What fearful strength! You will kill him!" It was the voice of the Doge, +from the porch. + +"Yes, please stop!" Mary pleaded. + +Suddenly, at the sound of her cry, Jack released his hold. The strong +column of his neck became apparently too weak to hold the weight of his +head. Inert, he fell against the hedge for support, his hands hanging +limp at his side, while he stared dazedly into space. It seemed then that +Pedro might have picked up the knife and carried out his plan of murder +without defence by the victim. + +"Yes, yes, yes!" Jack repeated. + +Pedro had not moved from the hollow in the hedge which the impress of his +body had made. He was trembling, his lips had fallen away from his +teeth, and he watched Jack in stricken horror, a beaten creature waiting +on some judgment from which there was no appeal. + +"We'll tell fairy stories"--Jack's soft tones of persuasion repeated +themselves in Mary's ears in contrast to the effect of what she had just +witnessed. Her hand slipped along the crest of the hedge, as if to +steady herself. + +"I'll change my mind about going to the pass, Jack," she said. + +"Yes, Mary," he answered in a faint tone. + +He looked around to see her back as she turned away from him; then, with +an effort, he stepped free of the hedge. + +"Come, we will go to the doctor!" he said to the Mexican. + +He touched Pedro's shoulder softly and softly ran his hand down the +sleeve in which the arm hung limp. Pedro had not moved; he still leaned +against the hedge inanimate as a mannikin. + +"Come! Your legs are not broken! You can walk!" said Jim Galway, who had +come up in a hurry when he saw what was happening. + +"Pedro, you will learn not to play with the devil in Senor Don't Care!" +whispered Ignacio, while Mary had disappeared in the house and the Doge +stood watching. + +Jack had stroked Pedro's head while the bone was being set. He had +arranged for Pedro's care. And now he was in his own yard with Jag Ear +and the ponies, rubbing their muzzles alternately in silent +impartiality, his head bowed reflectively as Firio came around the +corner of the house. At first he half stared at Firio, then he surveyed +the steeds of his long journeyings in questioning uncertainty, and then +looked back at Firio, smiling wanly. + +"Firio," he said, "I feel that I am a pretty big coward. Firio, I am full +up--full to overflowing. My mind is stuffed with cobwebs. I--I must think +things out. I must have the solitudes." + +"The trail!" prescribed Doctor Firio. + +After Jack had given his ranch in charge to Galway, he rode away in +the dusk, not by the main street, but straight across the levels +toward the pass. + + + + +XVII + +THE DOGE SNAPS A RUBBER BAND + + +Jasper Ewold was a disciple of an old-fashioned custom that has fallen +into disuse since the multiplicity of typewriters made writing for one's +own pleasure too arduous; or, if you will have another reason, since our +existence and feelings have become so complex that we can no longer +express them with the simple directness of our ancestors. He kept a +diary with what he called a perfect regularity of intermittency. A week +might pass without his writing a single word, and again he might indulge +freely for a dozen nights running. He wrote as much or as little as he +pleased. He wrote when he had something to tell and when he was in the +mood to tell it. + +"It is facing yourself in your own ink," he said. "It is confessing that +you are an egoist and providing an antidote for your egoism. Firstly, you +will never be bored by your own past if you can appreciate your errors +and inconsistencies. Secondly, you will never be tempted to bore others +with your past as long as you wish to pose as a wise man." + +He must have found, as you would find if you had left youth behind and +could see yourself in your own ink, that the first tracery of any +controlling factor in your life was faint and inconsequential to you at +the time, without presage of its importance until you saw other lines, +also faint and inconsequential in their beginnings, drawing in toward it +to form a powerful current. + +On the evening that Jack took to the trail again, Jasper Ewold had a +number of thick notebooks out of the box in the library which he always +kept locked, and placed them on the living-room table beside his easy +chair, in which he settled himself. Mary was sewing while he pored over +his life in review as written by his own hand. Her knowledge of the +secrets of that chronicle from wandering student days to desert exile was +limited to glimpses of the close lines of fine-written pages across the +breadth of the circle of the lamp's reflection. He surrounded his diary +with a line of mystery which she never attempted to cross. On occasions +he would read to her certain portions which struck his recollection +happily; but these were invariably limited to his impressions of some +city or some work of art that he was seeing for the first time in the +geniality of the unadulterated joy of living in what she guessed was the +period of youth before she was born; and never did they throw any light +on his story except that of his views as a traveller and a personality. +But he did not break out into a single quotation to-night. It seemed as +if he were following the thread of some reference from year to year; for +he ran his fingers through the leaves of certain parts hastily and became +studiously intense at other parts as he gloomily pondered over them. + +Neither she nor her father had mentioned Jack since the scene by the +hedge. This was entirely in keeping with custom. It seemed a matter of +instinct with both that they never talked to each other of him. Yet she +was conscious that he had been in her father's mind all through the +evening meal, and she was equally certain that her father realized that +he was in her mind. + +It was late when the Doge finished his reading, and he finished it with +the page of the last book, where the fine handwriting stopped at the edge +of the blank white space of the future. An old desire, ever strong with +Mary, which she had never quite had the temerity to express, had become +impelling under the influence of her father's unusually long and silent +preoccupation. + +"Am I never to have a glimpse of that treasure? Am I never, never to read +your diary?" she asked. + +The Doge drew his tufted eyebrows together in utter astonishment. + +"What! What, Mary! Why, Mary, I might preach a lesson on the folly of +feminine curiosity. Do you think I would ask to see your diary?" + +"But I don't keep one." + +"Hoo-hoo-hoo!" The Doge was blowing out his lips in an ado of deprecatory +nonsense. "Don't keep one? Have you lost your memory?" + +"I had it a minute ago--yes," after an instant's playful consideration, +"I am sure that I have it now." + +"Then, everybody with a memory certainly keeps a diary. Would you want +me to read all the foolish things you had ever thought? Do you think I +would want to?" + +"No," she answered. + +"There you are, then!" declared the Doge victoriously, as he rose, +slipping a rubber band with a forbidding snap over the last book. "And +this is all stupid personal stuff--but mine own!" + +There was an unconscious sigh of weariness as he took up the thumbed +leather volumes. He was haggard. "Mine own" had given him no pleasure +that evening. All the years of his life seemed to rest heavily upon him +for a silent moment. Mary feared that she had hurt him by her request. + +"You have read so much you will scarcely do any writing to-night," +she ventured. + +"Yes, I will add a few more lines--the spirit is in me--a few more days +to the long record," he said, absently, then, after a pause, suddenly, +with a kind of suppressed force vibrating in his voice: "Well, our Sir +Chaps has gone." + +"As unceremoniously as he came," she answered. + +"It was terrible the way he broke Nogales's wrist!" remarked the +Doge narrowly. + +"Terrible!" she assented as she folded her work, her head bent. + +"Gone, and doubtless for good!" he continued, still watching her sharply. + +"Very likely!" she answered carelessly without looking up. "His vagarious +playtime for this section is over." + +"Just it! Just it!" the Doge exclaimed happily. + +"And if Leddy overtakes him now, it's his own affair!" + +"Yes, yes! He and his Wrath of God and Jag Ear are away to other worlds!" + +"And other Leddys!" + +"No doubt! No doubt!" concluded the Doge, in high good humor, all the +vexation of his diary seemingly forgotten as he left the room. + +But, as the Doge and Mary were to find, they were alone among Little +Riversites in thinking that the breaking of Pedro Nogales's wrist was +horrible. Jim Galway, who had witnessed the affair, took a radically +contrary view, which everyone else not of the Leddy partisanship readily +accepted. Despite the frequency of Jack's visits to the Ewold garden and +all the happy exchange of pleasantries with his hosts, the community +could not escape the thought of a certain latent hostility toward Jack on +the part of the Doge, the more noticeable because it was so out of +keeping with his nature. + +"Doge, sometimes I think you are almost prejudiced against Jack Wingfield +because he didn't let Leddy have his way," said Jim, with an outright +frankness that was unprecedented in speaking to Jasper Ewold. "You're +such a regular old Quaker!" + +"But that little Mexican panting in abject fear against the hedge!" +persisted the Doge. + +"A nice, peaceful little Mexican with a knife, sneaking up to plant it in +Jack's neck!" + +"But Jack is so powerful! And his look! I was so near I could see it well +as he towered over Nogales!" + +"Yes, no mistaking the look. I saw it in the _arroyo_. It made me think +of what the look of one of those old sea-fighters might have been like +when they lashed alongside and boarded the enemy." + +"And the crack of the bone!" continued the Doge. + +"Would you have a man turn cherub when he has escaped having his +jugular slashed by a margin of two or three inches? Would you have him +say, 'Please, naughty boy, give me your knife? You mustn't play with +such things!'" + +"No! That's hyperbole!" the Doge returned with a lame attempt at a laugh. + +"Mebbe it is, whatever hyperbole is," said Jim; "but if so, hyperbole is +a darned poor means of self-defence. Yes, the trouble is you are against +Jack Wingfield!" + +"Yes, I am!" said the Doge suddenly, as if inward anger had got the +better of him. + +"And the rest of us are for him!" Jim declared sturdily. + +"Naturally! naturally!" said the Doge, passing his hand over his brow. +"Yes, youth and color and bravery!" He shook his head moodily, as if +Jim's statement brought up some vital, unpleasant, but inevitable fact +to his mind. + +"It's beyond me how anybody can help liking him!" concluded Galway +stubbornly. + +"I like him--yes, I do like him! I cannot help it!" the Doge admitted +rather grudgingly as he turned away. + +"So we weren't so far apart, after all!" Galway hastened to call after +the Doge in apology for his testiness. "We like him for what he has been +to us and will always be to us. That's the only criterion of character in +Little Rivers according to your own code, isn't it, Jasper Ewold?" + +"Exactly!" answered the Doge over his shoulder. + +The community entered into a committee of the whole on Jack Wingfield. +With every citizen contributing a quota of personal experience, his story +was rehearsed from the day of his arrival to the day of his departure. +Argument fluctuated on the question of whether or not he would ever +return, with now the noes and now the ayes having it. On this point Jim +had the only first-hand evidence. + +"He said to let things grow until he showed up or I heard from +him," said Jim. + +"Not what I would call enlightening," said Bob Worther. + +"That was his way of expressing it; but to do him justice, he showed what +a good rancher he was by his attention to the details that had to be +cared for," Jim added. + +"He's like the spirit of the winds, I guess," put in Mrs. Galway. +"Something comes a-calling him or a-driving him, I don't know which. +Indeed, I'm not altogether certain that it isn't a case of Mary Ewold +this time!" + +"Yes," agreed Jim. "The fighting look went out of his face when she +spoke, and when he saw how horrified she was, why, I never saw such a +change come over a man! It was just like a piece of steel wilting." + +However, the children, who had no part in the august discussions of the +committee of the whole, were certain that their story-teller would come +back. Their ideas about Jack were based on a simple, self-convincing +faith of the same order as Firio's. Lonely as they were, they were hardly +more lonely than their elders, who were supposed to have the philosophy +of adults. + +No Jack singing out "Hello!" on the main street! No Jack looking up from +work to ask boyishly: "Am I learning? Oh, I'll be the boss rancher yet!" +No Jack springing all sorts of conceits, not of broad humor, but the kind +that sort of set a "twinkling in your insides," as Bob Worther expressed +it! No Jack inspiring a feeling deeper than twinkles on his sad days! He +had been an improvement in town life that became indispensable once it +was absent. Little Rivers was fairly homesick for him. + +"How did we ever get along without him before he came, anyway?" Bob +Worther demanded. + +Then another new-comer, as distinctive from the average settler as Jack +was, diverted talk into another channel, without, however, reconciling +the people to their loss. + + + + +XVIII + +ANOTHER STRANGER ARRIVES + + +If the history of Little Rivers were to be written in chapter headings +the first would be, "Jasper Ewold Founded the Town"; the second, "Jack +Wingfield Arrived"; and the third, "John Prather Arrived." + +While Jack came in chaps and spurs, bearing an argosy of fancy, Prather +came by rail, carrying a suitcase in a conventional and businesslike +fashion. Bill Deering, as the representative of a spring wagon that did +the local omnibus and express business, was on the platform of the +station when the 11:15 rolled in, and sang out, in a burst of joy, as the +stranger, a man in the early twenties, stepped off the Pullman: + +"What's this, Jack? Back by train--and in store clothes? Well, of +all--" and saw his mistake when the stranger's full face was turned +toward him. + +"Yes, I am sometimes called Jack," said the stranger pleasantly. "Now, +where have we met before? Perhaps in Goldfield? No matter. It is time we +got acquainted. My name is Prather, and yours?" + +As he surveyed the man before him, Bill was as fussed as the giant of the +fairy story had been by a display of yellow. He was uncertain whether he +was giving his own baptismal name or somebody's else. + +"By Jing! No, I don't know you, but you sure are the dead spit of a +fellow I do know!" said Bill. + +"Well, he has done me the favor of introducing me to you, anyway," said +Prather, who had a remarkably ingratiating smile. "I would like a place +to stop while I take a look around. Is there a hotel?" + +"Rooms over the store and grub at Mrs. Smith's--none better!" + +"That will do." + +As they rode into town more than one passer-by called out a ringing +"Hello, Jack!" or, "Back, eh, Jack? Hurrah for you!" and then uttered an +exclamation of disillusion when Prather turned his head. + +"The others see it, too," said Bill. + +"They seem to. Who is this double of mine?" + +"Jack Wingfield." + +"Jack Wingfield? It seems that our first names are the same, too. He +lives here, I take it." + +"Yes. But he's away now." + +"Well, when he comes back"--with a pause of slight irritation--"there +will be no difficulty in telling us apart." + +He put his finger to a triangular patch of mole on his cheek. His +irritation passed and a sense of appreciative amusement at the +distinction took its place. + +"Now, where shall I find Jasper Ewold?" he asked, as Bill drew up before +the Smiths. + +A few minutes later the Doge, busy among his orange-trees, hearing a +step, looked up with a signal of recognition which changed to blank +inquiry when the cheek with the mole was turned toward him. + +"Upon my word, sir, I--I thought that you were--" he began. + +"Mr. Wingfield! Yes, everybody in town seems to think so at first glance, +so I am quite used to the comparison by this time," Prather put in, +easily. "It is very interesting to meet the founder of a town, and I +have come to you to find out about conditions here." + +Prather did not appear as if he had ever done manual labor. He was too +young to have turned from ill health or failure in the city to the refuge +of the land. Indeed, his quiet gray suit of good material indicated +unostentatious prosperity. Evidently he was well-bred and evidently he +was not an agent for a new style of seeding harrow or weed killer. + +"You think of settling?" asked the Doge. + +"Yes. From all I have heard of Little Rivers, it's a community where I +should feel at home." + +"Then, sir, we will talk of it at luncheon; it is knocking-off time for +the morning. Yes, I'll talk as much as you please. Come on, Mr. Prather!" +They started along the avenue of palms, the Doge still studying the face +at his side. "Pardon me for staring at you, but the resemblance to Jack +Wingfield at first sight is most striking," he added. + +"Has he travelled much in the West?" asked Prather. + +"Yes, much--leading an aimless life." + +"Then he must be the one that I was taken for in Salt Lake City one day. +The man who called out to me saw his mistake, just as you did, when he +saw my full face;" and again Prather made a gesture of understanding +amusement to the mole. + +"When you consider what confusion there must be in the workrooms, with +the storks flapping and screeching like newsboys outside the delivery +room," mused the Doge, "and when you consider the multitudinous +population of the earth, it's surprising that the good Lord is able to +furnish such a variety of faces as he does. But they do say that every +one of us has a few doubles. In the case of famous public men they get +their pictures in the papers." + +"Yes, very few of us but have been mistaken for a friend by a stranger +passing in the street!" Prather suggested. + +"Only to have the stranger see his mistake at a second glance; and on +second glance you do not look very much like Jack Wingfield," the Doge +concluded. "Just a coincidence in physiognomy!" + +And Prather was very frank about his past. + +"I have led rather a hard life," he said. "Though I was well brought up +my father left mother and me quite penniless. I had to fend for myself at +the age of sixteen. A friend gave me an opportunity to go to Goldfield at +the outbreak of the excitement there. The rough experience of a +mining-camp was not exactly to my taste, but it meant a livelihood. My +real interest has always been in irrigation farming. I would rather grow +a good crop than mine for gold. Well, I saved a little money at +Goldfield--saved it to buy land. But land is not the only consideration. +The surroundings, the people with whom you have to live count for a great +deal when you mean to settle permanently." + +"Excellent!" declared the Doge. "A good citizen in full fellowship with +your neighbors! Exactly what we want in Little Rivers." + +Prather had a complexion of that velvety whiteness that never tans. +His eyes were calm, yet attractive, with a peculiar insinuating charm +when he talked that made it seem easy and natural to respond to his +wishes. In listening he had an ingratiating manner that was +flattering to the speaker. + +"A practical man!" the Doge said to Mary that evening. "The kind we need +here. He and I had a grand afternoon of it together. Every one of his +questions about soils and cultivation was to the point." + +"Not one argument?" she asked. + +"No, Mary; no time for argument." + +"You do like people to agree with you, after all!" she hazarded. For she +did not like Prather. + +"Pooh! Not a matter of agreement! No persiflage! No altitudinous +conversation of the kind that grows no crops. Prather wants to learn, and +he's got good, clean ideas, with a trained and accurate mind--the best +possible combination. I hope he will stay for the very reason that he is +not the kind that takes up a plot of land for life on an impulse, which +usually results in turning on the water and getting discouraged because +nature will not do the rest. But he is very favorably impressed. He said +that after Goldfield Little Rivers was like Paradise--practical Paradise. +Good phrase, practical Paradise!" + +In two or three days the new-comer knew everyone in town; but though he +addressed the men by their first names they always addressed him as "Mr. +Prather." In another respect besides his features he was like Jack: he +was much given to smiling. + +"The difference between his smile and Jack's," said Mrs. Galway, who was +at one with Mary in not liking him, "is that his is sort of a drawing-in +kind of smile and Jack's sort of radiates." + +The children developed no interest in him. It was evident that he could +not tell stories, except with an effort. In his goings and comings, ever +asking pleasant questions and passing compliments, he was usually +accompanied by the Doge, and his attitude toward the old man was the +admiring deference of disciple for master. + +"I am sorry I don't understand that," he would say when the Doge fell +into a scholastic allusion to explain a point. "I was hard at work when +lots of my friends were in college." + +"Learning may be ruination," responded the Doge, "though it wouldn't have +been in your case. It's the man that counts. See what you have made of +yourself!" + +"Ah, yes, but I feel that I have missed something. When I am settled here +I shall be able to make up for lost time, with your help, sir." + +"Every pigeonhole in my mind will be open at your call!" said the Doge, +glowing at the prospect. + +The favor that Prather found in the eyes of Jasper Ewold partly accounted +for what favor he found in Little Rivers' eyes. + +"Prather has certainly made a hit with the Doge!" quoth Bob Worther. +"As the Doge gets older I reckon he will like compliments better than +persiflage. But Jack could pay a compliment, too--only he never used +the ladle." + +It was Bob, as inspector of ditches and dams, who provided a horse for +Prather to inspect the source of the water supply. In keeping with a +characteristic thoroughness, Prather wanted to go up the river into the +canyon. He made himself a very enjoyable companion on the way, drawing +out all of Bob's best stories. When they stopped in sight of the streak +of blue sky through the breach in the mighty wall that had once +imprisoned the ancient lake, he was silent for some time, while he +surveyed this grandeur of the heights with smiling contemplation, at +intervals rubbing the palms of his hands together in a manner habitual +with him when he was particularly pleased. + +"I guess the same idea has struck you that strikes everybody at sight of +that, seh!" said Bob. + +"Yes, a dam might be practical," Prather answered. "But it would take a +lot of capital--a lot of capital!" + +On the way back they stopped before a dilapidated shanty near the +foothills. In the midst of a littered yard old man Lefferts, half dozing, +occupied a broken chair. + +"Since the Doge came old man Lefferts has had to do no work at all. A +Mexican looks after him. But it hasn't made him any happier," Bob +explained as they approached. + +"Howdy yourself?" growled Lefferts in answer to Bob's greeting. + +"He seems to be a character!" whispered Prather to Bob, as he smiled at +the prospect. "To confess the truth, I am a little saddle sore and tired. +I didn't get much riding in Goldfield. I think I'll stop and rest and get +acquainted." + +"You won't get much satisfaction but growls." + +"That will be all the more fun for me," rejoined Prather. "But don't let +me keep you." + +"No. I must be going on. I've got some things to look after before +nightfall," said Bob, while Prather, in a humor proof against any hermit +cantankerousness, rode into the yard. + +When he returned after dark he said, laughingly, that he had enjoyed +himself, though the conversation was all on one side. The next morning he +decided to take up the plot of land adjoining Jack's. + +"But I shall not be able to begin work for a few weeks," he said. "I must +go to Goldfield to settle up my affairs before I begin my new career." + +"If Jack ever comes back I wonder what he will say to his new neighbor!" +Little Rivers wondered. + + + + +XIX + +LOOKING OVER PRECIPICES + + +To Mary Ewold the pass was a dividing line between two appeals. The +Little Rivers side, with the green patch of oasis in the distance, had a +message of peaceful enjoyment of what fortune had provided for her. Under +its spell she saw herself content to live within garden walls forever in +the land that had given her life, grateful for the trickles of +intelligence that came by mail from the outside world. + +The other side aroused a mighty restlessness. Therefore, she rarely made +that short journey which spread another panorama of space before her. But +this was one of the afternoons when she welcomed a tumult of any kind as +a relief from her depression; and she went on through the V as soon as +she reached the summit. + +Seated on a flat-topped rock, oblivious of the passage of time, of the +dream cities of the Eternal Painter, she was staring far away where the +narrowing gray line between the mountain rims met the sky. She was seeing +beyond the horizon. She was seeing cities of memory and reality. A great +yearning was in her heart. All the monotonous level lap of the heights +which seemed without end was a symbol that separated her from her desire. + +She imagined herself in a Pullman, flashing by farms and villages; in a +shop selecting gowns; viewing from a high window the human stream of +Fifth Avenue; taking passage on a steamer; hearing again foreign tongues +long ago familiar to her ears; sensing the rustle of great audiences +before a curtain rose; glimpsing the Mediterranean from a car window; +feeling herself a unit in the throbbing promenade of the life of many +streets while her hunger took its fill of a busy world. + +"It is hard to do it all in imagination!" she said to herself. "Even +imagination needs an occasional nest-egg of reality by way of +encouragement." + +An hour on the far side of the pass played the emotional part for her of +a storm of tears for many another woman. She rejoiced in being utterly +alone; rejoiced in the grandeur of the very wastes around her as mounting +guard over the freedom of her thoughts. There was no living speck on the +trail, which she knew lay across the expanse of parched earth to the edge +of the blue dome; there was not even a bird in the air. Undisturbed, she +might think anything, pray for anything; she might feed the flame of +revolt till the fuel of many weeks' accumulation had burned itself out +and left her calm in the wisdom and understanding that reconciled her to +her portion and freshened to return through Galeria to the quiet routine +of her daily existence. + +Her mind paused in its travels from capital to capital and she was +conscious solely of the stark majesty of her surroundings. She listened. +There was no sound. The spacious stillness was soothing to her nerves; a +specific when all the Eternal Painter's art failed. She closed her eyes, +trying to realize that great silence as one would try to realize the +Infinite. Then faintly she heard a man's voice singing. It seemed at +first a trick of the imagination. But nearer and nearer it came, in the +fellowship of life joyfully invading the solitude; and with a +readjustment of her faculties to the expected event, she watched the +point where the trail dipped on a sharp turn of grade. + +Above it rose a cowpuncher hat, then a silk shirt with a string tie, and +after that a sage baggage burro with clipped ears, a solemn-faced pony, +and an Indian. Jack was watching his steps in the uneven path, and not +until the full length of him had appeared and he was flush on the level +with her did he look up. + +She was leaning back, her weight partly poised on the flat of her hand +on the rock, revealing the full curve of throat and the soft sweep of +the lines of her slim figure, erect, her head thrown back, her face in +shadow with the sun behind playing in her hair, in half-defiant +readiness. She saw him as the spirit of travel--its ease, mystery, +unattachedness--which had spanned the distances between her and the +horizon, in the freedom of his wandering choice. His low-pitched +exclamation of surprise was vibrant with appreciation of the picture she +made, and he stood quite still in a second's wistful silence, waiting on +her first word after the lapse of the many days since he had brought a +look of horror into her eyes. + +"Hello, Jack!" she said in the old tone of comradeship. It struck a spark +electrifying him with all his old, happy manner. + +He swept off his hat with a grand bow, blinking in the blaze of the sun +which turned his tan to a bronze and touched the smile, which was born as +an inspiration from her greeting, with radiance. + +"Hello to you, Mary, guarding the pass to Little Rivers!" he said +exultantly. "You are just the person I wanted to see. I have been in +a hurry to tell you about a certain thing ever since it came to me +this morning." + +She guessed that he was about to make up a new story. He must have had +time for many inventions in the ten days of his absence. But she welcomed +any tangent of nonsense that set the right key for the coincidence of +their meeting. She had refused to ride to the pass with him and here they +were alone together on the pass. Three or four steps, so light that they +seemed to be irresistibly winning permission from her, and he had sat +down on another flat-topped rock close by. Firio and the baggage train +moved on up the trail methodically and stopped well in the background. + +"You know how when you meet a person you are sometimes haunted by a +conviction that you have met him before!" he began. "How exasperated you +are not to be able to recall the time and place!" + +"Had you forgotten where you met the dinosaur?" she asked. "He must have +thought you very impolite after all the trouble he had taken to make you +remember him the last time you went through the pass." + +"Oh, the dinosaur and I have patched up a truce, because it seems, after +all, that I had mistaken his identity and he was a pleosaur. But"--he did +not take the pains to parry her interruption with more foolery, and +proceeded as if she had not spoken--"it has never been out of my mind +that your father gave me a glance at our first meeting which asked the +question that has kept recurring to me: Where had he and I seen each +other before?" + +"Well?" she said curiously, recalling her father's repeated allusions to +"this Wingfield," his strange depression after Jack had left the night +before the duel, his reticence and animadversions. + +"I said nothing about it, nor did he. I wonder if it has not been a kind +of contest between us as to which should be the first to say 'Tag!'" + +She smiled at this and leaned farther back, but with the curtain of her +eyelashes widening in tremulous intensity. + +"I knew it would come!" he went on, with dramatic fervor. "Such things do +come unexpectedly in a flash when there is a sudden electric connection +with some dusty pigeonhole in the mind. It was in Florence that he and I +met! In Florence, on the road to Fiesole!" + +"Florence! The road to Fiesole!" Mary repeated; and the names seemed to +rouse in her a rapturous recollection. She leaned forward now, her lips +apart, her eyes glowing. In place of wastes she was seeing brown roofs +and the sweep of the Tuscan Valley. + +"And _we_ met--_you_ and _I_!" + +"We?" Her glance came sharply back from the distances in the astonishment +of dilating pupils that drew together in inquiry as she saw that he was +in earnest. + +"Yes. I was at the extremely mature age of six and you must have been +about a year younger. Do you remember it at all?" + +"No!" She was silent, concentrated, groping. "No, no!" she repeated. +"Five is very immature compared to six!" + +"Your father had a beard then, a great blond beard that excited my +emulation. When I grew up I was going to have one like it and just such +bushy eyebrows. You came up the Fiesole road at his side, holding fast +to his thumb. I was playing at our villa gate. You went up the path with +him to see my mother--I can see just how you looked holding so fast to +that thumb! After a while you came straying out alone. Now don't you +remember? Don't you? Something quite sensational happened." + +"No!" + +"Well, I showed off what a great boy I was. I walked on the parapet of +the villa wall. I bowed to my audience aged five with the grandeur of a +tight-rope performer who has just done his best thriller as a climax to +his turn." + +"Yes--yes!" she breathed, with quick-running emphasis. Out of the mists +of fifteen years had come a signal. She bent nearer to him in the wonder +of a thing found in the darkness of memory, which always has the +fascination of a communication from another world. "You wanted me to come +up on the wall," she said, taking up the thread of the story. "You said +it was so easy, and you helped me up, and when I looked down at the road +I was overcome and fell down all in a heap on the parapet." + +"And heavens!" he gasped, living the scene over again, "wasn't I +frightened for fear you would tumble off!" + +"But I remember that you helped me down very nicely--and--and that is all +I do remember. What then?" + +She had come to a blind alley and perplexity was in her face, though she +tried to put the question nonchalantly. What then? How deep ran the +current of this past association? + +"Why, there wasn't much else. Your father came down the path and his big +thumb took you in tow. I did not see you again. A week later mother and I +had gone to Switzerland--we were always on the move." + +The candor of his glance told her that this was all. As boy and girl they +had met under an Italian sky. As man and woman they had met under an +Arizona sky. + +Now the charm of the Florence of their affections held them with a magic +touch. They were not in a savage setting, looking out over savage +distances, but on the Piazzale Michelangelo, looking out over the city of +Renaissance genius which slumbers on the refulgent bosom of its past; +they were oblivious of the Eternal Painter's canvasses and enjoying +Raphael's, Botticelli's, and Andrea del Sarto's. Possibly the Eternal +Painter, in the leniency of philosophic appreciation of their oblivion to +his art, hazarded a guess about the destiny of this pair. He could not +really have known their destiny. No, it is impossible to grant him the +power of divination; for if he had it he might not be so young of heart. + +Their talk flitted here and there in exclamations, each bringing an +entail of recollection of some familiar, enjoyed thing; and when at last +it returned to their immediate surroundings the shadow of the range was +creeping out onto the plain, cut by the brilliance of the sun through the +V. Mary rose with a quick, self-accusing cry about the lateness of the +hour. To him it was a call on his resources to delay their departure. + +"Do you see where that shelf breaks abruptly?" he asked. "It must be the +side of a canyon. Have you ever looked down?" + +"I started to once." + +"I should not like to go over the pass again without seeing if this +is really a canyon of any account. I feel myself quite an authority +on canyons." + +"It will be dark before we reach Little Rivers!" she protested. + +"Ten minutes--only a step!" and he was appealing in his boyish fashion to +have his way. + +"Nonsense! Besides, I do not care for canyons." + +"You still fear, then, to look down from walls? You--" + +And this decided her. On another occasion she had gone to the precipice +edge and faltered. She would master her dizziness for once and all; he +should not know from her any confession of a weakness which was purely of +the imagination. + +The point to which he had alluded was an immense overhanging slab of +granite stratum deep set in the mountain side. As they approached, a +thrill of lightness and uncertainty was setting her limbs a-quiver. Her +elbow was touching his, her will driving her feet forward desperately. +Suddenly she was gazing down, down, down, into black depths which +seemed calling irresistibly and melting her power of muscular volition, +while he with another step was on the very edge, leaning over and +smiling. She dropped back convulsively. He was all happy absorption in +the face of that abyss. How easy for him to topple over and go hurtling +into the chasm! + +"Don't!" she gasped, and blindly tugged at his arm to draw him back. + +As he looked around in surprise and inquiry, she withdrew her hand in a +reaction against her familiarity, yet did not lower it, holding it out +with fingers spread in expression of her horror. Serenely he regarded +her for a moment in her confusion and distress, and then, smiling, while +the still light of confidence was in his eyes, he locked his arm in hers. +Before she could protest or resist he had drawn her to his side. + +"It is just as safe as looking off the roof of a porch on to a flower +garden," he said. + +And why she knew not, but the fact had come as something definite and +settled: she was no longer dizzy or uncertain. Calmly, in the triumph of +mind over fear, in the glory of a new sensation of power, she looked down +into that gulf of shadows--looked down for a thousand feet, where the +narrowing, sheer walls merged into darkness. + +From this pit to the blue above there was only infinite silence, with no +movement but his pulse-beat which she could feel in his wrist +distinctly. He had her fast, a pawn of one of his impulses. A shiver of +revolt ran through her. He had taken this liberty because she had shown +weakness. And she was not weak. She had come to the precipice to prove +that she was not. + +"Thank you. My little tremor of horror has passed," she told him. "I can +stand without help, now." + +He released his hold and she stood quite free of him, a glance flashing +her independence. Smilingly she looked down and smilingly and +triumphantly back at him. + +"You need not keep your arm up in that fashion ready to assist me. It +is tiring," she said, with a touch of her old fire of banter over the +barrier. "I am all right, now. I don't know what gave me that giddy +turn--probably sitting still so long and looking out at the blaze of +the desert." + +He swept her with a look of admiration; and their eyes meeting, she +looked back into the abyss. + +"I wish I had such courage," he said with sudden, tense earnestness; +"courage to master my revulsion against shadows." + +"Perhaps it will come like an inspiration," she answered +uncomprehendingly. + +Then both were silent until she spoke of a stunted little pine three or +four hundred feet down, in the crotch of an outcropping. Its sinking +roots had split a rock, over which the other roots sprawled in gnarly +persistence. Some passing bird had dropped the seed which had found a bed +in a pocket of dust from the erosions of time. So it had grown and set up +housekeeping in its isolation, even as the community of Little Rivers had +in a desert basin beside a water-course. + +"The little pine has courage--the courage of the dwarf," she said. "It is +worth more than a whole forest of its majestic cousins in Maine. How +green it is--greener than they!" + +"But they rise straight to heaven in their majesty!" he returned, to make +controversy. + +"Yes, out of the ease of their rich beds!" + +"In a crowd and waiting for the axe!" + +"And this one, in its isolation, creating something where there was +nothing! Every one of its needles is counted in its cost of birth out of +the stubborn soil! And waiting all its life down there for the reward of +a look and a word of praise!" + +"But," he went on, in the delight of hearing her voice in rebuttal, "the +big pines give us the masts of ships and they build houses and furnish +the kindling for the hardwood logs of the hearth!" + +"The little pine makes no pretensions. It has done more. It has given us +something without which houses are empty: It has given us a thought!" + +"True!" he exclaimed soberly, yielding. And now all the lively signals of +the impulse of action played on his face. "For your glance and your word +of praise it shall pay you tribute!" he cried. "I am going down to bring +you one of its clusters of spines." + +"But, Jack, it is a dangerous climb--it is late! No! no!" + +"No climb at all. It is easy if I work my way around by that ledge +yonder. I see stepping-places all the way." + +How like him! While she thought only of the pine, he had been thinking +how to make a descent; how to conquer some physical difficulty. Already +he had started despite her protest. + +"I don't want to rob the little pine!" she called, testily. + +"I'll bring a needle, then!" + +"Even every needle is precious!" + +"I'll bring a dead one, then!" + +There was no combatting him, she knew, when he was headstrong; and when +he was particularly headstrong he would laugh in his soft way. He was +laughing now as he took off his spurs and tossed them aside. + +"No climbing in these cart-wheels, and I shall have to roll up my chaps!" + +She went back to the precipice edge to prove to him, to prove to herself, +that she could stand there alone, without the moral support of anyone at +her side, and found that she could. She had mastered her weakness. It was +as if a new force had been born in her. She felt its stiffening in every +fibre as she saw him pass around the ledge and start down toward the +little pine; felt it as something which could build barriers and mount +them with an invulnerable guard. + +How would he get past that steep shoulder? The worst obstacle confronted +him at the very beginning of the descent. He was hugging a rock face, +feeling his way, with nothing but a few inches of a projecting seam +between him and the darkness far below. His foot slipped, his body turned +half around, and she had a second of the horror that she had felt when +waiting for the sound of Leddy's shot in Bill Lang's store. She saw his +outspread hands clutching the seam above; watched for them to let go. But +they held; the foot groped and got its footing again, and he worked his +way out on a shelf. + +He was safe and she dropped on her knees weakly, still looking down at +him. It was the old story of their relations. Was this man ever to be +subjecting her to spasms of fear on his account? And there he was beaming +up at her reassuringly, while she felt the blood which had gone from her +face return in a hot flood. It brought with it anger in place of fear. + +"I don't want it! I don't want it!" she cried down. + +"And I want to get it for you! I want to get it for you--for you!" His +voice was a tumult of emotion in the abandon of passionate declaration. +So long had she held him back that now when the flood came it had the +power of conserved strength bursting a dam in wild havoc. "There is +nothing I would not like to do for you, Mary!" he cried. "I'd like to +pull that pine up for you, even if it bled and suffered! I'd like to go +on doing things for you forever!" + +There was not even a movement of her lips in answer. It seemed to her +now that there on the precipice edge, while he held her arm in his, +the iridescent house of glass had fallen about them in a confused, +dazzling shower of wreckage. He had found an opening. He had broken +through the barrier. + +Half unconscious of his progress, of the chasm itself, she waited in a +daze and came out of it to see him sweeping his hat upward from beside +the pine before he reached as far as he could among the branches and, +with what seemed to her the refinement of effrontery and disregard of her +wishes, broke off a tawny young branch. He waved it to her--this garland +of conquest won out of the jaws of danger, which he was ready to throw at +her feet from the lists. + +"No, no, no!" she said, half aloud. + +She saw him start back with his sure steps, his shoulders swinging with +the lithe, adaptable movement of his body; and every step was drawing him +nearer to a meeting which would be like no other between them. Soon he +would be crunching the glass of the house under that confident tread; in +the ecstasy of a new part he would be before the opening he had broken in +the barrier with the jauntiness of one who expected admission. His +pulse-beat under the touch of her fingers at the precipice edge, his +artery-beat in the _arroyo_, was hammering in her temples, hammering out +a decision which, when it came, brought her to her feet. + +Now the shadows were deep; all the glory of the sunset in the Eternal +Painter's chaotic last moments of his day's work overspread the western +sky, and from the furnace in which he dipped his brush came a blade of +rich, blazing gold through the pass and lay across the trail. It +enveloped her as, half running, mindless of her footing, slipping as she +went, she hurried toward the other side of Galeria. + +When Jack Wingfield came up over the ledge, a pine tassel in his hand, +his languor of other days transformed into high-strung, triumphant +intensity, the sparkle of a splendid hope in his eyes, only Firio was +there to welcome him. + +"Senorita Ewold said she no could wait," Firio explained. "It was very +late, she said." + +Jack stopped as if struck and his features became a lifeless mask, as +lifeless as the walls of the canyon. He looked down at the trophy of his +climb and ran his fingers over the needles slowly, again and again, in +abstraction. + +"I understand!" he said, half to himself; and then aloud: "Firio, we will +not go into town to-night. We will camp on the other side by the river." + +"_Si_! I shot enough quail this afternoon for dinner." + +But Jack did not have much appetite, and after dinner he did not amuse +Firio with inventions of his fancy. He lay long awake, his head on his +clasped hands, looking at the stars. + + + + +XX + +A PUZZLED AMBASSADOR + + +A faint aureole of light crept up back of the pass. + +"Dawn at last!" Jack breathed, in relief. "Firio! Firio! Up with you!" + +"Oh-yuh!" yawned Firio. "_Si, si_!" he said, rising numbly to his feet +and rubbing his eyes with his fists, while he tried to comprehend an +astonishing reversal of custom. Usually he awakened his camp-mate; but +this morning his camp-mate had awakened him. A half shadow in the +semi-darkness, Jack was already throwing the saddle over P.D.'s back. + +"We will get away at once," he said. + +Firio knew that something strange had come over Senor Jack after he had +met Senorita Ewold on the pass, and now he was convinced that this thing +had been working in Senor Jack's mind all night. + +"Coffee before we start?" he inquired ingratiatingly. + +"Coffee at the ranch," Jack answered. + +In their expeditious preparations for departure he hummed no snatches of +song as a paean of stretching muscles and the expansion of his being with +the full tide of the conscious life of day; and this, too, was contrary +to custom. + +Before it was fairly light they were on the road, with Jack urging P.D. +forward at a trot. The silence was soft with the shimmer of dawn; all +glistening and still the roofs and trees of Little Rivers took form. The +moist sweetness of its gardens perfumed the fresh morning air in greeting +to the easy traveller, while the makers of gardens were yet asleep. + +It was the same hour that Mary had hurried forth after her wakeful night +to stop the duel in the _arroyo_. As Jack approached the Ewold home he +had a glimpse of something white, a woman's gown he thought, that +disappeared behind the vines. He concluded that Mary must have risen +early to watch the sunrise, and drew rein opposite the porch; but through +the lace-work of the vines he saw that it was empty. Yet he was positive +that he had seen her and that she must have seen him coming. She was +missing the very glorious moment which she had risen to see. A rim of +molten gold was showing in the defile and all the summits of the range +were topped with flowing fire. + +"Mary!" he called. + +There was no answer. Had he been mistaken? Had mental suggestion played +him a trick? Had his eyes personified a wish when they saw a figure on +the steps? + +"Mary!" he called again, and his voice was loud enough for her to have +heard if she were awake and near. Still there was no answer. + +The pass had now become a flaming vortex which bathed him in its +far-spreading radiance. But he had lost interest in sunrises. A last +backward, hungry glance over his shoulder as he started gave him a +glimpse through the open door of the living-room, and he saw Mary leaning +against the table looking down at her hands, which were half clasped in +her lap, as if she were waiting for him to get out of the way. + +Thus he understood that he had ended their comradeship when he had broken +through the barrier on the previous afternoon, and the only thing that +could bring it back was the birth of a feeling in her greater than +comradeship. His shoulders fell together, the reins loosened, while P.D., +masterless if not riderless, proceeded homeward. + +"Hello, Jack!" + +It was the greeting of Bob Worther, the inspector of ditches, who was the +only man abroad at that hour. Jack looked up with an effort to be genial +and found Bob closely studying his features in a stare. + +"What's the matter, Bob?" he asked. "Has my complexion turned green over +night or my nose slipped around to my ear?" + +"I was trying to make out if you do look like him!" Bob declared. + +"Like whom? What the deuce is the mystery?" + +"What--why, of course you're the most interested party and the only +Little Riversite that don't know about it, seh!" + +After all, there was some compensation for early rising. Bob expanded +with the privilege of being the first to break the news. + +"If you'd come yesterday you'd have seen him. He went by the noon train," +he said, and proceeded with the story of Prather. + +Jack had never heard of the man before and was obviously uninterested. He +did not seem to care if a dozen doubles came to town. + +"Oh, yes, there's another thing concerning you," Bob continued. "I was so +interested in telling you about Prather that I near forgot it. A +swell-looking fellow--says he's a doctor and he's got New York written +all over him--came in yesterday particularly to see you." + +Though it was a saying in Little Rivers that nobody ever found Jack at a +loss, he started perceptibly now. His fingers worked nervously on the +reins and he bit his lips in irritation. + +"He was asking a lot of questions about you," Bob added. + +By this time Jack had summoned back his smile. He did not seem to mind if +a dozen doctors came to town at the same time as a dozen doubles. + +"Did you tell him that I had a cough--kuh-er?" he asked, casually. + +"Why, no! I said you could thrash your weight in wildcats and he says, +'Well, he'll have to, yet!' and then shut up as if he'd overspoke +himself--and I judge that he ain't the kind that does that often. But +say, Jack," Bob demanded, in the alarm of local partisanship which +apprehends that it may unwittingly have served an outside interest, "did +you want us to dope it out that you were an invalid? We ain't been +getting you in wrong, I hope?" + +"Not a bit!" answered Jack with a reassuring slap on Bob's shoulder. "Was +his name Bennington?" + +"Yes, that's it." + +"Well," said Jack thoughtfully and with a return of his annoyance, "he +will find me at home when he calls." And P.D. knew that the reins were +still held in listless hands as he turned down the side street toward the +new ranch. + +Firio was feeling like an astrologer who had lost faith in his crystal +ball. An interrogation had taken the place of his confident "_Si, si_" +of desert understanding of the mind of his patron. Jack had broken camp +with the precipitancy of one who was eager to be quit of the trail and +back at the ranch; yet he gave his young trees only a passing glance +before entering the house. He had not wanted coffee on the road, yet +coffee served with the crisp odor of bacon accompanying its aroma, after +his bath and return to ranch clothes, found no appetite. He was as a man +whose mind cannot hold fast to anything that he is doing. Firio, +restless, worried, his eyes flicking covert glances, was frequently in +and out of the living-room on one excuse or another. + +"What work to-day?" he asked, as he cleared away the breakfast dishes. +"What has Senor Jack planned for us to do?" + +"The work to-day? The work to-day?" Jack repeated absently. "First the +mail." He nodded toward a pile on the table. + +"And I shall make ready to stay a long time?" Firio insinuated softly. + +"No!" Jack answered to space. + +The pyramid of mail might have been a week's batch for the Doge himself. +At the bottom were a number of books and above them magazines which Jack +had subscribed for when he found that they were not on the Doge's list. +There was only one letter as a first-class postage symbol of the exile's +intimacy with the outside world, and out of this tumbled a check and a +blank receipt to be filled in. He tore off the wrappers of the magazines +as a means of some sort of physical occupation and rolled them into +balls, which he cast at the waste-basket; but neither the contents of the +magazines nor those of the newspapers seemed to interest him. His +aspect was that of one waiting in a lobby to keep an appointment. + +When he heard steps on the porch he sang out cheerily, "Come in!" but, +contrary to the habit of Little Rivers hospitality, he did not hasten to +meet his caller, and any keenness of anticipation which he may have felt +was well masked. + +There entered a man of middle age, with close-cropped gray beard, clad in +soft flannels, the trousers bottoms turned up in New York fashion for +negligee business suits for that spring. To the simple interior of a +western ranch house he brought the atmosphere of complex civilization as +a thing ineradicably bred into his being. It was evident, too, that he +had been used to having his arrival in any room a moment of importance +which summoned the rapt attention of everybody, whether nurses, fellow +physicians, or the members of the patient's family. But this time that +was lacking. The young man leaning against the table was not visibly +impressed. + +"Hello, doctor!" said Jack, as unconcernedly as he would have passed the +time of day with Jim Galway in the street. + +"Hello, Jack!" said the doctor. + +Jack went just half-way across the room to shake hands. Then he dropped +back to his easy position, with the table as a rest, after he had set a +chair for the visitor. + +"How do you like Little Rivers?" Jack asked. + +"I have been here only thirty-six hours," answered the doctor, avoiding a +direct answer. He was pulling off his silk summer gloves, making the +operation a trifle elaborate, one which seemed to require much +attention. "I came pretty near mistaking another man for you, but his +mole patch saved me. I didn't think you could have grown one out here. +Wonderfully like you! Have you met him?" + +He glanced up as he asked this question, which seemed the first to occur +to him as a warming-up topic of conversation before he came to the +business in hand. + +"No. I have just heard of him," Jack answered. + +The doctor smiled at his gloves, which he now folded and put in his +pocket. Don't the lecturers to young medical students say, "Divert your +patient's mind to some topic other than himself as you get your first +impression"? Now Dr. Bennington drew forward in his chair, rested the +tips of the long fingers of a soft, capable hand on the edge of the +table, and looked up to Jack in professional candor, sweeping him with +the knowing eye of the modern confessor of the secrets of all manner of +mankind. With the other hand he drew a stethoscope from his side +coat-pocket. + +"Well, Jack, you can guess what brought me all the way from New +York--just five minutes' work!" and he gave the symbol of examination a +flourish in emphasis. + +"I don't think I have forgotten the etiquette of the patient on +such occasions," Jack returned. "It is an easy function in this +Arizona climate." + +He drew his shirt up from a compact loin and lean middle, revealing the +arch of his deep chest, the flesh of which was healthy pink under neck +and face plated with Indian tan. The doctor's eyes lighted with the bliss +of a critic used to searching for flaws at sight of a masterpiece. While +he conducted the initial plottings with the rubber cup which carried +sounds to one of the most expensive senses of hearing in America, Jack +was gazing out of the window, as if his mind were far away across the +cactus-spotted levels. + +"Breathe deep!" commanded the doctor. + +Jack's nostrils quivered with the indrawing of a great gust of air and +his diaphragm swelled until his ribs were like taut bowstrings. + +"And you were the pasty-faced weakling that left my office five years +ago--and you, you husky giant, have brought me two thousand miles to see +if you were really convalescent!" + +"I hope the trip will do you good!" said Jack, sweetly. + +"But it is great news that I take back, great news!" said the doctor, as +he put the stethoscope in his pocket. + +"Yes?" returned Jack, slipping his head through his shirt. "You don't +find even a speck?" + +"Not a speck! No sign of the lesion! There is no reason why you should +not have gone home long ago." + +"No?" Jack was fastening his string tie and doing this with something of +the urban nicety with which the doctor had folded his gloves. That tie +was one of the few inheritances from complex civilization which still had +Jack's favor. + +"What have you found to do all these years?" + +Jack was surprised at the question. + +"I have just wandered about and read and thought," he explained. + +"Without developing any sense of responsibility?" demanded the doctor in +exasperation. + +"I have tried to be good to my horses, and of late I have taken to +ranching. There is a lot of responsibility in that and care, too. Take +the scale, for instance!" + +"A confounded little ranch out in this God-forsaken place, that a Swede +immigrant might run!" + +"No, the Swedes aren't particularly good at irrigation, though better +than the Dutch. You see, the Hollanders are used to having so much +water that--" + +Jack was leaning idly against the table again. The fashionable +practitioner, accustomed to having his words accepted at their cost price +in gold, broke in hotly: + +"It is past all understanding! You, the heir to twenty millions!" + +"Is it twenty now?" Jack asked softly and sadly. + +"Nearer thirty, probably! And shirking your duty! Shirking and for +what--for what?" + +Jack faced around. The doctor, meeting a calm eye that was quizzically +challenging, paused abruptly, feeling that in some way he had been caught +at a professional disadvantage in his outburst of emotion. + +"Don't you like Little Rivers?" asked Jack. + +"I should be bored to death!" the doctor admitted, honestly. + +"Well, you see this air never healed a lesion for you! You never +uttered a prayer to it for strength with every breath! And, doctor," +Jack hesitated, while his lips were half open, showing his even teeth +slightly apart in the manner of a break in a story to the children +where he expected them to be very attentive to what was coming, "you +can take a piece of tissue and analyze it, yes, a piece of brain tissue +and find all the blood-vessels, but not what a man was thinking, can +you? Until you can take a precipitate of his thoughts--the very +thoughts he is unconscious of himself--and put them under a microscope, +why, there must be a lot of guesswork about the source of all +unconventional human actions." + +Jack laughed over his invasion of psychology; and when he laughed in a +certain way the impulse to join him was strong, as Mary first found on +the pass. So the doctor laughed, partly in relief, perhaps, that this +uncertain element which he was finding in Jack had not yet proved +explosive. + +"That would make a capital excuse for a student flunking in +examinations!" he said. + +"It might be a worthy one--not that I say it ought to pass him." + +"Now, Jack," the doctor began afresh, the reassuring force of his +personality again in play. + +He took a step and raised his hands as if he would put them on Jack's +shoulders. One could imagine him driving hypochondria out of many a +patient's mind by thus making his own vigorous optimism flow down from +his fingertips, while he looked into the patient's eye. But his hands +remained in the air, though Jack had been only smiling at him. This was +not the way to handle this patient, something told his trained, sensitive +instinct in time, and he let his hands fall in semblance of a gesture of +protest, gave a shrug and came directly to the point very genuinely. + +"Well, Jack--your father!" + +"Yes." And Jack's face was still and blank, while shadows played over +it in a war among themselves. "He did not even tell me you were +coming," he added. + +"Perhaps he feared that it would give you time to develop a cough or you +would start overland to Chihuahua so I should miss you. Jack, he needs +you! All that fortune waits for you!" + +"Now that I am strong, yes! He did not come out to see me even during +the first year when I had not the health to go to him, nor did he think +to come with you." + +"He--he is a very busy man!" explained the doctor, in ready championship. +And yet he looked away from Jack, and when he looked back it was with an +appeal to conscience rather than to filial affection. "Is it right to +remain, however much you like this desert life? Have you any excuse?" + +"Yes, an overwhelming one!" exclaimed Jack in a voice that was +high-pitched and determined, while his eyes burned and no trace of humor +remained on lips that were as firm as the outline of his chin. "Yes, one +that thrills me from head to foot with the steady ardor of the soldier +who makes a siege!" + +"I--I--you are beyond me! Then you will stay? You are not coming home?" + +"Yes," Jack answered, in another mood, but one equally rigid. "I am +coming at once. That was all settled last night under the stars. I have +found the courage!" + +"The courage to go to twenty millions!" gasped the doctor. "But--good! +You will go! That is enough! Why shouldn't we take the same train back?" +he went on enthusiastically. "I shall be coming through here in less than +a week. You see, I am so near California that I simply had to steal a few +days with my sister, who can't come East on account of her health. I have +been so tied down to practice that I have not seen her for fifteen years. +That will give you time to arrange your affairs. How about it?" + +"It would be delightful, but--" Jack was hesitating. "No, I will refuse. +You see, I rode horseback when I entered this valley for the first time +and I should like to ride out in the way I came. Just sentiment!" + +"Jack!" exclaimed the doctor. + +He was casting about how to express his suspicion when something electric +checked him--a current that began in Jack's measured glance. Jack was not +mentioning that his word was being questioned, but something still and +effective that came from far away out on the untrod desert was in the +room. It fell on the nerves of the ambassador from the court of complex +civilization like a sudden hush on a city's traffic. Jack broke the +silence by asking, in a tone of lively hospitality: + +"You will join me at luncheon?" + +"I should like to," answered the doctor, "but I can catch a train on the +other trunk line that will give me a few more hours with my sister. And +what shall I wire your father? Have you any suggestion?" + +"Why, that he will be able to judge for himself in a few days how near +cured I am." + +"You will wire him the date of your arrival?" + +"Yes." + +"Jack," said the doctor at the door, "that remark of yours about the +analysis of brain tissue and of thought put a truth very happily. Come +and see me and let me know how you get on. Good-by!" + +He took his departure thoughtfully, rather than with a sense of +triumph over the success of a two-thousand-mile mission in the name of +twenty millions. + + + + +XXI + +"GOOD-BY, LITTLE RIVERS!" + + +It was the thing thrilling him with the ardor of a soldier preparing for +a siege that sent Jack to the Ewolds' later in the morning. He had come +determined to finish the speech that he had called up to Mary from the +canyon. As he crossed the cement bridge, Ignacio appeared on the path and +took his position there obdurately, instead of standing to one side with +a nod, as usual, to let the caller pass. + +"Senorita Ewold is not at home!" he announced, before Jack had spoken. + +"Not even in the garden?" + +"No, senor." + +"But she will be back soon?" + +"I do not think so." + +Ignacio's face was as blank as a wall, but knowingly, authoritatively +blank. His brown eyes glistened with cold assurance. He seemed to have +become the interpreter of a message in keeping with Mary's flight from +the pass and her withdrawal from the porch when she had seen Jack +approaching. Here was a new barrier which did not permit even banter +across the crest. She must know that he was going, for the news of his +approaching departure had already spread through the town. She had chosen +not to see him again, even for a farewell. + +For a little time he stood in thought, while Ignacio remained steadfast +on the path, watchful, perhaps, for the devil in Senor Don't Care to +appear. Suddenly Jack's features glowed with action; he took a step as if +he would sweep by Ignacio on into the garden. But the impulse instantly +passed. He stopped, his face drawn as it had been when he fell limp +against the hedge stricken by the horror of his seeming brutality to +Pedro Nogales, and turned away into the street with a mask of smiles for +the greetings and regrets of the friends whom he met. + +Worth twenty millions or twenty cents, he was still Jack to Little +Rivers; still the knight who had come over the range to vanquish Pete +Leddy; still a fellow-rancher in the full freemasonry of calloused +hands; still the joyous teller of stories. The thought of losing him set +tendrils in the ranchers' hearts twitching in sympathy with tendrils in +his own, which he found rooted very deep now that he must tear them out. + +That afternoon at the appointed hour for his departure every man, woman, +and child had assembled at the end of the main street, where it broke +into the desert trail. The principal found an excuse for dismissing +school an hour earlier than usual. That is, everyone was present except +Mary. The Doge came, if a little late, to fulfil his function as chosen +spokesman for all in bidding Jack Godspeed on his journey. + +"Senor Don't Care, you are a part of the history of Little Rivers!" he +said, airily. "You have brought us something which we lacked in our +singularly peaceful beginning. Without romance, sir, no community is +complete. I have found you a felicitous disputant whom I shall miss; for +you leave me to provide the arguments on both sides of a subject on the +same evening. Our people have found you a neighbor of infinite resources +of humor and cheer. We wish you a pleasant trail. We wish you warm +sunshine when the weather is chill and shade when the weather is hot, and +that you shall ever travel with a singing heart, while old age never +overtakes the fancy of youth." + +Every one of the familiar faces grouped around the fine, cultured old +face of the Doge expressed the thoughts to which he had given form. + +"May your arguments be as thick as fireflies, O Doge!" Jack answered, +"everyone bearing a torch to illumine the outer darkness of ignorance! +May every happy thought I have for Little Rivers spring up in a +date-tree wonderful! Then, before the year is out, you will have a +forest of date-trees stretching from foothills to foothills, across the +whole valley." + +"And one more about the giant with the little voice and the dwarf with +the big voice and the cat with the stripes down her back!" cried Belvy +Smith, spokeswoman for the children. "Are they just going on forever +having adventures and us never knowing about them?" + +"No. I have been holding back the last story," Jack said. "Both the giant +and the dwarf were getting old, as you all know, and they were pretty +badly battered up from their continual warfare. Why, the scar which the +giant got on his forehead in their last battle was so big that if the +dwarf had had it there would have been no top left to his head. After the +cat had lost that precious black tip to her tail she became more and more +thoughtful. She made up her mind to retire and reform and have a +permanent home. And you know what a gift she had for planning out things +and how clever she was about getting her own way. Now she sat in a hedge +corner thinking and thinking and looking at the stubby end of her tail, +and suddenly she cried, 'Eureka!' And what do you think she did? She went +to a paint shop and had her left ear painted yellow and her right ear +painted green. So, now you can see her any day sunning herself on the +steps of the cottage where the giant and the dwarf live in peace. +Whenever they have an inclination to quarrel she jumps between them and +wiggles the yellow ear at the giant and the green ear at the dwarf, which +fusses them both so that they promise to be good and rush off to get her +a saucer of milk." + +"A green ear and a yellow ear! What a funny looking cat she must be!" +exclaimed Belvy. + +"So she says to herself between purrs," concluded Jack. "But she is a +philosopher and knows that she would look still funnier if she had lost +her ears as Jag Ear has. Good-by, children! Good-by, everybody! Good-by, +Little Rivers!" + +Jack gave P.D. a signal and the crowd broke into a cheer, which was +punctuated by the music of Jag Ear's bells as his burrohood got in +motion. The Doge, who had brought his horse, mounted. + +"I will ride a little distance with you," he said. + +He appeared like a man who had a great deal on his mind and yet was at a +loss for words. There was the unprecedented situation of silence between +the two exponents of persiflage in Little Rivers. + +"I--" he began, and paused as if the subject were too big for him and it +were better not to begin at all. Then he drew rein. + +"Luck, Jack!" he said, simply, and there was something like pity +in his tone. + +"And Mary--you will say good-by to her and thank her!" said Jack. + +"I think you may meet her," answered the Doge. "She went away early +taking her luncheon, before she knew that you were going." + +So Ignacio had been acting on his own authority! The thrill of the news +singing in Jack's veins was too overwhelming for him to notice the +challenge and apprehension in the Doge's glance. The Doge saw the glow of +a thousand happy, eager thoughts in Jack's face. He hesitated again on +the brink of speech, before, with a toss of his leonine head as if he +were veritably leaving fate's affairs to fate, he turned to go; and Jack +mechanically touched P.D.'s rein, while he gazed toward the pass. P.D. +had not gone many steps when Jack heard the same sonorous call that had +greeted him that first night when he stopped before the door of the +Ewolds; the call of a great, infectious fellowship between men: + +"Luck, Sir Chaps! I defy you to wear your spurs up the Avenue! Give my +love to that new Campanile in Babylon, the Metropolitan tower! Get it in +the mist! Get it under the sun! Kiss your hand to golden Diana, huntress +of Manhattan's winds! Say ahoy to old Farragut! And on gray days have a +look for me at the new Sorollas in the Museum! Luck, Sir Chaps!" + +"Good crops and a generous mail, O Doge!" + +Jack rode fast, in the gladness of a hope this side of the pass and in +the face of shadows on the other side which he did not attempt to define. +To Firio he seemed to have grown taller and older. + + + + +XXII + +"LUCK, JACK, LUCK!" + + +Apprehensively he watched the end of the ribbon running under P.D.'s +hoofs for the sight of a horsewoman breaking free of the foothills. The +momentary fear which rode with him was that Mary might be returning +earlier than usual. If they met on the road--why, the road was without +imagination and, in keeping with her new attitude toward him, she might +pass him by with a nod. But at the top of the pass imagination would be +supreme. There they had first met; there they had found their first +thought in common in the ozone which had meant life to them both. + +He did not look up at the sky changes. As he climbed the winding path +worn by moccasined feet before the Persians marched to Thermopylae, his +mind was too occupied making pictures of its own in glowing anticipation +to have any interest in outside pictures. This path was narrow. Here, at +least, she must pause; and she must listen. Every turn which showed +another empty stretch ahead sent his spirits soaring. Then he saw a pony +with an empty side-saddle on the shelf. A few steps more and he saw Mary. + +She was seated with the defile at her back, her hands clasped over her +knee. In this position, as in every position which she naturally took, +she had a pliant and personal grace. The welter of light of the low sun +was ablaze in her face. Her profile had a luminous wistfulness. Her +lashes were half closed, at once retaining the vision of the panorama at +her feet as a thing of atmospheric enjoyment and shutting it out from the +intimacy of her thoughts. And more enveloping than the light was the +silence which held her in a spell as still as the rocks themselves, +waiting on time's dispensation where time was nothing. Yet the soft +movement of her bosom with her even breaths triumphed in a life supreme +and palpitant over all that dead world. + +Thus he drank her in before the crunch of a stone under his heel warned +her of his presence and set her breaths going and coming in quick gusts +as she wheeled around, half rising and then dropping back to a position +as still as before, with a trace of new dignity in her grace, while her +starkness of inquiry gradually changed to stoicism. + +"Mary, I came upon you very suddenly," he said. + +"Yes"--a bare, echoing monosyllable. + +He stepped to one side to let Firio and his little cavalcade pass. All +the while she continued to look at him through the screen of her +half-closed lashes in a way that set her repose and charm apart as +something precious and cold and baffling. Now he realized that he had +made a breach in the barrier of their old relations only to find himself +in a garden whose flowers fell to ashes at his touch. He saw the light +that enveloped her as an armor far less vulnerable than any wall, and the +splendor of her was growing in his eyes. + +Jag Ear's bells with their warm and merry notes became a faint tinkle +that was lost in the depths of the defile. The two were alone on the spot +where the Eternal Painter had introduced them so simply as Jack and +Mary, and where he, as the easy traveller, had listened to her plead for +his own life. It was his turn to plead. She was not to be won by fighting +Leddys or tearing up pine-trees by their roots. That armor was without a +joint; a lance would bend like so much tin against its plates, and yet +there must be some alchemy that would make it melt as a mist before the +sun. It was tenanted by a being all sentiency, which saw him through her +visor as a passer-by in a gallery. But one in armor does not fly from +passers-by as she had flown while he was climbing up the canyon wall with +his pine-tree branch. + +"I have learned now to look over any kind of a precipice without getting +dizzy," she announced, quietly. + +He was not the Jack who had come over the ledge in the energy of his +passion yesterday to find her gone. He had turned gentle and was smiling +with craved permission for a respite from her evident severity as he +dropped to a half-lying posture near her. Overhead, the Eternal Painter +was throwing in the smoky purple of a false thunderhead, sweeping it away +with the promise of a downpour, rolling in piles of silver clouds and +drawing them out into filmy fingers melting into a luminous blue. + +"One can never tire of this," he said, tentatively. + +"To me it is all!" she answered, in an absorption with the scene that +made him as inconsequential as the rocks around her. + +"And you never long for cities, with their swift currents and busy +eddies?" he asked. + +"Cities are life, the life of humanity, and I am human. I--" The +unfinished sentence sank into the silence of things inexpressible or +which it was purposeless to express. + +Her voice suggested the tinkle of Jag Ear's bells floating away into +space. If a precipitate were taken from her forehead, in keeping with +Jack's suggestion to Dr. Bennington, it would have been mercury, which is +so tangible to the eye and intangible to the touch. Press it and it +breaks into little globules, only to be shaken together in a coherent +whole. If there is joy or pain in the breaking, either one must be +glittering and immeasurable. + +"But Little Rivers is best," she added after a time, speaking not to him, +but devoutly to the oasis of green. + +In the crystal air Little Rivers seemed so near that one could touch the +roofs of the houses with the fingertips of an extended arm, and yet so +diminutive in the spacious bosom of the plateau that it might be set in +the palm of the hand. + +Jack was as one afraid of his own power of speech. A misplaced word might +send her away as oblivious of him as a globule of mercury rolling free +from the grasp. Here was a Mary unfathomed of all his hazards of study, +undreamed of in all his flights of fancy. + +"It is my last view," he began. "I have said all my good-bys in town. I +am going." + +Covertly, fearfully, he watched the effect of the news. At least now +she would look around at him. He would no longer have to talk to a +profile and to the golden mist of the horizon about the greatest thing +of his life. But there was no sign of surprise; not even an inclination +of her head. + +"Yes," she told the horizon; and after a little silence added: "The time +has come to play another part?" + +She asked the question of the horizon, without any trace of the old +banter over the wall. She asked it in confirmation of a commonplace. + +"I know that you have always thought of me as playing a part. But I am +not my own master. I must go. I--" + +"Back to your millions!" She finished the sentence for him. + +"Then you--you knew! You knew!" But his exclamation of astonishment did +not move her to a glance in his direction or even a tremor. + +"Yes," she went on. "Father told me about your millions last night. He +has known from the first who you were." + +"And he told no one else in Little Rivers? He never mentioned it to me or +even to you before!" + +"Why should he when you did not mention it yourself? His omission was +natural delicacy, in keeping with your own attitude. Isn't it part of the +custom of Little Rivers that pasts melt into the desert? There is no +standard except the conduct of the present!" + +And all this speech was in a monotone of quiet explanation. + +"He did not even tell you until last night! Until after our meeting on +the other side of the pass! It is strange! strange!" he repeated in the +insistence of wonder. + +He saw the lashes part a little, then quiver and close as she lifted +her gaze from the horizon rim to the vortex of the sun. Then she +smiled wearily. + +"He likes a joke," she said. "Probably he enjoyed his knowledge of your +secret and wanted to see if I would guess the truth before you were +through playing your part." + +"But the part was not a part!" he said, with the emphasis of fire +creeping along a fuse. "It was real. I do not want to leave Little +Rivers!" + +"Not in your present enthusiasm," she returned with a warning inflection +of literalness, when he would have welcomed satire, anger, or any +reprisal of words as something live and warm; something on which his mind +could lay definite hold. + +In her impersonal calm she was subjecting him to an exquisite torture. He +was a man flayed past all endurance, flayed by a love that fed on the +revelation of a mystery in her being superbly in control. The riot of all +the colors of the sky spoke from his eyes as he sprang to his feet. He +became as intense as in the supreme moment in the _arroyo_; as reckless +as when he walked across the store toward a gun-muzzle. Only hers were +this time the set, still features. His were lighted with all the strength +of him and all the faith of him. + +"A part!" he cried. "Yes, a part--a sovereign and true part which I shall +ever play! I was going that day we first met, going before the legate of +the millions came to me. Why did I stay? Because I could not go when I +saw that you wanted to turn me out of the garden!" + +His quivering words were spoken to a profile of bronze, over which +flickered a smile as she answered with a prompting and disinterested +analysis. + +"You said it was to make callouses on your hands. But that must have been +persiflage. The truth is that you imagined a challenger. You wanted to +win a victory!" she answered. + +"It was for you that I calloused my hands!" + +"Time will make them soft!" + +She was half teasing now, but teasing through the visor, not over the +wall. + +"And if I sought victory I saw that I was being beaten while I made a +profession of you, not of gardening! Yes, of you! I could confess it to +all the world and its ridicule!" + +"Jack, you are dramatic!" + +If she would only once look at him! If he could only speak into her eyes! +If her breaths did not come and go so regularly! + +"Why did I take to the trail after Pedro Nogales struck at me with his +knife? Because I saw the look on your face when you saw that I had broken +his arm. I had not meant to break his arm--yet I know that I might have +done worse but for you! I did not mean to kill Leddy--yet there was +something in me which might have killed him but for you!" + +"I am glad to have prevented murder!" she answered almost harshly. + +A shadow of horror, as if in recollection of the scene in the _arroyo_ +and beside the hedge, passed over her face. + +"Yes, I understand! I understand!" he said. "And you must hear why this +terrible impulse rose in me." + +"I know." + +"You know? You know?" he repeated. + +"About the millions," she corrected herself, hastily. "Go on, Jack, if +you wish!" Urgency crept into her tone, the urgency of wishing to have +done with a scene which she was bearing with the fortitude of +tightened nerves. + +"It was the millions that sent me out here with a message, when I did +not much care about anything, and their message was: 'We do not want to +see you again if you are to be forever a weakling. Get strong, for our +power is to the strong! Get strong, or do not come back!'" + +"Yes?" + +For the first time since he had begun his story she looked fairly at him. +It was as if the armor had melted with sympathy and pity and she, in the +pride of the poverty of Little Rivers, was armed with a Samaritan +kindliness. For a second only he saw her thus, before she looked away to +the horizon and he saw that she was again in armor. + +"And I craved strength! It was my one way to make good. I rode the +solitudes, following the seasons, getting strength. I rejoiced in the tan +of my arm and the movement of my own muscles. I learned to love the feel +of a rifle-stock against my shoulder, the touch of the trigger to my +finger's end. I would shoot at the cactus in the moonlight--oh, that is +difficult, shooting by moonlight!--and I gloried in my increasing +accuracy--I, the weakling of libraries and galleries and sunny verandas +of tourist resorts! Afraid at first of a precipice's edge, I came to +enjoy looking over into abysses and in spending a whole day climbing down +into their depths, while Firio waited in camp. And at times I would cry +out: 'Millions, I am strong! I am not afraid of you! I am not afraid of +anything!' In the days when I knew I could never be acceptable as their +master I knew I was in no danger of ever having to face them. When I had +grown strong, less than ever did I want to face them. I know not why, but +I saw shadows; I looked into another kind of depths--mental +depths--which held a message that I feared. So I procrastinated, staying +on in the air which had given me red blood. But that was cowardly, and +that day I came over the pass I was making my last ride in the kingdom of +irresponsibility. I was going home! + +"When you asked me not to face Leddy I simply had to refuse. I had just +as soon as not that Leddy would shoot at me, because I wanted to see if +he would. Yes, I was strong. I had conquered. And if Leddy hit me, why, I +did not have to go back to battle with the shadows--the obsession of +shadows which had grown in my mind as my strength grew. When I was +smiling in Leddy's muzzle, as they say I did, I was just smiling +exultantly at the millions that had called me a weakling, and saying, +like some boaster, 'Could you do this, millions?' I--I--well, Mary, I--I +have told you what I never was quite able to tell myself before." + +"Thank you, Jack!" she answered, and all the particles of sunlight that +bathed her seemed to reflect her quiet gladness as something detached, +permeating, and transcendent. + +"When Leddy challenged me I wanted to fight," he went on. "I wanted to +see how cool I, the weakling whom the millions scorned, could be in +battle. After Leddy's shot in the _arroyo_ I found that strength had +discovered something else in me--something that had lain dormant in +boyhood and had not awakened to any consciousness of itself in the five +years on the desert--something of which all my boyhood training made me +no less afraid than of the shadows, born of the blood, born of the very +strength I had won. It seemed to run counter to books and gardens and +peace itself--a lawless, devil-like creature! Yes, I gloried in the fact +that I could kill Leddy. It was an intoxication to hold a steady bead on +him. And you saw and felt that in me--yes, I tell you everything as a man +must when he comes to a woman offering himself, his all, with his angels, +his devils, and his dreams!" + +He paused trembling, as before a judge. She turned quickly, with a +sudden, winsome vivacity, the glow of a great satisfaction in her eyes +and smiling a comradeship which made her old attitude over the wall a +thing of dross and yet far more intimate. Her hand went out to meet his. + +"Jack, we have had good times together," she said. "We were never +mawkish; we were just good citizens of Little Rivers, weren't we? And, +Jack, every mortal of us is partly what he is born and the rest is what +he can do to bend inheritance to his will. But we can never quite +transform our inheritance and if we stifle it, some day it will break +loose. The first thing is to face what seems born in us, and you have +made a good beginning." + +She gave his hands a nervous, earnest clasp and withdrew hers as she +rose. So they stood facing each other, she in the panoply of good will, +he with his heart on his sleeve. The swiftly changing pictures of the +Eternal Painter in his evening orgy seemed to fill the air with the music +of a symphony in its last measures, and her very breaths and smiles to be +keeping time with its irresistible movement toward the finale. + +"I must be starting back, Jack," she said. + +"And, Mary, I must learn how to master the millions. Oh, I have not the +courage of the little dwarf pine in the canyon! Mary, Mary, I calloused +my hands for you! I want to master the millions for you! I would give you +the freedom of Little Rivers and all the cities of the world!" + +"No, Jack! This is my side of the pass. I shall be very happy here." + +"Then I will stay in Little Rivers! I will leave the millions to the +shadows! I will stay on ranch-making, fortune-making. Mary, I love you! I +love you!" + +There was no staying the flame of his feeling. He seized her hands; he +drew her to him. But her hands were cold; they were shivering. + +"Jack! No, no! It is not in the blood!" she cried in the face of some +mocking phantom, her calmness gone and her words rocking with the tumult +of emotion. + +"In the blood, Mary? What do you mean? What do you know that I don't +know? Do you know those shadows that I cannot understand better than +I?" he pleaded; and he was thinking of the Doge's look of pity and +challenge and of the meeting long ago in Florence as the hazy filaments +of a mystery. + +"No, I should not have said that. What do I know? Little--nothing that +will help! I know what is in me, as I know what is in you. I am afraid of +myself--afraid of you!" + +"Mary, I will fight all the shadows!" He drew her close to him +resistlessly in his might. + +"Jack, you will not use your strength against me! Jack!" + +He saw her eyes in a mist of pain and reproach as he released her. And +now she threw back her head; she was smiling in the philosophy of garden +nonsense as she cried: + +"Good-by, Jack! Luck against the dinosaur! Don't press him too hard +when he is turning a sharp corner. Remember he has a long reach with +his old paleozoic tail. Luck!" with a laugh through her tears; a laugh +with tremulous cheer in it and yet with the ring of a key in the lock +of a gate. + +Unsteadily he bent over and taking her hands in his pressed his +lips to them. + +"Yes, luck!" he repeated, and half staggering turned toward the defile. + +"Luck!" she called after him when he was out of sight. "Luck!" she called +to the silence of the pass. + +Three days with the trail and the Eternal Painter mocking him, when the +singing of Spanish verses that go click with the beat of horse-hoofs in +the sand sounded hollow as the refrain of vain memories, and from the +steps of a Pullman he had a final glimpse of Firio's mournful face, with +its dark eyes shining in the light of the station lamp. Firio had in his +hand a paper, a sort of will and testament given him at the last minute, +which made him master in fee simple of the ranch where he had been +servant, with the provision that the Doge of Little Rivers might store +his overflow of books there forever. + + + + +PART II + +HE FINDS HIMSELF + + + + +XXIII + +LABELLED AND SHIPPED + + +Behold Jack clad in the habiliments of conventional civilization taken +from the stock of ready-made suitings in an El Paso store! They were of +the Moscowitz and Guggenheim type, the very latest and nattiest, as +advertised in popular prints. The dealer said that no gentleman could be +well dressed without them. He wanted to complete the transformation with +a cream-colored Fedora or a brown derby. + +"I'll wait on the thirty-third degree a little longer," said Jack, +fondling the flat-brimmed cowpuncher model of affectionate predilection. +Swinging on a hook on the sleeper with the sway of the train, its company +was soothing to him all the way across the continent. + +The time was March, that season of the northern year when winter growing +stale has a gritty, sticky taste and the relief of spring seems yet far +away. After the desert air the steam heat was stifling and nauseating. +Jack's head was a barrel about to burst its hoops; his skin drying like a +mummy's; his muscles in a starchy misery from lack of exercise. He felt +boxed up, an express package labelled and shipped. When he crawled into +his berth at night it was with a sense of giving himself up to +asphyxiation at the whim of strange gods. + +If you have ever come back to town after six months in the woods, six +months far from the hysteria of tittering electric bells, the brassy +honk-honk of automobiles, the clang of surface cars and the screech of +their wheels on the rails, multiply your period of absence by ten, add a +certain amount of desert temperament, and you will vaguely understand how +the red corpuscles were raising rebellion in Jack's artery walls on the +morning of his journey's end. From the ferryboat on the dull-green bosom +of the river he first renewed his memory of the spectral and forbidding +abysses and pinnacles of New York. Here time is everything; here man has +done his mightiest in contriving masses to imitate the architectural +chaos of genesis. A mantle of chill, smoky mist formed the dome of +heaven, in which a pale, suffused, yellowish spot alone bespoke the +existence of a sun in the universe. + +In keeping with his promise to Dr. Bennington he had wired to his father, +naming his train; and in a few minutes Wingfield, Sr. and Wingfield, Jr. +would meet for the first time in five years. Jack was conscious of a +faster beating of his heart and a feeling of awesome expectancy as the +crowd debouched from the ferryboat. At the exit to the street a big +limousine was waiting. The gilt initials on the door left no doubt for +whom it had been sent. But there was no one to meet him, no one after his +long absence except a chauffeur and a footman, who glanced at Jack +sharply. After the exchange of a corroborative nod between them the +footman advanced. + +"If you please, Mr. Wingfield," he said, taking Jack's suit case. + +"What would Jim Galway think of me now!" thought Jack. He put his head +inside the car cautiously. "Another box!" he thought, this time aloud. + +"You have the check for it, sir?" asked the footman, thinking that Jack +was using the English of the mother island for trunk. + +"No. That's all my baggage." + +In the tapering, cut-glass vase between the two front window-panels of +the "box" was a rose--a symbol of the luxury of the twenty millions, +evidently put there regularly every morning by direction of their master. +Its freshness and color appealed to Jack. He took it out and pressed it +to his nostrils. + +"Just needs the morning sun and the dew to be perfect," he said to the +amazed attendants; "and I will walk if you will take the suit case to +the house." + +He kept the rose, which he twirled in his fingers as he sauntered across +town, now pausing at curb corners to glance back in thoughtful survey, +now looking aloft at the peaks of Broadway which lay beyond the foothills +of the river-front avenues. + +"All to me what the desert is to other folks!" he mused; "desert, without +any cacti or mesquite! All the trails cross one another in a maze. A +boxed-up desert--boxes and boxes piled on top of one another! Everybody +in harness and attached by an invisible, unbreakable, inelastic leash to +a box, whither he bears his honey or goes to nurse his broken wings!--so +it seems to me and very headachy!" + +At Madison Square he was at the base of the range itself; and halting on +the corner of Twenty-third Street and the Avenue he was a statue as aloof +as the statue of Farragut from his surroundings. Salt sea spray ever +whispers in the atmosphere around the old sailor. How St. Gaudens +created it and keeps it there in the heart of New York is his secret. +Possibly the sculptor put some of his soul into it as young Michael +Angelo did into his young David. + +It is a great thing to put some of your soul into a thing, whether it is +driving a nail or moulding a piece of clay into life. There are men who +pause before the old Admiral and see the cutwater of men-of-war's bows +and hear the singing of the signal halyards as they rise with the command +to close in. Perhaps the Eternal Painter had put a little of his soul +into the heart of Jack; for some busy marchers of the Avenue trail as +they glanced at him saw the free desert and heard hoof-beats in the sand. +Others seeing a tanned Westerner kissing his hand to Diana of Madison +Square Garden probably thought him mad. Next, performing another +sentimental errand for the Doge of Little Rivers, his gaze rose along the +column of the Metropolitan tower. Its heights were half shrouded in mist, +through which glowed the gold of the lantern. + +"Oh, bully! bully!" he thought. "The only sun in sight a manufactured +one, shining on top of a manufactured mountain! It is a big business +building a mountain; only, when God Almighty scattered so many ready-made +ones about, why take the trouble?" he concluded. "Or so it seems to me," +he added, sadly, in due appreciation of the utterly reactionary mood of a +man who has been boxed up for a week. + +Now he turned toward a quarter which he had, thus far, kept out of the +compass of observation. He looked up the jagged range of Broadway where, +over a terra-cotta pile, floated a crimson flag with "John Wingfield" in +big, white letters. + +"My mountain! My box! My millions!" he breathed half audibly. + +How the people whom he passed, their faces speaking city keenness of +ambition, must envy his position! How little reason they had to envy him, +he thought, as he walked around the great building and saw his name +glaring at him in gilt letters over the plate-glass windows and on all +the delivery wagons, open-mouthed for the packages being wheeled out +under the long glass awning. + +"A whole block now! Yes, the doctor was right. It must be thirty instead +of twenty millions!" he concluded, as his vision swept the straight-line, +window-checkered mass of the twelve stories. "And I do wish we had a +tower! If one could go up on top of a tower and look out over the range +now and then and breathe deep, it would help." + +When he entered the main door he paused in a maze, gazing at the acreage +of counters manned by clerks and the aisles swarming with shoppers under +the glare of the big, electric globes, and listening to the babble of +shrill talk, the calls of the elevator boys, the coughing of the +pneumatic tubes and the clang of the elevator doors. It was all like some +devilishly complicated dream from which he would never awake. He must +have a little time in order to orient himself before he could think +rationally. The roar of the train still obsessed him; the air in the +store seemed more stifling than that of the sleeper. + +So he decided that, rather than be shot up into The Presence by the +elevator, he would gradually scale the heights. Ascending stairway after +stairway, he ranged back and forth over the floors, a stranger in his +own wonderland. When he reached the eleventh floor, with only one more to +the offices, the whole atmosphere seemed suddenly to turn rare with +expectancy; a rustle to run through all the goods on the counters; the +very Paris gowns among which he was standing to be called to martial +attention. + +"The boss!" he heard one of the model girls say. + +Turning to follow her nod toward the stairway, Jack saw, two-thirds of +the way up the broad flight, a man past middle age, in dark gray suit and +neutral tie, rubbing his palms together as he surveyed a stratum of his +principality. The sight of him to Jack was like the touch of a myriad +electric needles that pricked sharply, without exhilaration. + +"The boss is likely to run up that way any time of the day," said the +model girl to a customer; "and what he don't see don't count!" + +"Not much older; not much changed!" thought Jack; and his realization of +the disinterestedness of his observation tipped the needles with acid. + +In the sharpness of the master's button-counting survey there was swift +finality; and his impressions completed, analyzed, docketed for +reference, he ran on up the flight with light step, still rubbing the +palms of his hands in the unctuously well-contained and appreciative +sense of his power. To Jack he was a fascinating, grand, distant figure, +this of his own father, yet mortally near. + +If the model girl had had the same keenness of observation for what is +borne in the face as for what is worn on the back, she could not have +failed to note the strong family resemblance between the young man +standing near her and the man who had paused on the stairway. This +glimpse of his father's mastery of every detail of that organization +which he had built, this glimpse of cool, self-centered authority, only +reminded Jack of his own ignorance and flightiness in view of all that +would be expected of him. He knew less than one of the cash girls about +how to run the store. A duel with Leddy was a simple matter beside this +battle he had to wage. + +He mounted the last flight of stairs into an area of glass-paneled doors, +behind which the creative business of the great concern was conducted. +Out of one marked "Private," closing it softly and stepping softly, came +a round-shouldered, stooping man of middle age, with the apprehensive and +palliating manner of a long-service private secretary who has many things +to remember and many persons to appease with explanations. It was evident +that Peter Mortimer had just come from The Presence. At sight of Jack he +drew back in a surprise that broke into a beaming delight which played +over his tired and wrinkled features in ecstasy. + +"Jack! Jack! You did it! You did it!" he cried. + +"Peter!" Jack seized the secretary's hands and swung them back and forth. + +"You've got a grip of iron! And tanned--my, how you're tanned! You did +it, Jack, you did it! It hardly seems credible, when I think of the last +time I saw you." + +It was then that the secretary had seen a Jack with his eyes moist; a +Jack pasty-faced, hollow-cheeked; and, in what was a revolutionary +outburst for a unit in the offices, Peter Mortimer had put his arm around +the boy in a cry for the success of the Odyssey for health which the +heir was about to begin. And Mortimer's words were sweet, while the words +of the farewell from the other side of the glass-paneled door marked +"Private" were acrid with the disappointed hopes of the speaker. + +"You have always been a weakling, Jack, and I have had little to say +about your rearing. Go out to the desert and stay--stay till you are +strong!" declared the voice of strength, as if glad to be freed of the +sight of weakness in its own image. + +"Father did not come to meet me?" Jack observed questioningly now +to Mortimer. + +"He was very busy--he did not feel certain about the nature of your +telegram--he--" and Mortimer's impulses withdrew into the shell of the +professional private secretary. + +"I wired that he should see for himself if I were well. So he shall!" +said Jack, turning toward the door. + +"Yes--that will be all right--yes, there is no one with him!" + +Mortimer, in the very instinct of long practice, was about to go in to +announce the visitor, but paused. As Jack entered, whatever else may have +been in his eyes, there was no moisture. + + + + +XXIV + +IN THE CITADEL OF THE MILLIONS + + +John Wingfield, Sr. sat at a mahogany table without a single drawer, in +the centre of a large room with bare, green-tinted walls. His oculist had +said that green was the best color for the eyes. Beside the green +blotting-pad in front of him was a pile of papers. These would either be +disposed of in the course of the day or, if any waited on the morrow's +decision, would be taken away by Peter Mortimer overnight. When he rose +to go home it was always with a clear desk; a habit, a belief of his +singularly well-ordered mind in the mastery of the teeming detail that +throbbed under the thin soles of his soft kid shoes. On the other side of +the pad was the telephone, and beyond it the supreme implements of his +will, a row of pearl-topped push-buttons. + +The story of John Wingfield, Sr.'s rise and career, as the lieutenants of +the offices and the battalions of the shopping floors knew it, was not +the story, perhaps, as Dr. Bennington or Peter Mortimer knew it; but, +then, doctors and private secretaries are supposed to hold their secrets. +There was little out of the commonplace in the world's accepted version. +You may hear its like from the moneyed host at his dinner table in New +York or as he shows you over the acres of his country estate, enthusing +with a personal narrative of conquest which is to him unique. John +Wingfield, Sr. makes history for us in the type of woman whom he +married and the type of son she bore him. + +He was the son of a New England country clergyman, to whom working his +way through college in order to practise a profession made no appeal. +Birth and boyhood in poverty had taught him, from want of money, the +power of money. He sought the centre of the market-place. At sixteen he +was a clerk, marked by his industry not less than by his engaging +manners, on six dollars a week in the little store that was the site of +his present triumph. Of course he became a partner and then owner. It was +his frequent remark, when he turned reminiscent, that if he could only +get as good clerks as he was in his day he would soon have a monopoly of +supplying New York and its environs with all it ate and wore and needed +to furnish its houses; which raises the point that possibly such an +equality of high standards in efficiency might make all clerks employers. + +The steady flame of his egoism was fanned with his Successes. Without +real intimates or friends, he had an effective magnetism in making others +do his bidding. It had hardly occurred to him that his discovery of the +principle of never doing anything yourself that you can win others to do +for you and never failing, when you have a minute to spare, to do a thing +yourself when you can do it better than any assistant, was already a +practice with leaders in trade and industry before the Pharaohs. + +Life had been to him a ladder which he ascended without any glances to +right or left or at the rung that he had left behind. The adaptable +processes of his mind kept pace with his rise. He made himself at home +in each higher stratum of atmosphere. His marriage, delayed until he was +forty and already a man of power, was still another upward step. Alice +Jamison brought him capital and position. The world was puzzled why she +should have accepted him; but this stroke of success he now considered as +the vital error of a career which, otherwise, had been flawlessly +planned. Yet he could flatter his egoism with the thought that it was +less a fault of judgment than of the uncertainty of feminine temperament, +which could not be measured by logic. + +New York saw little of Mrs. Wingfield after Jack's birth. Her friends +knew her as a creature all life and light before her marriage; they +realized that the life and light had passed out of her soon after the boy +came; and thenceforth they saw and heard little of her. She had given +herself up to the insistent possessorship and company of her son. Those +who met her when travelling reported how frail she was and how +constrained. + +Jack was fourteen when his mother died. He was brought home and sent to +school in America; and two-years later Dr. Bennington announced that the +slender youngster, who had been so completely estranged from the affairs +of the store, must matriculate in the ozone of high altitudes instead of +in college, if his life were to be saved. Whether Jack were riding over +the _mesas_ of Arizona or playing in a villa garden in Florence, John +Wingfield, Sr.'s outlook on life was the same. It was the obsession of +self in his affairs. After the eclipse of his egoism the deluge. The very +thought that anyone should succeed him was a shock reminding him of +growing age in the midst of the full possession of his faculties, while +he felt no diminution of his ambition. + +"I am getting better," came the occasional message from that stranger +son. And the father kept on playing the tune of accruing millions on the +push-buttons. His decision to send Dr. Bennington to Arizona came +suddenly, just after he had turned sixty-three. He had had an attack of +grip at the same time that his attention had been acutely called to the +demoralization of another great business institution whose head had died +without issue, leaving his affairs in the hands of trustees. + +Two days of confinement in his room with a high pulse had brought +reflection and the development of atavism. What if the institution built +as a monument to himself should also pass! What if the name of Wingfield, +his name, should no longer float twelve stories high over his building! +He foresaw the promise of companionship of a restless and ghastly +apparition in the future. + +But he recovered rapidly from his illness and his mental processes were +as keen and prehensile as ever. Checking off one against the other, with +customary shrewdness, he had a number of doctors go over him, and all +agreed that he was good for twenty years yet. Twenty years! Why, Jack +would be middle-aged by that time! Twenty years was the difference +between forty-three and sixty-three. Since he was forty-three he had +quintupled his fortune. He would at least double it again. He was not +old; he was young; he was an exceptional man who had taken good care of +himself. The threescore and ten heresy could not apply to him. + +Bennington's telegram irritated him with its lack of precision. Fifteen +hundred dollars and expenses to send an expert to Arizona and in +return this unbusinesslike report: "You will see Jack for yourself. He +is coming." + +In the full enjoyment of health, observing every nice rule for +longevity, his slumber sweet, his appetite good, John Wingfield, Sr. +had less interest in John Wingfield, Jr. than he had when his bones +were aching with the grip. Jack's telegram from Chicago announcing the +train by which he would arrive aroused an old resentment, which dated +far back to Jack's childhood and to a frail woman who had been proof +against her husband's will. + +Did this home-coming mean a son who could learn the business; a strong, +shrewd, cool-headed son? A son who could be such an adjutant as only one +who is of your own flesh and blood can be in the full pursuit of the same +family interest as yourself? If Jack were well, would not Bennington have +said so? Would he not have emphasized it? This was human nature as John +Wingfield, Sr. knew it; human nature which never missed a chance to +ingratiate itself by announcing success in the service of a man of power. + +The spirit of his farewell message to Jack, which said that strength +might return but bade weakness to remain away, and the injured pride of +seeing a presentment of wounded egoism in the features of a sickly boy, +which had kept him from going to Arizona, were again dominant. Yet that +morning he had a pressing sense of distraction. Even Mortimer noticed it +as something unusual and amazing. He kept reverting to Jack's history +between flashes of apprehension and he was angry with himself over his +inability to concentrate his mind. Concentration was his god. He could +turn from lace-buyer to floor-walker with the quickness of the swing of +an electric switch. Concentrate and he was oblivious to everything but +the subject in hand. He was in one of the moments of apprehension, half +staring at the buttons on the desk rather than at the papers, when he +heard the door open without warning and looked up to see a lean, sturdy +height filling the doorway and the light from the window full on a +bronzed and serene face. + +More than ever was Jack like David come over the hills in his incarnation +of sleeping energy. Instead of a sling he carried the rose. Into the +abode of the nicely governed rules of longevity came the atmosphere of +some invasive spirit that would make the stake of life the foam on the +crest of a charge in a splendid moment; the spirit of Senor Don't Care +pausing inquiringly, almost apologetically, as some soldier in dusty +khaki might if he had marched into a study unawares. + +Jack was waiting, waiting and smiling, for his father to speak. In a +swift survey, his features transfixed at first with astonishment, then +glowing with pride, the father half rose from his chair, as if in an +impulse to embrace the prodigal. But he paused. He felt that something +under his control was getting out of his control. He felt that he had +been tricked. The boy must have been well for a long time. Yes! But he +was well! That was the vital point. He was well, and magnificent in +his vigor. + +The father made another movement; and still Jack was waiting, inquiring +yet not advancing. And John Wingfield, Sr. wished that he had gone to +the station; he wished that he had paid a visit to Arizona. This thought +working in his mind supplied Jack's attitude with an aspect which made +the father hesitate and then drop back into his chair, confused and +uncertain for the first time in his own office. + +"Well, Jack, you--you surely do look cured!" he said awkwardly. "You see, +I--I was a little surprised to see you at the office. I sent the +limousine for you, thinking you would want to go straight to the house +and wash off the dust of travel. Didn't you connect?" + +"Yes, thank you, father--and when you didn't meet me--" + +"I--I was very busy. I meant to, but something interrupted--I--" The +father stopped, confounded by his own hesitation. + +"Of course," said Jack. He spoke deferentially, understandingly. "I know +how busy you always are." + +Yet the tone was such to John Wingfield, Sr.'s ears that he eyed Jack +cautiously, sharply, in the expectancy that almost any kind of +undisciplined force might break loose from this muscular giant whom he +was trying to reconcile with the Jack whom he had last seen. + +"I thought I'd stretch my legs, so I came over to the store to see how it +had grown," said Jack. "I don't interrupt--for a moment?" + +He sat down on the chair opposite his father's and laid his faded +cowpuncher hat and the rose on the desk. They looked odd in the company +of the pushbuttons and the pile of papers in that neutral-toned room +which was chilling in its monotony of color. And though Jack was almost +boyishly penitent, in the manner of one who comes before parental +authority after he has been in mischief, still John Wingfield, Sr. +could not escape the dead weight of an impression that he was speaking to +a stranger and not to his own flesh and blood. He wished now that he had +shown affection on Jack's entrance. He had a desire to grip the brown +hand that was on the edge of the desk fingering the rose stem; but the +lateness of the demonstration, its futility in making up for his previous +neglect, and some subtle influence radiating from Jack's person, +restrained him. It was apparent that Jack might sit on in silence +indefinitely; in a desert silence. + +"Well, Jack, I hear you had a ranch," said the father, with a faint +effort at jocularity. + +"Yes, and a great crop of alfalfa," answered Jack, happily. + +"And it seems that all the time you were away you have never used your +allowance, so it has just been piling up for you." + +"I didn't need it. I had quite sufficient from the income of my +mother's estate." + +"Yes--your mother--I had forgotten!" + +"Naturally, I preferred to use that, when I was of so little service to +you unless I got strong, as you said," Jack said, very quietly. + +Now came another silence, the silence of luminous, unsounded depths +concealing that in the mind which has never been spoken or even taken +form. Jack's garden of words had dried up, as his ranch would dry up for +want of water. He rose to go, groping for something that should express +proper contrition for wasted years, but it refused to come. He picked up +the rose and the hat, while the father regarded him with stony wonder +which said: "Are you mine, or are you not? What is the nature of this +new strength? On what will it turn?" + +For Jack's features had set with a strange firmness and his eyes, looking +into his father's, had a steady light. It seemed as if he might stalk out +of the office forever, and nothing could stop him. But suddenly he +flashed his smile; he had looked about searching for a talisman and found +it in the rose, which set his garden of words abloom again. + +"This room is so bare it must be lonely for you," he said. "Wouldn't it +be a good idea to cheer it up a bit? To have this rose in a vase on your +table where you could see it, instead of riding about in an empty +automobile box?" + +"Why, there is a whole cold storage booth full of them down on the first +floor!" said the father. + +"Yes, I saw them in their icy prison under the electric light bulbs. The +beads of water on them were like tears of longing to get out for the joy +of their swan song under a woman's smiles or beside a sick bed," said +Jack, in the glow of real enthusiasm. + +"Good line for the ad writer!" his father exclaimed, instinctively. "You +always did have fanciful ideas, Jack." + +"Yes, I suppose I have!" he said, with some surprise and very +thoughtfully. "I suppose that I was born with them and never weeded +them out." + +"No doubt!" and the father frowned. + +Surveying the broad shoulders before him, he was thinking how nothing but +aimlessness and fantasies and everything out of harmony with the career +to come had been encouraged in the son. But he saw soberness coming into +Jack's eyes and with it the pressure of a certain resoluteness of +purpose. And now Jack spoke again, a trifle sadly, as if guessing his +father's thoughts. + +"It will be a case of weeding for me in the future, won't it?" he asked +wanly, as he rose. "I am full of foolish ideas that are just bound to run +away with me." + +"Jack! Jack!" John Wingfield, Sr. put his hands out to the shoulders +of his son and gripped them strongly, and for a second let his own +weight half rest on that sturdy column which he sensed under the grip. +His pale face, the paleness of the type that never tans, flushed. +"Jack, come!" he said. + +He permitted himself something like real dramatic feeling as he signalled +his son to follow him out of the office and led the way to a corner of +one of the balconies where, under the light from the glass roof of the +great central court, he could see down the tiers of floors to the jewelry +counter which sparkled at the bottom of the well. + +"Look! look!" he exclaimed, rubbing his palms together with a peculiar +crisp sound. "All selling my goods! All built from the little store where +I began as a clerk!" + +"It's--it's immense!" gasped Jack; and he felt a dizziness and confusion +in gazing at this kind of an abyss. + +"And it's only beginning! It's to go on growing and growing! You see why +I wanted you to be strong, Jack; why it would not do to be weak if you +had all this responsibility." + +This was a form of apology for his farewell to Jack, but the message was +the same: He had not wanted a son who should be of his life and heart and +ever his in faults and illnesses. This was the recognizable one of the +shadows between them now recalled. He had wanted a fresh physical machine +into which he could blow the breath of his own masterful being and instil +the cunning of his experience. He saw in this straight, clean-limbed +youth at his side the hope of Jack's babyhood fulfilled, in the +projection of his own ego as a living thing after he himself was gone. + +"And it is to go on growing and growing, in my name and your name--John +Wingfield!" + +Jack was swallowing spasmodically; he moistened his lips; he grasped the +balcony railing so tight that his knuckles were white knobs on the bronze +back of his hand. The father in his enthusiasm hardly noticed this. + +"What couldn't I have done," he added, "if I had had all this to begin +with! All that you will have to begin with!" + +Jack managed a smile, rather thin and wavering. + +"Yes, I am going to try my best." + +"All I ask! You have me for a teacher and I know one or two little +things!" said the father, fairly grinning in the transmission of his +joke. "Now, you must be short on clothes," he added; "so you can get +something ready-made downstairs while you have some making at +Thompson's." + +"Don't you buy your clothes, your best clothes, I mean, in your own +store?" Jack asked. It was his first question in getting acquainted with +his future property. + +"No. We cater to a little bigger class of trade--one of the many twists +of the business," was the answer. "And now we'll meet at dinner, shall +we, and have a good long talk," he concluded, closing the interview and +turning to the door, his mind snapping back to the matter he was about to +take up when he had been interrupted with more eagerness than ever, now +that his egoism thrilled with a still greater purpose. + +"I--I left my hat on your desk," Jack explained, as he followed his +father into the office. + +"Well, you don't want to be carrying packages about," said John +Wingfield, Sr. "That is hardly the fashion in New York, though John +Wingfield's son can make it so if he wants to. I'll have that +flat-brimmed western one sent up to the house and you can fit out with +another when you go downstairs for clothes. That is, I suppose you will +want to keep this as a memento, eh?" and he held out the cowpuncher, +sweeping it with a sardonic glance. + +"No," Jack answered decisively, out of the impulse that came with the +sight of the veteran companion that had shielded him from the sun on +the trail. It was good to have any kind of an impulse after his +giddiness on the balcony at sight of all the phantasmagoria of detail +that he must master. + +If he were to be equal to this future there must be an end of temptation. +He must shake himself free of the last clinging bit of chrysalis of the +old life. His amazed father saw the child of the desert, where convention +is made by your fancy and the supply of water in your canteen, go to the +window and raise the sash. Leaning out, he let the hat drop into +Broadway, with his eyes just over the line of the ledge while he watched +it fall, dipping and gliding, to the feet of a messenger boy, who picked +it up, waved it gleefully aloft before putting it over his cap, and with +mock strides of grandeur went his way. + +"That gave him a lot of pleasure--and a remarkably quick system for +delivering goods, wasn't it?" said Jack, cheerfully. + +"Yes, I should say so!" assented his father, returning to his seat. +"Dinner at seven!" he called before the door closed; and as his finger +sought one of the push-buttons it rested for a moment on the metal edge +of the socket, his head bowed, while an indefinable emotion, mixed of +prophecy and recollection, must have fluttered through the routine +channels of his vigorous mind. + + + + +XXV + +"BUT WITH YOU, 'YES, SIR'" + + +As Jack came out of the office, Mortimer appeared from an adjoining room +in furtive, mouselike curiosity. + +"Not much damage done!" said Jack, in happy relief from the ordeal. "I am +without a hat, but I have the rose." He held it up before Mortimer's +worn, kindly face that had been so genuine in welcome. "Yes, I must have +kept it to decorate you, Peter!" + +Ineffectually, in timorous confusion, the old secretary protested while +Jack fastened it in his buttonhole. + +"And you are going to help me, aren't you, Peter?" Jack went on, +seriously. "You are going to hold up a finger of warning when I get off +the course. I am to be practical, matter-of-fact; there's to be an end to +all fantastic ideas." + +An end to all fantastic ideas! But it was hardly according to the gospel +of the matter-of-fact to take Burleigh, the fitter, out to luncheon. Jack +might excuse himself on the ground that he had not yet begun his +apprenticeship and had several hours of freedom before his first lesson +at dinner. This ecstasy of a recess, perhaps, made him lay aside the +derby, which the clerk said was very becoming, and choose a softer +head-covering with a bit of feather in the band, which the clerk, with +positive enthusiasm, said was still more becoming. At all events, it was +easy on his temples, while the derby was stiff and binding and conducive +to a certain depression of spirits. + +Burleigh, the fitter, was almost as old as Mortimer. He rose to the +exceptional situation, his eyes lighting as he surveyed the form to be +clothed with a professional gratification unsurpassed by that of Dr. +Bennington in plotting Jack's chest with a stethoscope. + +"Yes, sir, we will have that dinner-jacket ready to-night, sir, depend +upon it--and couldn't I show you something in cheviots?" + +Jack broke another precedent. A Wingfield, he decided to patronize +the Wingfield store, because he saw how supremely happy every order +made Burleigh. + +"You can do it as well as Thompson's?" he asked. + +"With you, yes, sir--though Thompson is a great expert on round +shoulders. But with you, yes, sir!" + +When the business of measuring was over, while Burleigh peered triumphant +over the pile of cloths from which the masterpieces were to be fashioned, +Jack said that he had a ripping appetite and he did not see why he and +Burleigh should not appease their hunger in company. Burleigh gasped; +then he grinned in abandoned delight and slipped off his shiny coat and +little tailor's apron that bristled with pins. + +They went to a restaurant of reputation, which Jack said was in keeping +with the occasion when a man changed his habits from Arizona simplicity +to urban multiplicity of courses. And what did Burleigh like? Burleigh +admitted that if he were a plutocrat he would have caviar at least once a +day; and caviar appeared in a little glass cup set in the midst of +cracked ice, flanked by crisp toast. After caviar came other things to +Burleigh's taste. He was having such an awesomely grand feast that he +was tongue-tied; but Jack could never eat in silence until he had +forgotten how to tell stories. So he told Burleigh stories of the trail +and of life in Little Rivers in a way that reflected the desert sunshine +in Burleigh's eyes. Burleigh thought that he would like to live in Little +Rivers. Almost anyone might after hearing Jack's description, in the joy +of its call to himself. + +"Now, if you would trust me," said Burleigh, when they left the +restaurant, "I should like to send out for some cloths not in stock for a +couple of suits. And couldn't I make you up three or four fancy +waistcoats, with a little color in them--the right color to go with the +cloth? You can carry a little color--decidedly, yes." + +"Yes, I rather like color," said Jack, succumbing to temptation, though +he felt that the heir to great responsibilities ought to dress in the +most neutral of tones. + +"And I should like to select the ties to go with the suits and a few +shirts, just to carry out my scheme--a kind of professional triumph for +me, you see. May I?" + +"Go ahead!" said Jack. + +"And you can depend on your evening suit to be up in time. But I am going +to rush a little broader braid on those ready-made trousers--you can +carry that, too," Burleigh concluded. + +When they parted Jack turned into Fifth Avenue. Before he had gone a +block the bulky eminence of a Fifth Avenue stage awakened his +imagination. How could anybody think of confinement in a taxicab when he +might ride in the elephant's howdah of that top platform, enjoying mortal +superiority over surrounding humanity? Jack hung the howdah with silken +streamers and set a mahout's turban on the head of the man on the seat in +front of him, while the glistening semi-oval tops of the limousines +floating in the mist of the rising grade from Madison Square to +Forty-second Street, swarmed and halted in a kind of blind, cramped _pas +de quatre_ from cross street to cross street, amid the breaking surge of +pedestrians. + +"Such a throbbing of machine motion," he thought, "that I don't see +how anybody can have an emotion of his own without bumping into +somebody else's." + +It was a scene of another age and world to him, puzzling, overpowering, +dismal, mocking him with a sense of loneliness that he had never felt on +the desert. Could he ever catch up with this procession which had all the +time been moving on in the five years of his absence? Could he learn to +talk and think in the regulated manner of the traffic rules of +convention? The few chums of his brief home school-days were long away +from the fellowship of academies; they had settled in their grooves, with +established intimacies. If he found his own flock he could claim +admission to the fold only with the golden key of his millions, rather +than by the password of kindred understanding. + +The tripping, finely-clad women, human flower of all the maelstrom of +urban toil, in their detachment seemed only to bring up a visualized +picture of Mary. What would he not like to do for her! He wished that he +could pick up the Waldorf and set it on the other side of the street as +a proof of the overmastering desire that possessed him whenever she was +in his mind. + +And the Doge! He was the wisest man in the world. With a nod of +well-considered and easy generosity Jack presented him with the new +Public Library. And then all the people on the sidewalks vanished and +the buildings melted away into sunswept levels, and the Avenue was a +trail down which Mary came on her pony in the resplendent sufficiency of +his dreams. + +"Great heavens!" he warned himself. "And I am to take my first lesson in +running the business this evening! What perfect lunacy comes from +mistaking the top of a Fifth Avenue stage for a howdah!" + + + + +XXVI + +THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY + + +How thankful he was that the old brick corner mansion in Madison Avenue, +with age alone to recommend its architecture of the seventies--let it +stand for what it was--had not been replaced by one of stone freshly +polished each year! The butler who opened the door was new and stiffer +than the one of the old days; but he saw that the broad hall, with the +stairs running across the rear in their second flight, was little more +changed than the exterior. + +Five years since he had left that hall! He was in the thrall of +anticipation incident to seeing old associations with the eyes of +manhood. The butler made to take his hat, but Jack, oblivious of the +attention, went on to the doorway of the drawing-room, his look centering +on a portrait that faced the door. In this place of honor he saw a +Gainsborough. He uttered a note of pained surprise. + +"There used to be another portrait here. Where is it?" he demanded. + +The butler, who had heard that the son of the house was an invalid, had +not recovered from his astonishment at the appearance of health of the +returned prodigal. + +"Upstairs, sir," he answered. "When Mr. Wingfield got this prize last +year, sir--" + +Though the butler had spoken hardly a dozen words, he became conscious +of something atmospheric that made him stop in the confusion of one +who finds that he has been garrulous with an explanation that does +not explain. + +"Please take this upstairs and bring back the other," said Jack. + +"Yes, sir. You will be going to your room, sir, and while--" The butler +had a feeling of a troublesome future between two masters. + +"Now, please!" said Jack, settling into a chair to wait. + +The Gainsborough countess, with her sweeping plumes, her rich, fleshy, +soft tones, her charming affectation, which gave you, after the art +interest, no more human interest in her than in a draped model, was +carried upstairs and back came the picture that it had displaced. The +frame still bore at the bottom the title "Portrait of a Lady," under +which it had been exhibited at the Salon many years ago. It was by a +young artist, young then, named Sargent. He had the courage of his +method, this youngster, no less than Hals, who also worked his wonders +with little paint when this suited his genius best. The gauze of the gown +where it blended with the background at the edge of the line of arm was +so thin, seemingly made by a single brush-stroke, that it almost showed +the canvas. + +A purpose in that gauze: The thinness of transparency of character! The +eyes of the portrait alone seemed deep. They were lambent and dark, +looking straight ahead inquiringly, yet in the knowledge that no answer +to the Great Riddle could change the course of her steps in the blind +alley of a life whose tenement walls were lighted with her radiance. You +could see through the gown, through the flesh of that frail figure, so +lacking in sensuousness yet so glowing with a quiet fire, to the soul +itself. She seemed of such a delicate, chaste fragility that she could be +shattered by a single harsh touch. There would be no outcry except the +tinkle of the fragments. The feelings of anyone who witnessed the +breaking and heard the tinkle would be a criterion of his place in the +wide margin between nerveless barbarism and sensitive gentility. + +"I give! I give! I give!" was her message. + +For a long time, he had no measure of it, Jack sat studying the portrait, +set clear in many scenes of memory in review. It had been a face as +changeful as the travels, ever full of quick lights and quick shadows. He +had had flashes of it as it was in the portrait in its very triumph of +resignation. He had known it laughing with stories of fancy which she +told him; sympathetic in tutorial illumination as she gave him lessons +and brought out the meaning of a line of poetry or a painting; beset by +the restlessness which meant another period of travel; intense as fire +itself, gripping his hands in hers in a defiance of possession; in moods +when both its sadness and its playfulness said, "I don't care!" and +again, fleeing from his presence to hide her tears. + +It was with the new sight of man's maturity and soberness that he now saw +his mother, feeling the intangible and indestructible feminine majesty of +her; feeling her fragility which had brought forth her living soul in its +beauty and impressionableness as a link with the cause of his Odyssey; +believing that she was rejoicing in his strength and understanding +gloriously that it had only brought him nearer to her. + +After he had been to his room to dress he returned to the same chair and +settled into the same reverie that was sounding depths of his being that +he had never suspected. He was mutely asking her help, asking the support +of her frail, feminine courage for his masculine courage in the battle +before him; and little tremors of nervous determination were running +through him, when he heard his father's footstep and became conscious of +his father's presence in the doorway. + +There was a moment, not of hesitation but of completing a thought, before +he looked up and rose to his feet. In that moment, John Wingfield, Sr. +had his own shock over the change in the room. The muscles of his face +twitched in irritation, as if his wife's very frailty were baffling +invulnerability. Straightening his features into a mask, his eyes still +spoke his emotion in a kind of stare of resentment at the picture. + +Then he saw his son's shoulders rising above his own and looked into +his son's eyes to see them smiling. Long isolated by his power from +clashes of will under the roof of his store or his house, the father +had a sense of the rippling flash of steel blades. A word might start a +havoc of whirling, burning sentences, confusing and stifling as a +desert sandstorm; or it might bring a single killing flash out of +gathering clouds. + +Thus the two were facing each other in a silence oppressive to both, +which neither knew how to break, when relief came in the butler's +announcement of dinner. Indeed, by such small, objective interruptions do +dynamic inner impulses hang that this little thing may have suppressed +the lightnings. + +The father was the first to speak. He hoped that a first day in New York +had brought Jack a good appetite; certainly, he could see that the store +had given him a wonderful fit for a rush order. + + + + +XXVII + +BY RIGHT OF ANCESTRY + + +There were to be no stories of Little Rivers at dinner; no questions +asked about desert life. This chapter of Jack's career was a past rung of +the ladder to John Wingfield, Sr. who was ever looking up to the rungs +above. The magnetism and charm with which he won men to his service now +turned to the immediate problem of his son, whom he was to refashion +according to his ideas. + +"Are you ready to settle down?" he asked, half fearful lest that scene in +the drawing-room might have wrought a change of purpose. + +In answer he was seeing another Jack; a Jack relaxed, amiable, +even amenable. + +"If you have the patience," said Jack. "You know, father, I haven't a +cash-register mind. I'm starting out on a new trail and I am likely to go +lame at times. But I mean to be game." + +He looked very frankly and earnestly into his father's eyes. + +"Wild oats sown! My boy, after all!" thought the father. "Respected his +mother! Well, didn't I respect mine? Of course--and let him! It is good +principles. It is right. He has health; that is better than schooling." + +In place of the shock of the son's will against his, he was feeling it as +a force which might yet act in unison with his. He expanded with the +pride of the fortune-builder. He told how a city within a city is created +and run; of tentacles of investment and enterprise stretching beyond the +store in illimitable ambition; how the ball of success, once it was set +rolling, gathered bulk of its own momentum and ever needed closer +watching to keep it clear of obstacles. + +"And I am to stand on top like a gymnast on a sphere or be rolled under," +thought Jack. "And I'll have cloth of gold breeches and a balancing pole +tipped with jewels; but--but--" + +"A good listener, and that is a lot!" thought the father, happily. + +Jack had interrupted neither with questions nor vagaries. He was gravely +attentive, marveling over this story of a man's labor and triumph. + +"And the way to learn the business is not from talks by me," said his +father, finally. "You cannot begin at the top." + +"No! no!" said Jack, aghast. "The top would be quite too insecure, too +dizzy to start with." + +"Right!" the father exclaimed, decidedly. "You must learn each department +of itself, and then how it works in with the others. It will be drudgery, +but it is best--right at the bottom!" + +"Yes, father, where there is no danger of a fall." + +"You will be put on an apprentice salary of ten dollars a week." + +"And I'll try to earn it." + +"Of course, you understand that the ten is a charge against the store. +That's business. But as for a private allowance, you are John Wingfield's +son and--" + +"I think I have enough of my own for the present," Jack put in. + +"As you wish. But if you need more, say the word. And you shall name the +department where you are to begin. Did you get any idea of which you'd +choose from looking the store over to-day?" + +"That's very considerate of you!" Jack answered. He was relieved and +pleased and made his choice quickly, though he mentioned it half timidly +as if he feared that it might be ridiculous, so uncertain was he about +the rules of apprenticeship. + +"You see I have been used to the open air and I'd like a little time in +which to acclimatize myself in New York. Now, all those big wagons that +bring the goods in and the little wagons that take them out--there is an +out-of-door aspect to the delivery service. Is that an important branch +to learn?" + +"Very--getting the goods to the customer--very!" + +"Then I'll start with that and sort of a roving commission to look over +the other departments." + +"Good! We will consider it settled. And, Jack, every man's labor that you +can save and retain efficiency--that is the trick! Organization and +ideas, that's what makes the employer and so makes success. Why, Jack, if +you could cut down the working costs in the delivery department or +improve the service at the present cost, why--" John Wingfield, Sr. +rubbed the palms of his hands together delightedly. + +Everything was going finely--so far. He added that proviso of _so far_ +instinctively. + +"Besides, Jack," he went on, changing to another subject that was equally +vital to his ego, "this name of Wingfield is something to work for. I was +the son of a poor New England clergyman, but there is family back of it; +good blood, good blood! I was not the first John Wingfield and you shall +not be the last!" + +He rose from the table, bidding the servant to bring the coffee to the +drawing-room. With the same light, quick step that he ascended the +flights in the store, he led the way downstairs, his face alive with the +dramatic anticipation that it had worn when he took Jack out of the +office to look down from the balcony of the court. + +"Ah, we have something besides the store, Jack!" he was saying, in the +very exultation of the pride of possession, as he went to the opposite +side of the mantel from the mother's portrait and turned on the reflector +over a picture. + +Jack saw a buccaneer under the brush of the gold and the shadows of +Spain; a robust, ready figure on fighting edge, who seemed to say, "After +you, sir; and, then, pardon me, but it's your finish, sir!" + +"It's a Velasquez!" Jack exclaimed. + +"And you knew that at a glance!" said his father. + +"Why, yes!" + +"Not many Velasquezes in America," said the father, thinking, +incidentally, that his son would not have to pay the dealers a heavy toll +for an art education, while he revelled in a surprise that he was +evidently holding back. + +"Or many better Velasquezes than this, anywhere," added Jack. "What +mastery! What a gift from heaven that was vouchsafed to a human being to +paint like that!" + +He was in a spell, held no less by the painter's art than by the subject. + +"Absolutely a certified Velasquez, bought from the estate of Count +Galting," continued his father. "I paid a cool two hundred and fifty +thousand for it. And that isn't all, Jack, that isn't all that you are +going to drudge for as an apprentice in the delivery department. I know +what I am talking about. I wasn't fooled by any of the genealogists who +manufacture ancestors. I had it all looked up by four experts, checking +one off against another." + +"Yes," answered Jack, absently. He had hardly heard his father's words. +In fervent scrutiny he was leaning forward, his weight on the ball of the +foot, the attitude of the man in the picture. + +"And who do you think he is--who?" pursued John Wingfield, Sr. + +"A man who fought face to face with the enemy; a man whom men followed! +Velasquez caught all that!" answered Jack. + +"That old fellow was a great man in his day--a great Englishman--and his +name was John Wingfield! He was your ancestor and mine!" + +After a quick breath of awakening comprehension Jack took a step nearer +the portrait, all his faculties in the throe of beaming inquiry of Senor +Don't Care and desert freedom, in the self-same, alert readiness of pose +as the figure he was facing. + +"They say I resemble him!" The father repeated that phrase which he had +used in benignant satisfaction to many a guest, but now seeing with +greedy eyes a likeness between his son and the ancestor deeper than mere +resemblance of feature, he added: "But you--you, Jack, you're the dead +spit of him!" + +"Yes," said Jack, as if he either were not surprised or were too +engrossed to be interested. To the buccaneer's "After you, sir; and, +then, your finish, sir!" he seemed to be saying, in the fully-lived +spirit of imagination: "A good epitaph, sir! I'll see that it is written +on your tombstone!" + +The father, singularly affected by the mutual and enjoyed challenge that +he was witnessing, half expected to see a sword leap out of the scabbard +of the canvas and another from Jack's side. + +"If he had lived in our day," said the father, "he would have built +himself a great place; he would have been the head of a great +institution, just as I am." + +"Two centuries is a long way to fetch a comparison," answered Jack, +hazily, out of a corner of his brain still reserved for conversation, +while all the rest of it was centered elsewhere. "He might have been a +cow-puncher, a revolutionist, or an aviator. Certainly, he would never +have been a camp-follower." + +"At all events, a man of power. It's in the blood!" + +"It's in the blood!" Jack repeated, with a sort of staring, lingering +emphasis. He was hearing Mary's protest on the pass; her final, +mysterious reason for sending him away; her "It's not in the blood!" +There could be no connection between this and the ancestor; yet, in the +stirred depths of his nature, probing the inheritance in his veins, her +hurt cry had come echoing to his ears. + +"Why, I would have paid double the price rather than not have got that +picture!" the father went on. "There is a good deal of talk about family +trees in this town and a strong tendency in some quarters for second +generations of wealth to feel a little superiority over the first +generation. Here I come along with an ancestor eight generations back, +painted by Velasquez. I tell you it was something of a sensation when I +exhibited him in the store!" + +"You--you--" and Jack glanced at his father perplexedly; "you exhibited +him in the store!" he said. + +"Why, yes, as a great Velasquez I had just bought. I didn't advertise him +as my ancestor, of course. Still, the fact got around; yes, the fact got +around, Jack." + +While Jack studied the picture, his father studied Jack, whose face and +whose manner of blissful challenge to all comers in the unconcern of easy +fatality and ready blade seemed to grow more and more like that of the +first John Wingfield. At length, Jack passed over to the other side of +the mantel and turned on the reflector over the portrait of his mother; +and, in turn, standing silently before her all his militancy was gone and +in its place came the dreamy softness with which he would watch the +Eternal Painter cloud-rolling on the horizon. And he was like her not in +features, not in the color of hair or eyes, but in a peculiar +sensitiveness, distinguished no less by a fatalism of its own kind than +was the cheery aggressiveness of the buccaneer. + +"Yes, father," he said, "that old ruffian forebear of ours could swear +and could kill. But he had the virtue of truth. He could not act or live +a lie. And I guess something else--how supremely gentle he could be +before a woman like her. Velasquez brought out a joyous devil and Sargent +brought out a soul!" + +John Wingfield, Sr., who stood by the grate, was drumming nervously on +the mantel. The drumming ceased. The fingers rested rigid and white on +the dark wood. Alive to another manifestation of the lurking force in +his son, he hastened to change the subject. + +"I had almost forgotten that you always had a taste for art, Jack." + +"Yes, from her;" which was hardly changing the subject. + +"As for the first John Wingfield, you may be sure that I wanted to know +everything there was to know about the old fellow," said the father. "So +I set a lot of bookworms looking up the archives of the English and +Spanish governments and digging around in the libraries after material. +Then I had it all put together in proper shape by a literary sharp." + +"You have that!" cried Jack. "You have the framework from which you can +build the whole story of him--the story of how he fought and how +Velasquez came to paint him? Oh, I want to read it!" With an unexplored +land between gilt-tooled covers under his arm he went upstairs early, in +the transport of wanderlust that had sent him away over the sand from +Little Rivers. _Si, si_, Firio, outward bound, camp under the stars! If +Senor Don't Care's desert journeys were over--and he had no thought but +that they were--there was no ban on travelling in fancy over sea trails +in the ancestor's company. + +Jack was with the buccaneer when he boarded the enemy at the head of his +men; with him before the Board of Admiralty when, a young captain of +twenty-two, he refused to lie to save his skin; with him when, in answer +to the scolding of Elizabeth, then an old woman, he said: "It is glorious +for one who fought so hard for Your Majesty to have the recognition even +of Your Majesty's chiding in answer to the protest of the Spanish +ambassador," which won Elizabeth's reversal of the Admiralty's decision; +with him when, in a later change of fortune, he went to the court of +Spain for once on a mission which required a sheathed blade; with him +when the dark eye of Velasquez, who painted men and women of his time +while his colleagues were painting Madonnas, glowed with a discoverer's +joy at sight of this fair-haired type of the enemy, whom he led away to +his studio. + +More than once was there mention of the fact that this terrible fighter +was gentle with women and fonder of the company of children than of +statesmen or courtiers. He had married the daughter of a great merchant, +a delicate type of beauty; the last to fascinate a buccaneer, according +to the gossips of the time. Rumor had it that he had taken her for the +wherewithal to pay the enormous debts contracted in his latest exploit. +To disprove this he went to sea in a temper with a frigate and came back +laden with the treasure of half a dozen galleons, to find that his wife +had died at the birth of a son. He promised himself to settle down for +good; but the fog of London choked lungs used to soft airs; he heard the +call of the sun and was away again to seek adventure in the broiling +reaches of the Caribbean. A man of restless, wild spirit, breathing +inconsistencies incomprehensible to the conventions of Whitehall! And his +son had turned a Cromwellian, who, in poverty, sought refuge in America +when Charles II. came to the throne; and from him, in the vicissitudes of +five generations, the poor clergyman was descended. + +Thus ran the tale in its completeness. The end of the ancestor's career +had been in keeping with its character and course. He had been spared +the slow decay of faculties in armchair reminiscence. He had gone down in +his ship without striking his colors, fighting the Spaniards one to +three. When Jack closed the cover on the last page tenderly and in +enraptured understanding, it was past midnight. + +The spaciousness of the sea under clouds of battle smoke had melted into +the spaciousness of the desert under the Eternal Painter's canopy. Then +four walls of a bedroom in Madison Avenue materialized, shutting out the +horizon; a carpet in place of sand formed the floor; and in place of a +blanket roll was a canopied bed upon which a servant had laid out a suit +of pajamas. In the impulse of a desire to look into the face of the first +John Wingfield in the light of all he now knew, Jack went downstairs, and +in the silence of the house drank in the portrait again. + +"You splendid old devil, you!" he breathed, understandingly. "How should +you like to start out delivering goods with me in the morning?" + + + + +XXVIII + +JACK GETS A RAISE + + +The next morning Jack went down town with his father in the limousine. +About an hour later, after he had been introduced to the head of the +delivery division, he was on his way up town beside a driver of one of +the wagons on the Harlem route. He was in the uniform of the Wingfield +light cavalry, having obtained a cap with embroidered initials on the +front. The driver was like to burst from inward mirth, and Jack was +regarding the prospect with veritable juvenile zest. + +At dinner that evening John Wingfield, Jr. narrated his experiences of +the day to John Wingfield, Sr. with the simplicity and verisimilitude +that always make for both realism and true comedy. + +"But, Jack, you took me too literally! It is hardly in keeping with your +position! You--" + +"Why, I thought that the only way to know the whole business was to +play every part. Didn't you ever deliver packages in person in your +early days?" + +"I can't say that I did!" the father admitted wryly. + +"Then it seems to me that you missed one of the most entertaining and +instructive features," Jack continued. "You cannot imagine the majestic +feminine disdain with which you may be informed that a five-cent bar of +soap should be delivered at the back door instead of the front door. The +most indignant example was a red-haired woman who was doing her own work +in a flat. She fairly blazed. She wanted to know if I didn't know what +dumb-waiters were for." + +"And what did you say?" the father asked wearily; for the ninth John +Wingfield had a limited sense of humor. + +"Oh, I try, however irritating the circumstances, to be most courtly, for +the honor of the store," said Jack. "I told her that I was very sorry and +I would speak to you in person about the mistake." + +"You mean that you admitted who you were?" + +"Oh, no! The red-haired woman laughed and took the package in at the +front door," Jack responded. Anybody in Little Rivers would have +understood just how he looked and smiled and why it was that the +red-haired woman laughed. + +"Jack--now, really, Jack, this is not quite dignified!" expostulated the +father. "What do you think your ancestor would say to it?" + +"I suspect that he would have made an even more ingratiating bow to the +lady than I could," said Jack, thoughtfully. "They had the grand manner +better developed in his day than in ours." + +In the ensuing weeks John Wingfield, Sr. dwelt in a kind of infernal +wonder about his son. He was cheered when some friend of his world who +had met Jack in the garb of his caste, as fitted by Burleigh, would say: +"Fine, strapping son you have there, Wingfield!" He was abashed and +dumfounded when Jack announced that he had taken Mamie Devore, who sold +culinary utensils in the basement, out to luncheon with her "steady +company," Joe Mathewson, driver of one of the warehouse trucks. + +"They were a little awed at first," Jack explained, "but they soon +became natural. I don't know anything pleasanter than making people feel +perfectly natural, do you? You see, Joe and Mamie are very real, father, +and most businesslike; an ambitious, upstanding pair. They're going to +have two thousand dollars saved before they marry. + +"'I don't believe that a woman ought to work out after she's married,' +was the way Joe put it. And Mamie, with her eyes fairly devouring him, +snapped back: 'No, she'd have enough to do looking after you, you big +old bluff!' + +"Mamie is a wiry little thing and Joe is a heavyweight, with a hand +almost as big as a baseball mit. That's partly why their practical +romance is so fascinating. Why, it's wonderful the stories that are +playing themselves out in that big store, father! Well, you see Joe is on +a stint--two thousand before he gets Mamie. He had been making money on +the side nights in boxing bouts. But Mamie stopped the fighting. She said +she was not going to have a husband with the tip of his nose driven up +between his eyes like a bull-dog's. And what do you imagine they are +going to do with the two thousand? Buy a farm! Isn't that corking!" + +John Wingfield, Sr. shrugged his shoulders, but did not express his +feelings with any remark. It seemed to him that Jack must have been born +without a sense of proportion. + +With the breaking of spring, when gardens were beginning to sprout, Jack +broadened his study to the trails of Westchester, Long Island, and New +Jersey, coursed by the big automobile vans of the suburban delivery. To +the people of the store, whose streets he traversed at will in +unremitting wonder over its varied activities, he had brought something +of the same sensation that he had to an Arizona town. He came to know the +employees by name, even as he had his neighbors in Little Rivers. He +nodded to the clerks as he passed down an aisle. They watched for his +coming and brightened with his approach and met his smile with their +smiles. In their idle moments he would stop and talk of the desert. + +Although he was learning to like the store as a community of human beings +its business was as the works of a watch, when all he knew was how to +tell the time by the face. But he tried hard to learn; tried until his +head was dizzy with a whirl of dissociated facts, which he knew ought to +be associated, and under the call of his utter restlessness would +disappear altogether for two or three days. + +"Relieving the pressure! It's a safety-valve so I shan't blow up," he +explained to his father, sadly. + +"Take your time," said John Wingfield, Sr., having in mind a recent talk +with Dr. Bennington. + +Jack listened faithfully to his father's clear-cut lessons. He asked +questions which only made his father sigh; for they had little to do with +the economy of working costs. All his suggestions were extravagant; they +would contribute to the joy of the employees, but not to profit. And +other questions made his father frown in devising answers which were in +the nature of explanations. Born of his rambling and humanly observant +relations with every department, they led into the very heart of things +in that mighty organization. There were times when it was hard for him +to control his indignation. There were trails leading to the room with +the glass-paneled door marked "Private" which he half feared to pursue. + +Thus, between father and son remained that indefinable chasm of thought +and habit which filial duty or politeness could not bridge. No stories of +the desert were ever told at home, though it was so easy to tell them to +Burleigh or Mathewson, those contrasts in a pale fitter of clothes and a +herculean rustler of dry-goods boxes. But echoes of the tales came to the +father through his assistants. He had the feeling of some stranger spirit +in his own likeness moving there in the streets of his city under the +talisman of a consanguinity that was nominal. One day he put an inquiry +to the general manager concretely, though in a way to avoid the +appearance of asking another's opinion about his own son. + +"He has your gift of winning men to him. There is no denying his +popularity with the force," said the general manager, who was a diplomat. + +The same question was put to Peter Mortimer. + +"We all love him. I think a lot of people in the store would march out to +the desert after him," said Mortimer, with real rejoicing in his candor +and courage. Indeed, of late he had been developing cheer as well as +courage, imbibing both, perhaps, from the roses in the vase on his +employer's desk. Jack had ordered a fresh bunch put there every day; and +when employees were sick packages of grapes and bunches of flowers came +to them, in Little Rivers fashion, with J.W. on the card, as if they had +come from the head of the firm himself. + +"Maybe Jack will soften the old man a little," ran a whisper from +basement to roof. For the battalions called him "Jack," rather than "Mr. +Wingfield," just as Little Rivers had. + +"The boy's good nature isn't making him too familiar with the employees?" +was a second question which the father had asked both the general manager +and Mortimer. + +"No. That is the surprising thing--the gift of being friendly without +being familiar," answered the manager. + +"He's got a kind of self-respect that induces respect in others," +said Peter. + +John Wingfield, Sr. was the proprietor of the store, but the human world +of the store began to feel a kind of proprietorship in Jack, while its +guardian interest in helping him in his mistakes was common enough to be +a conspiracy. + +And the callouses were gone from his hands. There was no longer a +dividing line between tan and white on his forehead. No outward symbol of +the desert clung to his person except the moments of the far vision of +distances in his eyes. Superficially, on the Avenue he would have been +taken for one of his caste. + +But tossing a cowpuncher hat out of a window into Broadway was easier +than tossing a thing out of mind. He sat up nights to write to Mary. +Letter after letter he poured out as a diary of his experiences in his +new world, letters breathing a pupil's hope of learning and all that +pupil's sorry vagaries. No answer ever came, not even to the most +appealing ones about his most adventurous conflicts with the dinosaur. +He felt the chagrin of the army of unpublished novelists who lay their +hearts bare on the stone slab of the dissectors in a publisher's +office. He might as well have thrown all he wrote into the +waste-basket so far as any result was concerned; yet he kept on +writing as if it were his glorious duty to report to her as his +superior. But he found a more responsive correspondent in Jim Galway; +and this was the letter he received: + +"DEAR JACK: + +"The whole valley is not yet sprouting with dates as you said it would +from your thinking of us. Maybe we didn't use the right seed. Your ranch +is still called Jack's ranch, and Firio is doing his best and about the +best I ever knew in an Indian. But as you always said, Indians are mostly +human, like the rest of us, barring a sort of born twist in their +intellect for which they aren't responsible. You see, Jack, a lot of your +sayings still live with us, though you are gone. + +"Well, Firio keeps your P.D. exercised and won't let anybody but himself +ride him. He says you will need him. For you can't budge the stubborn +little cuss. He declares you're coming back. When we tell him you're +worth twenty millions and he's plumb full of primitive foolishness and +general ignorance of the outside world, he says, '_Si_, he will come +back!' like some heathen oracle that's strong on repetition and weak on +vocabulary. + +"Of course you know about the new addition to our citizenship, John +Prather, that double of yours that you didn't happen to meet. And I +might mention that by this time, after we've seen so much of him, we +agree with the Doge that he doesn't look a bit like you. Well, he's +making a fine ranch across the road from you, but hiring all his work +done, which ain't exactly according to Little Rivers custom, as you +will remember. The Doge sets a lot by him, though I can't see how +there's much in common between them. This fellow's not full of all that +kind of scholastic persiflage that you are, Jack. He's so all-fired +practical his joints would crack if he wasn't so oily; and he's up to +old man Lefferts' pretty often. + +"He goes to Phoenix a good deal. When I was there the other day I heard +he was circulating around among the politicians in his quiet way, and I +saw him and Pete Leddy hobnobbing together. I didn't like that. But when +I told the Doge of it he said he guessed there wasn't much real +hobnobbing. The Doge is certainly strong for Prather. Another thing I +heard was that, after all, old man Lefferts' two partners aren't dead, +and Prather's been hunting them up. + +"Come to think of it, I didn't tell you that Pete Leddy and some of the +gang have been back in town. Of course we have every confidence in the +Doge, he's been so fair to this community. Still, some of us can't help +having our private suspicions, considering what a lot we have at stake. +And four or five of us was talking the other night, when suddenly we all +agreed how you'd shine in any trouble, and if there was going to be +any--not that there is--we wished you were here. + +"Well, Jack, the pass hasn't changed and the sunsets are just as grand as +ever and the air just as free. The pass won't have changed and the +sunsets will be doing business at the old stand when the antiquaries are +digging up the remote civilization of Little Rivers and putting it in a +high scale because they ran across a pot of Mrs. Galway's jam in the +ruins--the same hifalutin compliment being your own when you were +nursing your wound, as you will remember. + +"Here's wishing you luck from the whole town, way out here in nowhere. + +"As ever yours, + +"James R. Galway. + +"P.S. Belvy Smith wants to know if you won't write just one story. I told +her you were too busy for such nonsense now. But she refuses to believe +it. She says being busy doesn't matter to you. She says the stories just +pop out. So I transmit her request. J.R.G." + +"P.D. waiting!" breathed Jack. "No changing Firio! He is like the pass. I +wonder how Wrath of God and Jag Ear are!" + +He wrote a story for Belvy. He wrote to Firio in resolute assertion that +he would never require the services of P.D. again, when he knew that +Firio, despite the protests, would still keep P.D. fit for the trail. He +wrote to Jim Galway how immersed he was in his new career, but that he +might come for a while--for a little while, with emphasis--if ever Jim +wired that he was needed. + +"That was a good holiday--a regular week-end debauch away from the shop!" +he thought, when the letters were finished. + +Soon after this came an event which, for the first time, gave John +Wingfield, Sr. a revelation of the side of his son that had won Little +Rivers and the interest of the rank and file of the store. Among Jack's +many suggestions, in his aim to carry out his father's talk about the +creative business sense the first night they were together, had been one +for a suburban clubbing delivery system. It had been dismissed as +fantastic, but Jack had asked that it be given a trial and his father had +consented. Its basis was a certain confidence in human nature. Jack and +his father had dined together the evening after the master of the +push-buttons had gone through the final reports of the experiment. + +"Well, Jack, I am going to raise your salary to a hundred a week," the +father announced. + +"On the ground that if you pay me more I might make myself worth more?" +Jack asked respectfully. + +"No, as a matter of business. Whenever any man makes two dollars for the +store, he gets one dollar and I keep the other. That is the basis of my +success--others earning money for me. Your club scheme is a go. As the +accountant works it out, it has brought a profit of two hundred a week." + +"Then I have done something worth while, really?" Jack asked, eagerly, +but half sceptical of such good fortune. + +"Yes. You have created a value. You have used your powers of observation +and your brain. That's the thing that makes a few men employers while the +multitude remains employees." + +"Father! Then I am not quite hopeless?" + +"Hopeless! My son hopeless! No, no! I didn't expect you to learn the +business in a week, or a month, or even a year. Time! time!" + +Nor did John Wingfield, Sr. wish his son to develop too rapidly. Now +that he was so sure of beating threescore and ten, while retaining the +full possession of his faculties, if he followed the rules of longevity, +he would not have welcomed a son who could spring into the saddle at +once. He wanted to ride alone. He who had never shared his power with +anyone! He who had never admitted anyone into even a few shares of +company partnership in his concern! Time! time! The boy would never fall +heir to undivided responsibility before he was forty. John Wingfield, +Sr. was pleased with himself; pleased over a good sign; and he could not +deny that he was pleased at the sudden change in Jack. For he saw Jack's +eyes sparkling into his own; sparkling with comradeship and spontaneous +gratification. Was the boy to be his in thought and purpose, after all? +Yes, of course; yes, inevitably, with the approach of maturity. Gradually +the flightiness of his upbringing would wear off down to the steel, the +hard-tempered, paternal steel. + +"You can scarcely realize what a fight it has been for me until you know +the life I led out in Arizona, getting strong for you and the store," +Jack began. + +"Strong for me! For the store! Yes, Jack!" There was an emphasis on the +subjective personal pronoun--for _him_; for the store! + +The father's face beamed a serene delight. This Jack accepted as the +expression of sympathy and understanding which he had craved. It was to +him an inspiration of fellowship that set the well of his inner being in +overflow and the force of his personality, which the father had felt +uncannily before the mother's picture, became something persuasive in its +radiance rather than something held in leash as a threatening and +volcanic element. Now he could talk as freely and happily of the desert +to his father as to Burleigh and Mathewson. He told of the long rides; +of Firio and Wrath of God. He made the tinkle of Jag Ear's bells heard in +the silence of the dining-room as it was heard in the silences of the +trail. He mentioned how he was afraid to come back after he was strong. + +"Afraid?" queried his father. + +"Yes. But I was coming--coming when, at the top of the pass, I saw Little +Rivers for the first time." + +He sketched his meeting with Mary Ewold; the story of the town and the +story of Jasper Ewold as he knew it, now glancing at his father, now +seeming to see nothing except visualization of the pictures of his story. +The father, looking at the table-cloth, at times playing with his +coffee-spoon, made no comment. + +"And that first night I saw that Jasper Ewold had met me somewhere +before. But--" he went on after going back to the incident of the villa +in his childhood--"that hardly explained. How could he remember the face +of a grown man from the face of a boy? Jasper Ewold! Do you recall ever +having met him? He must have known my mother. Perhaps he knew you, though +why he should not have told me I don't know." + +"Yes, yes--Jasper Ewold," said the father. "I knew him in his younger +days. His was an old family up in Burbridge, the New England town where I +came from. Too much college, too much travel, as I remember, +characterized Jasper Ewold. No settled point of view; and I judge from +what you say that he must have run through his patrimony. One of the ups +and downs of the world, Jack. And he never mentioned that he had met me?" + +"No." + +"Probably a part of that desert notion of freemasonry in keeping pasts a +secret. But why did you stay on after you had recovered from your wound?" +he asked penetratingly, though he was looking again at the bottom of his +coffee-cup. + +"For a reason that comes to a man but once in his life!" Jack answered. + +Had the father looked up--it was a habit of his in listening to any +report to lower his eyes, his face a mask--he might have seen Jack's +face in the supremacy of emotion, as it was when he had called up to +Mary from the canyon and when he had pleaded with her on the pass. But +John Wingfield, Sr. could not mistake the message of a voice vibrating +with all the force of a being let free living over the scene. With the +shadows settling over his eyes, Jack came to her answer and to the +finality of her cry: + +"It's not in the blood!" + +The only sound was a slight tinkle of a spoon against the coffee-cup. +Looking at his father he saw a nervous flutter in his cheeks, his lips +hard set, his brow drawn down; and the rigidity of the profile was such +that Jack was struck by the shiver of a thought that it must have been +like his own as others said it was when he had gripped Pedro Nogales's +arm. But this passed quickly, leaving, however, in its trail an +expression of shock and displeasure. + +"So it was the girl, that kept you--you were in love!" John Wingfield, +Sr. exclaimed, tensely. + +"Yes, I was--I am! You have it, father, the unchangeable all of it! I +face a wall of mystery. 'It's not in the blood!' she said, as if it were +some bar sinister. What could she have meant?" + +In the fever of baffled intensity crying for light and help, he was +sharing the secret that had beset him relentlessly and giving his father +the supreme confidence of his heart. Leaning across the table he grasped +his father's hand, which lay still and unresponsive and singularly cold +for a second. Then John Wingfield, Sr. raised his other hand and patted +the back of Jack's hesitantly, as if uncertain how to deal with this +latest situation that had developed out of his son's old life. Finally he +looked up good-temperedly, deprecatingly. + +"Well, well, Jack, I almost forgot that you are young. It's quite a bad +case!" he said. + +"But what did she mean? Can you guess? I have thought of it so much that +it has meant a thousand wild things!" Jack persisted desperately. + +"Come! come!" the father rallied him. "Time, time!" + +He gripped the hand that was gripping his and swung it free of the table +with a kindly shake. All the effective charm of his personality which he +never wasted, the charm that could develop out of the mask to gain an end +when the period of listening was over, was in play. + +"She excited the opposition of the strength in you," he said. "You ask +what did she mean? It is hard to tell what a woman means, but I judge +that she meant that it was not in her blood to marry a fellow who went +about fighting duels and breaking arms. She would like a more peaceful +sort; and, yes, anything that came into her mind leaped out and you were +mystified by her strange exclamation!" + +"Perhaps. I suppose that may be it. It was just myself, just my devil!" +Jack assented limply. + +"Time! time! All this will pass." + +Jack could not answer that commonplace with one of his own, that it would +not pass; he could only return the pressure when his father, rising and +coming around the table, slipped his arm about the son in a demonstration +of affection which was like opening the gate to a new epoch in their +relations. + +"And you would have killed Leddy! You could have broken that Mexican in +two! I should like to have seen that! So would the ancestor!" said the +father, giving Jack a hug. + +"Yes, but, father, that was the horror of it!" + +"Not the power to do it--no! I mean, Jack, that in this world it is well +to be strong." + +"And you think that I am no longer a weakling?" Jack asked strangely; +"that I carried out your instructions when you sent me away?" + +"Oh, Jack, you remember my farewell remark? It was made in irritation and +suffering. That hurt me. It hurt my pride and all that my work stands +for. It hurt me as much as it hurt you. But if it was a whip, why, then, +it served a purpose, as I wanted it to." + +"Yes, it was a whip!" said Jack, mechanically. + +"Then all ends well--all quits! And, Jack," he swung Jack, who was +unresisting but unresponsive, around facing him, "if you ever have any +doubts or any questions to ask bring them to me, won't you?" + +"Yes." + +"And, Jack, a hundred a week to-morrow! You're all right, Jack!" And he +gave Jack a slap on the back as they left the dining-room. + + + + +XXIX + +A MEETING ON THE AVENUE TRAIL + + +Light sang in the veins and thoughts of a city. Light cleansed the +streets of vapors. Light, the light of the sunshine of late May, made a +far different New York from the New York under a blanket of March mist of +the day of Jack's arrival. The lantern of the Metropolitan tower was all +blazing gold; Diana's scarf trailed behind her in the shimmering abandon +of her _honi soit qui mal y pense_ chases on Olympus; Admiral Farragut +grew urbane, sailing on a smooth sea with victory won; General Sherman in +his over-brightness, guided by his guardian lady, still gallantly pursued +the tone of time in the direction of the old City Hall and Trinity; and +the marble facade of the new library seemed no less at home than under an +Agean sky. An ecstasy, blinding eyes to blemishes, set critical faculties +to rejoicing over perfections. They graciously overlooked the blotch of +red brick hiding the body of St. Patrick's on the way up town in +gratitude for twin spires against the sky. + +Enveloping radiance gilded the sharp lines of skyscrapers and swept away +the shadows in the chasms between them. It pointed the bows of busy tugs +with sprays of diamonds falling on the molten surface of rivers and bays. +It called up paeans of childish trebles from tenement alleys; slipped +into the sickrooms of private houses, delaying the advent of crape on +the door; and played across the rows of beds in the public wards of +hospitals in the primal democracy of the gift of ozone to the earth. + +The milky glass roof of the central court of the Wingfield store acted as +a screen to the omnipotent visitor, but he set unfiltered patches of +delight in the aisles and on the counters near the walls. Mamie Devore +and Burleigh and Peter Mortimer and many other clerks and employees asked +if this were like a desert day and Jack said that it was. He longed to be +free of all roofs and feel the geniality of the hearth-fire of the +planetary system penetrating through his coat, his skin, his flesh, into +his very being. Why not close the store and make a holiday for everybody? +he asked himself; only to be amazed, on second thought, at such a +preposterous suggestion from a hundred-dollar-a-week author of created +profits in the business. He was almost on the point of acting on another +impulse, which was that he and his father break away into the country in +a touring car, not knowing where they were going to stop until hunger +overtook an inn. This, too, he dismissed as a milder form of the same +demoralizing order of heresy, bound to be disturbing to the new filial +relations springing from the night when he had told his desert story over +the coffee, which, contrary to the conventional idea of an exchange of +confidences clearing the mind of a burden, had only provoked more +restlessness. + +At least, he would fare forth for a while on the broad asphalt trail that +begins under the arch of the little park and runs to the entrance of the +great park. Even as the desert has its spell of overawing stillness in an +uninhabited land, so this trail had its spell of congested human +movement in the heart of habitations. A broad, luminous blade lay across +the west side of the street and left the other in shade; and all the +world that loved sunshine and had no errands on the east side kept to the +west side. There was a communism of inspiration abroad. It was a +conqueror's triumph just to be alive and feel the pulse-beat of the +throng. The very over-developed sensitiveness of city nerves became +something to be thankful for in providing the capacity for keener +enjoyment as compensation for the capacity for keener pain. + +Womankind was in spring plumage. The mere consciousness of the value of +light to their costumes, no less than the elixir in their nostrils, gave +vivacity to their features. As usual, Jack was seeing them only to see +Mary. The creation of no _couturier_ could bear rivalry with the garb in +which his imagination clothed her. He found himself suddenly engrossed in +a particular exhibit of fashion's parade a little distance ahead and +going in the same direction as himself, a young woman in a simplicity of +gown to which her carriage gave the final touch of art. Her steps had a +long-limbed freedom and lightness, with which his own steps ran in a +rhythm to the music of some past association. The thrall of a likeness, +which more and more possessed him, made him hasten to draw near for a +more satisfying glimpse. + +The young woman turned her head to glance into a shop-window and then +there could be no mistaking that cheek and chin and the peculiar relation +of the long lashes to the brow. It was the profile whose imprint had +become indelible on his mind when he had come round an elbow of rock on +Galeria. The Jack of wild, tumultuous pleading who had parted from Mary +Ewold on the pass became a Jack elate with the glad, swimming joy of May +sunshine at seeing and speaking to her again. + +"Mary! Mary!" he cried. "My, but you've become a grand swell!" he +breathed delectably, with a fuller vision of her. + +"Jack!" + +There was a nervous twitching of her lips. He saw her eyes at first in a +blaze of surprise and wonder; then change to the baffling sparkle, hiding +their depths, of the slivers of glass on the old barrier. His smile and +hers in unspoken understanding said that two comrades of another trail +had met on the Avenue trail. There had not been any Leddy; there had not +been any scene on the pass. They were back to the conditions of the +protocol he had established when they started out from the porch of the +Ewold bungalow in the airiest possible mood to look at a parcel of land. + +"And you also have become a grand swell!" she said. "Did you expect that +I should be in a gray riding-habit? Certainly I didn't expect to see you +in chaps and spurs." + +It was brittle business; but with a common resource in play they managed +it well. And there they were walking together, noted by passers-by for +their youth and beaming oblivion to everything but themselves. + +"How long have you been here?" Jack asked. + +"Two weeks," she answered. + +Two weeks in the same town and this his first glimpse of her! What a maze +New York was! What a desert waste of two weeks! + +"Yes. Our decision to come was rather abrupt," she explained. "A sudden +call to travel came to father; came to him like an inspiration that he +could not resist. And how happily he has entered into the spirit of the +city again! It has made him young." + +"And it has been quite like martyrdom for you!" Jack put in, teasingly. + +"Terrible! Sackcloth and ashes!" + +"I see you are wearing the sackcloth." + +She laughed outright, with a downward glance at her gown, at once in +guilt and appreciation. + +"Another whim of father's." + +"The Doge a scapegoat for fashion!" + +"Not a scapegoat--a partisan! He insisted on going to one of the best +places. Could I resist? I wanted to see how I felt, how I appeared." + +"The veritable curiosity of a Japanese woman getting her first +foreign gown!" + +"Thank you! That is another excuse." + +"And it certainly looks very well," Jack declared. + +"Do you think so?" Mary flushed slightly. She could not help being +pleased. "After six years, could I drop back into the old chrysalis +naturally, without awkwardness? Did I still know how to wear a fine +gown?"--and the gift for it, as anyone could see, was born in her as +surely as certain gifts were born in Jack. "But," she added, severely, "I +have only two--just two! And the cost of them! It will take the whole +orange crop!" + +Just two, when she ought to have twenty! When he would have liked to put +all the Paris models in the store in a wagon and, himself driving, +deliver them at her door! + +"Having succumbed to temptation, I enjoy it out of sheer respect to +the orange crop," Mary said; "and yes, because I like beautiful +gowns; wickedly, truly like them! And I like the Avenue, just as I +like the desert." + +And all that she liked he could give her! And all that he could give she +had stubbornly refused! + +The liveliness of her expression, the many shades of meaning that she +could set capering with a glance, were now as the personal reflection of +the day and the scene. Their gait was a sauntering one. They went as far +as the Park and started back, as if all the time of the desert were +theirs. They stopped to look into the windows of shops of every kind, +from antiques to millinery. When he saw a hat which he declared, after +deliberate, critical appraisement, would surely become her, she asked +boldly if it were better than the one she wore. + +"I mean an extra hat; that one more hat would have the good fortune of +becoming you!" + +"Almost a real contribution to the literature of compliments!" she +answered, unruffled. + +He thought, too, that she ought to have a certain necklace in a +jeweler's window. + +"To wear over my riding-habit or when I am digging in the flower beds?" +she inquired. + +When they passed a display of luxuries for masculine adornment, she found +a further retort in suggesting that he ought to have a certain giddy +fancy waistcoat. He complimented her on her taste, bought the waistcoat +and, going to the rear of the shop, returned wearing it with a +momentarily appreciated show of jaunty swagger. + +"Why be on the Avenue and not buy?" he queried, enthusing with a new +idea. + +Jim Galway should have a cowpuncher hat as a present. The style of band +was a subject of discussion calling on their discriminative views of +Jim's personal tastes. This led to thoughts of others in Little Rivers +who would appreciate gifts, and to the purchase of toys for the children, +a positive revel. When they were through it was well past noon and they +were in the region of the restaurants. The sun in majestic altitude swept +the breadth of the Avenue. + +"Shall we lunch--yes, and in the Best Swell Place?" he asked, as if it +were a matter-of-course part of the programme, while inwardly he was +stirred with the fear of her refusal. He felt that any minute she might +leave him, with no alternative but another farewell. She hesitated a +moment seriously, then accepted blithely and naturally. + +"Yes, the Best Swell Place--let's! Who isn't entitled to the Best Swell +Place occasionally?" + +After an argument in comparison of famous names, they were convinced that +they had really chosen the Best Swell Place by the fact of a vacant table +at a window looking out over a box hedge. Jack told the waiter that the +assemblage was not an autocracy, but a parliament which, with a full +quorum present, would enjoy in discursive appreciation selections from +the broad range of a bill of fare. + +A luncheon for two narrows a walk on the Avenue, where you are part of a +crowd, into restricted intimacy. He was feeling the intoxication of her +inscrutability, catching gleams of the wealth that lay beyond it, across +the limited breadth of a table-cloth. He forgot about the unspoken +conditions in a sally which was like putting his hand on top of the +barrier for an impetuous leap across. + +"I wrote you stacks of letters," he said, "and you never sent me one +little line; not even 'Yours received and contents noted!'" + +In a flash all intimacy vanished. She might have been at the other end of +the dining-room in somebody else's party nodding to him as to an +acquaintance. Her answer was delayed about as long as it takes to lift an +arrow from a quiver and notch it in a bowstring. + +"A novel may be very interesting, but that does not mean that I write to +the author!" + +He imagined her going through the meal in polite silence or in measured +commonplaces, turning the happy parliament into a frigid Gothic ceremony. +Why had he not kept in mind that sufficient to the hour is the pleasure +of it? Famished for her companionship, a foolhardy impulse of temptation +had risked its loss. The waiter set something before them and softly +withdrew. Jack signaled the unspoken humility of being a disciplined +soldier at attention on his side of the barrier and Mary signaled a +trifle superior but good-natured acceptance of his apology and promise of +better conduct. + +They were back to the truce of nonsense, apostrophizing the cooking of +the Best Swell Place, setting exclamations to their glimpses of people +passing in the street. For they had never wanted for words when talking +across the barrier; there was paucity of conversation only when he +threatened an invasion. + +While a New Yorker meeting a former New Yorker on the desert might have +little to tell not already chronicled in the press, a Little Riversite +meeting a former Little Riversite in New York had a family budget of +news. How high were Jack's hedges? How were the Doge's date-trees? How +was this and that person coming on? Listening to all the details, Jack +felt homesickness creeping over him, and he clung fondly to every one of +the swiftly-passing moments. By no reference and by no inference had she +suggested that there was ever any likelihood of his meeting or hearing +from her again. A thread of old relations had been spun only to be +snapped. She was, indeed, as a visitation developed out of the sunshine +of the Avenue, into which she would dissolve. + +"I was to meet father at a bookstore at three," she said, finally, +as she rose. + +"Inevitably he would be there or in a gallery," said Jack. + +"He has done the galleries. This is the day for buying books--still +more books! I suppose he is spending the orange crop again. If you keep +on spending the same orange crop, just where do you arrive in the maze +of finance?" + +"I should not like to say without consulting the head book-keeper or, at +least, Peter Mortimer!" + +They were coming out of the door of the Best Swell Place, now. A word and +she would be going in one direction and he in another. How easily she +might speak that word, with an electric and final glance of good-will! + +"But I must say howdy do to the Doge!" he urged. "I should like to +see him buying books. What a prodigal debauch of learning! I cannot +miss that!" + +"It is not far," she said, prolonging Paradise for him. + +A few blocks below Forty-second Street they turned into a cross street +which was the same that led to the Wingfield house; and halfway to +Madison Avenue they entered a bookstore. The light from low windows +spreading across the counters blended with the light from high windows at +the back, and here, on a platform at the head of the stairs, before a big +table sat the Doge, in the majesty of a great patron of literature, with +a clerk standing by in deftly-urging attentiveness. Mary and Jack paused +at the foot of the stairs watching him. Gently he was fingering an old +octavo; fingering it as one would who was between the hyperionic desire +of possession and a fear that a bank account owed its solvency to keeping +the amounts of deposits somewhere in proportion to the amount of +withdrawals. + +"No, sir! No more, you tempter!" he declared. "No more, you unctuous +ambassador from the court of Gutenberg! Why, this one would take enough +alfalfa at the present price a ton to bury your store under a haycock as +high as the Roman Pantheon!" + +The Doge rose and picked up his broad-brimmed hat, prepared to fly from +danger. He would not expose himself a moment longer to the wiles of +that clerk. + +"I'll wait for my daughter down there in the safe and economical environs +of the popular novels fresh from the press!" he said. + +Turning to descend the stairs he saw the waiting pair. He stopped stock +still and threw up his hand in a gesture of astonishment. His glance +hovered back and forth between Jack's face and Mary's, and then met +Jack's look with something of the same challenge and confidence of his +farewell on the road out of Little Rivers, and in an outburst of genial +raillery he began the conversation where he had left off with the final +call of his personal good wishes and his salutations to certain landmarks +of New York. + +"Well, well, Sir Chaps! I saw Sorolla in his new style; very different +from the academics of the young Sorolla. He has found his mission and let +himself go. No wonder people flocked to his exhibitions on misty days! +The trouble with our artists is that they are afraid to let themselves +go, afraid to be popular. They think technique is the thing, when it is +only the tool. Why, confound it all! all the great masters were popular +in their day--Venetian, Florentine, Flemish! Confound it, yes! And not +one Velasquez"--evidently he was talking partly to get his bearings after +his shock at seeing Jack--"no, not one Velasquez in the Metropolitan! I +go home without seeing a Velasquez. They have the Catherine Lorillard +Wolfe collection, thousands of square yards of it, and yes, cheer up! +Thank heaven, they have some great Americans, Inness and Martin and Homer +and our exile Whistler, who annexed Japan, and our Sargent, born in +Florence. And I did see the Metropolitan tower. I take off my hat, my +broad-brimmed hat, wishing that it were as big as a carter's umbrella, to +that tower. I hate to think it an accident of chaos like the Grand +Canyon. I rather like to think of it as majestic promise." + +The Doge had talked so fast that he was almost out of breath. He was +ready to yield the floor to Jack. + +"I kissed my hand to Diana for you!" said Jack. "And what do you think? +The lady in answer shook out her scarf and something white and small +fluttered down. I picked it up. It was a note." + +"Did you open that note?" asked the Doge in haughty suspicion. + +"Naturally." + +"Wasn't it marked personal for me?"--this in fine simulation of +indignation. + +"Without address!" + +"I am chagrined and surprised at Diana," said the Doge ruefully. "It's +the effect of city association. As a matter of course, she ought to have +given it to Mercury, or at least to one of the Centaurs, considering all +the horseshows that have been held under her skipping toes! Well, what +did she say? Being a woman of action she was brief. What did she say?" + +"It was in the nature of a general personal complaint. Her costume is in +need of repair; it is flaking disgracefully. She said that if you had not +forsaken your love of the plastic for love of the graphic arts you would +long ago have stolen a little gold off the Eternal Painter's palette, +just to clothe her decently for the sake of her own self-respect--the +town having set her so high that its sense of propriety was quite safe." + +"I stand convicted of neglect," said the Doge, coming down to the floor +of the store. "I will shoot her a bundle of gold leaf from the top of the +pass on a ray of evening sunshine." + +There, he gave Jack a pat on the shoulder; a hasty, playful, almost +affectionate demonstration, and broke off with a shout of: + +"Persiflage, sir, persiflage!" + +"It is manna to me!" declared Jack, in the fulness and sweetness of the +sensation of the atmosphere of Little Rivers reproduced in New York. + +"And not a Velasquez in the Metropolitan!" mused the Doge, bustling along +the aisle hurriedly. "Well, Mary, we have errands to do. There is no time +to spare." + +They were at the door, Jack in wistful insistence, hungry for their +companionship, and the Doge and Mary in common hesitancy for a phrase +before parting from him. He was ahead of the phrase. + +"But there is a Velasquez, one of the greatest of Velasquezes, just a few +steps from here! It would take only a minute to see it." + +"A Velasquez a few steps from here!" cried the Doge. "Where? Be exact, +before I let my hopes rise too high." + +"The subject is an ancestor of mine. My father has it." + +Jack had looked in the direction of the Wingfield house on the Madison +Avenue corner as he spoke, and the Doge had followed his glance. The +eagerness passed from the Doge's face, but not its intensity. That was +transmuted into something staring and hard. + +"A very great Velasquez!" Jack repeated. + +"My _amour propre_!" the Doge said, in whispered abstraction, using the +French which so exactly expresses the rightness of an inner feeling that +will not let one do a thing however much he may wish to. Then a wave of +confusion passed over his face, evidently at the echo of his thoughts in +the form of words come unwittingly from his lips. He tried to retrieve +his exclamation in an effort at the forensic: "The _amour propre_ of any +American is hurt by the thought that he must go to a private gallery to +see a Velasquez in the greatest city of the land!" + +But it was a lame explanation. Clearly, some old antipathy had been +aroused in Jasper Ewold; and it made him hesitate to enter the big red +brick house on the corner. + +"And we have a wonderful Sargent, too, a Sargent of my mother!" Jack +proceeded. + +"Yes, yes!" said the Doge, and eagerness returned; a strange, moving +eagerness that seemed to come from the same depths as the exclamation +that had arrested his acceptance of the invitation at the outset. It held +the monosyllables like drops of water trembling before they fell. + +"I should like you to see them both," said Jack. + +"Yes," said the Doge, the word an echo rather than consent. + +"There is no one at home at this hour; you will have all the time you can +spare for the pictures." + +In the ascendency of his ardor to retain the joy of their company and in +the perplexity of mystery injected afresh into his relations with Mary, +Jack was hardly conscious that his urging was only another way of saying +that his father was absent. And Mary had not thrown her influence either +for or against going. She was watching her father, curiously and +penetratingly, as if trying to understand the source of the emotion that +he was seeking to control. + +"Why, in that case," exclaimed the Doge, "why, you see," he went on to +explain, "we desert folk, though we are used to galleries, are a little +diffident about meeting people who live in big mansions. I mean, people +who have not had the desert training that you have had, Sir Chaps. If it +is only a matter of looking at a picture without any social +responsibilities, and that picture a Velasquez, why, we must take the +time, mustn't we, Mary?" + +"Yes," Mary assented. + +With Mary on one side of him and Jack on the other, the Doge was walking +heavily and slowly. + +"At what period of Velasquez's career?" he asked, vacantly. + +"When he was young and the subject was middle-aged, a Northerner, with +fair hair and lean muscles under a skin bronzed by the tropics, and the +unquenchable fire of youth in his eyes." + +"That ought to be a good Velasquez," said the Doge. + +At the bottom step of the flight up to the entrance to the house he +hesitated. He appeared to be very old and very tired. His face had gone +quite pale. The lids hung heavily over his eyes. Jack dropped back in +alarm to assist him; but his color quickly returned and the old challenge +was in his glance as it met Jack's. + +"Now for your Velasquez!" he exclaimed, with calm vigor. + +Once in the hall, Jack stood to one side of the door of the drawing-room +to let the Doge enter first. As the old man crossed the threshold his +hands were clasped behind him; his shoulders had fallen together, not in +weariness now, but in a kind of dazed, studious expectancy; and he faced +the "Portrait of a Lady." + +"This is the Sargent," he said slowly, his lips barely opening in +mechanical and absent comment. "A good Sargent!" + +He was as still as the picture in his bowed and earnest gaze into her +eyes, except for an occasional nervous movement of the fingers. All the +surroundings seemed to melt into a neutral background for the two; there +was nothing else in the room but the scholar in his age and the "Portrait +of a Lady" in her youth. Jack saw the Doge's face, its many lines +expressive as through a mist of time, its hills and valleys in the sun +and the shadow of emotions as variable as the mother's in life, speaking +personal resentment and wrong, admiration and tenderness, grievous +inquiry and philosophy, while the only answer was the radiant, "I give! I +give!" Finally, the Doge tightened the clasp of his hands, with a quiver +of his frame, as he turned toward Jack. + +"Yes, a really great Sargent--a Sargent of supreme inspiration!" he said. +"Now for your Velasquez!" + +Before the portrait of the first John Wingfield, Jasper Ewold's head and +shoulders recovered their sturdiness of outline and his features lighted +with the veritable touch of the brush of genius itself. He was the +connoisseur who understands, whose joy of possession is in the very +tingling depths of born instinct, rich with training and ripened by time. +It was superior to any bought title of ownership. In the presence of a +supreme standard, every shade of discriminative criticism and appraisal +became threads woven into a fabric of rapture. + +"Mary," he said, his voice having the mellowness of age in its deep +appreciation, "Mary, wherever you saw this--skied or put in a corner +among a thousand other pictures, in a warehouse, a Quaker meetinghouse, +anywhere, whatever its surroundings--should you feel its compelling +power? Should you pause, incapable of analysis, in a spell of tribute?" + +"Yes, I don't think I am quite so insensible as not to realize the +greatness of this portrait, or that of the Sargent, either," she +answered. + +"Good! I am glad, Mary, very glad. You do me credit!" + +Now he turned from the artist to the subject. He divined the kind of man +the first John Wingfield was; divined it almost as written in the +chronicle which Jack kept in his room in hallowed fraternity. Only he +bore hard on the unremitting, callous, impulsive aggressiveness of a +fierce past age, with its survival of the fittest swordsmen and +buccaneers, which had no heroes for him except the painters, poets, and +thinkers it gave to posterity. + +"Fire-eating old devil! And the best thing he ever did, the best luck he +ever had, was attracting the attention of a young artist. It's +immortality just to be painted by Velasquez; the only immortality many a +famous man of the time will ever know!" + +He looked away from the picture to Jack's face keenly and back at the +picture and back at Jack and back at the picture once more. + +"Yes, yes!" he mused, corroboratively; and Jack realized that at the same +time Mary had been making the same comparison. + +"Very like!" she said, with that impersonal exactness which to him was +always the most exasperating of her phases. + +Then the Doge returned to the Sargent. He was standing nearer the +picture, but in the same position as before, while Jack and Mary waited +silently on his pleasure; and all three were as motionless as the +furniture, had it not been for the nervous twitching of the Doge's +fingers. He seemed unconscious of the passing of time; a man in a maze of +absorption with his thoughts. Jack was strangely affected. His brain was +marking time at the double-quick of fruitless energy. He felt the +atmosphere of the room surcharged with the hostility of the unknown. He +was gathering a multitude of impressions which only contributed more +chaos to chaos. His sensibilities abnormally alive to every sound, he +heard the outside door opened with a latch-key; he heard steps in the +hall, and saw his father's figure in the doorway of the drawing-room. + +John Wingfield, Sr. appeared with a smile that was gone in a flash. +His face went stark and gray as stone under a frown from the Doge to +Jack; and with an exclamation of the half-articulate "Oh!" of +confusion, he withdrew. + +Jack looked around to see the Doge half turned in the direction of the +door, gripping the back of a chair to steady himself, while Mary was +regarding this sudden change in him in answer to the stricken change in +the intruder with some of Jack's own paralysis of wonder. The Doge was +the first to speak. He fairly rocked the chair as he jerked his hand free +of its support, while he shook with a palsy which was not that of fear, +for there was raging color in his cheeks. The physical power of his great +figure was revealed. For the first time Jack was able to think of him as +capable of towering militancy. His anger gradually yielded to the +pressure of will and the situation. At length he said faintly, with a +kind of abyssmal courtesy: + +"Thank you, Sir Chaps! Now I shall not go back to the desert without +having seen a Velasquez. Thank you! And we must be going." + +Jack had an impulse, worthy of the tempestuous buccaneer of the picture, +to call to his father to come down; and then to bar the front door until +his burning questions were heard. The still light in Mary's eyes would +have checked him, if not his own proper second thought and the fear of +precipitating an ungovernable crisis. There had been shadows, real +shadows, he was thinking wildly; they were not born of desert imaginings; +and out of the quandary of his anguish came only the desire not to part +from the Doge and Mary in this fashion! No, not until in some way +equilibrium of mind was restored. + +Though he knew that they did not expect or want his company, he went +out into the street with them. He would go as far as their hotel, he +remarked, in the bravery of simulated ease. The three were walking in +the same relative positions that they had before, with the Doge's bulk +hiding Mary from Jack's sight. The Doge set a rapid pace, as if under +the impetus of a desire to escape from the neighborhood of the +Wingfield house. + +"Well, Sir Chaps," he said, after a while, "it will be a long time before +the provincials come to New York again. Why, in this New York you can +spend a patrimony in two weeks"--this with an affected amusement at his +own extravagance--"and I've pretty nearly done it. So we fly from +temptation. Yes, Mary, we will take the morning train." + +"The morning train!" Mary exclaimed; and her surprise left no doubt that +her father's decision was new to her. Was it due to an exchange of +glances between a stark face and a face crimson with indignation which +Jack had already connected with the working out of his own destiny? + +"Yes, that is better than spending our orange crop again!" she hastened +to add, with reassuring humor. "I'm fairly homesick for our oasis." + +"We've had our fill of the big city," said the Doge, feelingly, "and we +are away to our little city of peace where we turned our pasts under with +the first furrows in the virgin soil." + +Then silence. The truce of nonsense was dead. Persiflage was dead. Jack +was as a mute stranger keeping at their side unasked, while the only +glimpse he had of Mary was the edge of her hat and her fingertips on her +father's sleeve. Silence, which he felt was as hard for them as for him, +lasted until they were at the entrance to the quiet little hotel on a +cross-town street where the Ewolds were staying; and having the first +glimpse of Mary's eyes since they had started, he found nothing +fathomable in them except unmistakable relief that the walk was over. + +"Thank you for showing me the Velasquez," said the Doge. + +"Thank you, Jack," Mary added. + +Both spoke in a manner that signaled to him the end of all things, but an +end which he could not accept. + +"I--I--oh, there are a thousand questions I--" he broke out, desperately. + +The muscles of his face tightened. Unconsciously he had leaned forward +toward the Doge in his intensity, and his attitude had become that of the +Wingfield of the portrait. A lower note of command ran through the +misery of his tone. + +Jasper Ewold stared at him in a second of scrutiny, at once burningly +analytic and reflective. Then he flushed as he had at sight of the figure +in the drawing-room doorway. His look plainly said: "How much longer do +you mean to harass me?" as if Jack's features were now no less the image +of a hard and bitter memory than those of John Wingfield, Sr. Jack drew +back hurt and dumb, in face of this anger turned on himself. At length, +the Doge mustered his rallying smile, which was that of a man who carries +into his declining years a burden of disappointments which he fears may, +in his bad moments, get the better of his personal system of philosophy. + +"Come, Mary!" he said, drawing his arm through hers. He became, in an +evident effort, a grand, old-fashioned gentleman, making a bow of +farewell. "Come, Mary, it's an early train and we have our packing +yet to do." + +This time it was, indeed, dismissal; such a dismissal with polite urgency +as a venerable cabinet minister might give an importunate caller who is +slow to go. He and Mary started into the hotel. But he halted in the +doorway to say over his shoulder, with something of his old-time cheer, +which had the same element of pity as his leave-taking on the trail +outside of Little Rivers: + +"Luck, Sir Chaps!" + +"Luck!" Mary called in the same strained tone that she had called to Jack +when he went over the pass on his way to New York, the tone that was like +the click of a key in the lock of a gate. + + + + +XXX + +WITH THE PHANTOMS + + +As Jack left the hotel entrance he was walking in the treadmill mechanics +of a prisoner pacing a cell, without note of his surroundings, except of +dim, moving figures with which he must avoid collision. The phantoms of +his boyhood, bulky and stiflingly near, had a monstrous reality, yet the +ghostly intangibility that mocked his sword-thrusts of tortured inquiry. +At length his distraction centered on the fact that he and his father +were to dine alone that evening. + +They dined alone regularly every Wednesday, when Jack made a report of +his progress and received a lesson in business. It was at the last +council of this kind that John Wingfield, Sr. had bidden his son to +bring all questions and doubts to him. Now Jack hailed the weekly +function as having all the promise of relief of a surgeon's knife. Fully +and candidly he would unburden himself of every question beating in his +brain and every doubt assailing his spirit. + +By the time that he was mounting the steps of the house his growing +impatience could no longer bear even the delay of waiting on dinner. When +he entered the hall he was the driven creature of an impelling desire +that must be satisfied immediately. + +"Will you ask my father if he will see me at once?" he said to the +butler. + +"Mr. Wingfield left word that he had to go into the country for the +night," answered the butler. "I am sorry, sir," he added confusedly, in +view of the blank disappointment with which the information was received. + +In dreary state Jack dined by himself in the big dining-room, leaving the +food almost untouched. At intervals he was roused to a sense of his +presence at table by the servant's question if he should bring another +course. Without waiting for the last one, he went downstairs to the +drawing-room, and standing near the "Portrait of a Lady," again poured +out his questions, receiving the old answer of "I give! I give!" which +meant, he knew, that she had given all of herself to him. Saying after +saying of hers raced through his mind without throwing light on the +mystery, which had the uncanniness of a conspiracy against him. + +And after his mother, Mary had influenced him more than any other person. +She had brought life to the seeds which his mother had planted in his +nature. That new life could not die, but without her it could not +flourish. Her cry of "It's not in the blood!" again came echoing to his +ears. What had she meant? The question sent him to the Ewolds' hotel; it +sent this note up to her room: + +"MARY: + +"In behalf of old desert comradeship, if I were in trouble wouldn't you +help me all you could? If I were in darkness and you could give me light, +would you refuse? Won't you see me for a few moments, if I promise to +keep to my side of the barrier which you have raised between us? I will +wait here in the lobby a long time, hoping that you will. + +"JACK." + +"All the light I have to give. I also am in darkness," came the answer in +a nervous, impulsive hand across a sheet of paper; and soon Mary herself +appeared from the elevator, not in the fashion of the Avenue, but in +simple gray coat and skirt, such as she wore at home. She greeted him in +a startled, half-fearful manner, as if her presence were due to the +impulsion of duty rather than choice. + +"Shall we walk?" she asked, turning toward the door in the welcome of +movement as a steadying influence in her evident emotion. + +There they were in the old rhythm of step of Little Rivers companionship +on a cross-town street. He saw that the costly hat that he had selected +for her in the display of a shop-window after all was not the equal of +the plain model with a fetching turn to the brim and a single militant +feather, which she wore that evening. The light feather boa around her +neck on account of the cool night air seemed particularly becoming. He +was near, very near, her, so near that their elbows touched; but the +nearness was like that of a picture out of a frame which has come to life +and may step back into cold canvas at any moment. Oh, it was hard, in the +might of his love for her, not to forget everything else and cry out +another declaration, as he had from the canyon! But her face was very +still. She was waiting for him to begin, while her fingers were playing +nervously with the tip of her boa. + +"I must be frank, very frank," he said. + +"Yes, Jack, or why speak at all?" + +"From the night of my arrival in Little Rivers, when the Doge at once +recognized who I was without telling me, I saw that, under his politeness +and his kindness, he was hostile to my presence in Little Rivers." + +"Yes, I think that in a way he was," she answered. + +"I was conscious that something out of the past was between him and me, +and that it included you in a subtle influence that nothing could change. +And this afternoon, while you were at the house and my father came to the +drawing-room door, I could not help noticing how the Doge was overcome. +You noticed it, too?" + +"Yes, I never saw my father in such anger before. It seemed to me that +he could have struck down that man in the doorway!" There was a +perceptible shudder, but she did not look up, her glance remaining level +with the flags. + +"And on the pass you said, 'It's not in the blood!'" he continued. "Yes, +almost in terror you said it, as if it spelled an impassable gulf between +us. Why? why? Mary, haven't I a right to know?" + +As he broke off passionately with this appeal, which was as the focus of +all the fears that had tormented him, they were immediately under the +light of a street lamp. She turned her head toward him resolutely, in the +mustering of her forces for an ordeal. Her face was pale, but there was +an effort at the old smile of comradeship. + +"Yes, as I said, the little light that I have is yours, Jack," she began. +"But there is not much. It is, perhaps, more what I feel than what I +know that has influenced me. All that my father has ever said about you +and your father and your relations to us was the night after I returned +from the pass ahead of you, when you had descended into the canyon to +frighten me with the risk you were taking." + +"I did not mean to frighten you!" he interjected. "I only followed +an impulse." + +"Yes, one of your impulses, Jack," she remarked, comprehendingly. "Father +and I have been so much together--indeed, we have never been apart--that +there is more than filial sympathy of feeling between us. There is +something akin to telepathy. We often divine each other's thoughts. I +think that he understood what had taken place between us on the pass; +that you had brought on some sort of a crisis in our relations. It was +then that he told me who you were, as you know. Then he talked of you and +your father--you still wish to hear?" + +"Yes!" + +"And you will listen in silence?" + +"Yes!" + +"I will grant your defence of your father, but you will not argue? I am +giving what you ask, in justice to myself; I am giving my reasons, my +feelings." + +"No, I will not argue." + +Their tones were so low that a passer-by would have hardly been conscious +that they were talking; but had the passer-by caught the pitch he might +have hazarded many guesses, every one serious. + +"Then, I will try to make clear all that father said. You were the image +of your father--a smile and a square chin. The smile could charm and the +chin could kill. He liked you for some things that seemed to spring from +another source, as he called it; but these would vanish and in the end +you would be like your father, as he knew when he saw you break Pedro +Nogales's arm. And you gloried in your strength; as you told me on the +pass and as I saw for myself in the duel. And to you, father said, +victory was the supreme guerdon of life. It ran triumphant and +inextinguishable in your veins." + +"I--" he said, chokingly; but remembered his promise not to argue. + +"Any opposition, any refusal excited your will to overcome it in the +sheer joy of the exercise of your strength. This had been your father's +story in everything, even in his marriage." + +She paused. + +"There is nothing more? No further light on his old relations with my +father and mother?" he asked. + +"Only a single exclamation, 'It's not in the blood for you to believe in +Jack Wingfield, Mary!' And after that he turned silent and moody. I +pressed him for reasons. He answered that he had told me enough. I had to +live my own life; the rest I must decide for myself. I knew that I was +hurting him sorely. I was striking home into that past about which he +would never speak, though I know it still causes him many days of +suffering." + +"But on the desert there is no past!" Jack exclaimed. + +"Yes, there is, Jack. There is your own heart. On the desert your past is +not shared with others. But to-night, after I received your note, I did +try, for the second time in my life, to share father's. I told him your +request; I spoke of the scene in your drawing-room; I asked him what it +meant. He answered that you must learn from one nearer you than he was, +and that he never wanted to think of that scene again." + +It was she who had chosen the direction at the street corners. They were +returning now toward the hotel. The fingers which had been playing with +the boa had crumpled the end of it into a ball, which they were gripping +so tightly that the knuckles were little white spots set in a blood-red +background. She was suffering, but determined to leave nothing unsaid. + +"Jack, when I said 'It's not in the blood' I was more than repeating my +father's words. They expressed a truth for me. I meant not only rebellion +against what was in you, but against the thing that was in me. Why, Jack, +I do not even remember my own mother! I have only heard father speak of +her sadly when I was much younger. Of late years he has not mentioned +her. He and the desert and the garden are all I have and all I know; and +probably, yes--probably I'm a strange sort of being. But what I am, I am; +and to that I will be true. Father went to the desert to save my life; +and broken-hearted, old, he is greater to me than the sum of any worldly +success. And, Jack, you forget--riding over the pass so grandly with your +impulses, as if to want a thing is to get it--you--but we have had good +times together; and, as I said, you belong on one side of the pass and I +on the other. This and much else, which one cannot see or define, is +between us. From the day you came, some forbidding influence seemed at +work in my father's life and mine; and when you had gone another man, +with your features and your smile, came to Little Rivers; one that I +understand even less than you!" + +Jack recalled the references to the new rancher by Bob Worther on the day +of his departure for the East and, later, in Jim Galway's letter. But he +did not speak. Something more compelling than his promise was keeping him +silent: her own apprehension, with its story of phantoms of her own. + +"And yesterday I saw your father's face," she went on, "as it appeared in +the doorway for a second before he saw my father and was struck with +fear, and how like yours it was--but more like John Prather's. And the +high-sounding preachments about the poverty that might go with fine gowns +became real to me. They were not banal at all. They were simple truth, +free of rhetoric and pretence. I knew that my cry of 'It's not in the +blood' was as true in me as any impulse of yours ever could be in you!" + +To the end, under the dominance of her will, she had not faltered; and +with the end she looked up with a faint smile of stoicism and an +invincible flame in her eyes. Anything that he might be able to say would +be as flashing a blade in and out of a blaze. She had become superior to +the resources of barrier or armor, confident of a self whose richness he +realized anew. He saw and felt the tempered fineness of her as something +that would mind neither siege nor prayer. + +"I am not afraid," she said, "and I know that you are not. It is all +right!" Then she added, with a desperate coolness, but still clasping the +boa rigidly: "The hotel is only a block away, and to-morrow you will be +back in the store and I shall soon be on my side of the pass." + +This was her right word for a situation when his temples were throbbing, +harking back, with time's reversal of conditions, to a situation after +the duel in the _arroyo_ was over and he had used the right word when her +temples were throbbing and her hands splashed. If retribution were her +object, she had repaid in nerve-twitch of torture for nerve-twitch of +torture. The picture that had been alive and out of its frame was back on +cold canvas. Even the girl he had known across the barrier, even the girl +in armor, seemed more kindly. But one can talk, even to a picture in a +frame; at least, Jack could, with wistful persistence. + +"You don't mind if I tell you again--if I speak my one continuous thought +aloud again?" he asked. "Mary, I love you! I love you in such a way that +I"--with a faint bravery of humor as he saw danger signals--"I would +build mud-houses all day for you to knock to pieces!" + +"Foolish business, Jack!" she answered. + +"Or drag a plow." + +"Very hard work!" + +"Or set out to tunnel a mountain single-handed, with hammer and chisel." + +"I think you would find it dreadfully monotonous at the end of the +first week." + +He had spoken his extravagances without winning a glance from her. She +had answered with a precision that was more trying than silence. + +"_I_ shouldn't find it so if you were in the neighborhood to welcome +me when I knocked off for the day," he declared. "You see, I can't +help it. I can't help what is in me, just as surely as the breath of +life is in me." + +"Jack!" she flashed back, with arresting sharpness, but without looking +around, while her step quickened perceptibly, "suppose I say that I am +sorry and I, too, cannot help it; that I, too, have temperament, as well +as you;" her tone was almost harsh; "that even you cannot have everything +you command; that for you to want a thing does not mean that I want it; +that I cannot help the fact that I do not--" + +With a quick interruption he stayed the end of the sentence, as if it +were a descending blade. + +"Don't say that!" he implored. "It is too much like taking a vow that +might make you fearfully stubborn in order to live up to it. Perhaps the +thing will come some day. It's wonderful how such a thing does come. You +see, I speak from experience," he went on, in wan insistence, with the +entrance to the hotel in sight. "Why, it is there before you realize it, +like the morning sunshine in a room while you are yet asleep. And you +open your eyes and there is the joyous wonder, settling itself all +through you and making itself at home forever. You know for the first +time that you are alive. You know for the first time that you were born +into this world merely because one other person was born into it." + +"Very well said," she conceded, in hasty approval, without vouchsafing +him a glance. "I begin to think you get more inspiration for compliments +on this side of the pass than on the other,"--and they were at the hotel +door. Precipitately she hastened through it, as if with her last display +of strength after the exhaustion of that walk. + + + + +XXXI + +PRATHER WOULD NOT WAIT + + +When he returned to the house, Jack found a letter that had come in the +late mail from Jim Galway: + +"First off, that story you sent for Belvy," Jim wrote. "We've heard it +read and reread, and the more it's worn with reading the fresher it gets +in our minds. As I size up the effect on the population, we folks in the +forties and fifties got more fun out of it than anybody except the folks +in the seventies and the five-to-twelve-year-olds. Some of the thirteen +and fourteen-year-olds were inclined to think at first that it wasn't +quite grown up enough for them, until they saw what fashionable +literature it was becoming. Then their dignified maturity limbered up a +little. Jack, it certainly did us a world of good. It seemed as if you +were back home again." + +"Back home again!" Jack repeated, joyously; and then shook his head at +himself in solemn warning. + +"And those of us that don't take our meat without salt sort of needed +cheering up," Jim went on. "Only a few days after I wrote you, the Doge +and Mary suddenly started for New York. Maybe he has looked you up." (The +"maybe" followed an "of course," which had been scratched through.) "And +maybe if he has you know more about what is going on here than we do. We +practically don't know anything; but I've sure got a feeling of that +uncertainty in the atmosphere that I used to have before a cyclone when I +lived in Kansas. This Prather, that so many thought at first looked like +you, has also gone to New York. + +"He left only two days ago. Maybe you will run across him. I don't know, +but it seems to me he's gone to get the powder for some kind of a blow-up +here. Jack, you know what would happen if we lost our water rights and +you know what I wrote you in my last letter. Leddy and Ropey Smith are +hanging around all the time, and since the Doge went a whole lot of +fellows that don't belong to the honey-bee class have been turning up and +putting up their tents out on the outskirts, like they expected something +to happen. If things get worse and I've got something to go on and we +need you, I'm going to telegraph just as I said I would; because, Jack, +though you're worth a lot of millions, someway we feel you're one of us. + +"Very truly yours for Little Rivers, + +"JAMES R. GALWAY. + +"P.S.--Belvy said to put in P.S. because P.S.'s are always the most +important part of a letter. She wants to know if you won't write +another story." + +"I will!" said Jack. "I will, immediately!" + +He made it a long story. He took a deal of pains with it in the very +relief of something to do when sleep was impossible and he must count the +moments in wretched impatience until his interview with the one person +who could answer his questions. + +As he went down town in the morning the very freshness of the air +inspired him with the hope that he should come out of his father's office +with every phantom reduced to a figment of imagination springing from the +abnormality of his life-story; with a message that should allay Mary's +fears and soften her harshness toward him; with the certainty that the +next time he and his father sat together at dinner it would be in a +permanent understanding, craved of affection. Mary might come to New +York; the Doge might spend his declining years in leisurely patronage of +bookshops and galleries; and he would learn how to run the business, +though his head split, as became a simple, normal son. + +These eddying thoughts on the surface of his mind, however, could not +free him of a consciousness of a deep, unsounded current that seemed to +be the irresistible, moving power of Mary's future, the store's, his +fathers, Jasper Ewold's and his own. With it he was going into a gorge, +over a cataract, or out into pleasant valleys, he knew not which. He knew +nothing except that there was no stopping the flood of the current which +had its source in streams already flowing before he was born. When the +last question had been asked his future would be clear. Relief was ahead, +and after relief would come the end of introspection and the beginning of +his real career. + +But another question was waiting for him in the store. It was walking the +streets of his father's city in the freedom of a spectator who comes to +observe and not to buy. Crossing the first floor as he came to the +court, Jack saw, with sudden distinctness among the many faces coming and +going, a profile which, in its first association, developed on his vision +as that of his own when he shaved in front of the ear in the morning. He +had only a glimpse before it was turned away and its owner, a young man +in a quiet gray suit, started up the stairs. + +Jack studied the young man's back half amusedly to see if this, too, were +like his own, and laughed at himself because he was sure that he would +not know his own back if it were preceding him in a promenade up the +Avenue. In peculiar suspense he was hoping that the young man would pause +and look around, as his father always did and shoppers often did, in a +survey of the busy, moving picture of the whole floor. But the young man +went on to the top of the flight. There he proceeded along the railing of +the court. His profile was again in view under a strong light, and Jack +realized that his first recognition of a resemblance was the recognition +of an indisputable fact. + +"Have I a double out West and another in New York?" he thought. "It gives +a man a kind of secondhand feeling!" + +Then he recalled Jim's letter saying that John Prather had gone to New +York. Was this John Prather? He had no doubt that it was when the object +of his scrutiny, with full face in view, stopped and leaned over the +balcony just above the diamond counter. There was a mole patch on the +cheek such as Jack remembered that the accounts of John Prather had +mentioned. + +"I am as much fussed as the giant was at the sight of yellow!" +Jack mused. + +But for the mole patch the features were his own, as he knew them, +though no one not given to more frequent personal councils with mirrors +than Senor Don't Care of desert trails knows quite the lights and shadows +of his own countenance, which give it its character even more than does +its form. John Prather was regarding the jewelry display, where the +diamonds were scintillating under the light from the milk glass roof, +with a smile of amused contemplation. His expression was unpleasant to +Jack. It had a quality of satire and of covetousness as its owner leaned +farther over the rail and rubbed the palms of his hands together as +gleefully as if the diamonds were about to fly into his pockets by +enchantment. + +All the time Jack had stood motionless in fixed and amazed observation. +He wondered that his stare had not drawn the other's attention. But John +Prather seemed too preoccupied with the dazzle of wealth to be +susceptible to any telepathic influence. + +"Great heavens! I am gaping at him as if he were climbing hand over hand +up the face of a sky-scraper!" Jack thought. It was time something +happened. Why should he get so wrought up over the fact that another man +looked like him? "I'll get acquainted!" he declared, shaking himself free +of his antipathy. "We are both from Little Rivers and that's a ready +excuse for introducing myself." + +As he started across the floor toward the stairs, Prather straightened +from his leaning posture. For an instant his glance seemed to rest on +Jack. Indeed, eye met eye for a flash; and then Prather moved away. His +decision to go might easily have been the electric result of Jack's own +decision to join him. Jack ran up the stairs. At the head of the flight +he saw, at half the distance across the floor, Prather's back entering an +elevator on the down trip. He hurried forward, his desire to meet and +speak with the man whose influence Jim Galway and Mary feared now +overwhelming. + +"Hello!" Jack sang out; and this to Prather's face after he had turned +around in the elevator. + +In the second while the elevator man was swinging to the door, Jack +and Prather were fairly looking at each other. Prather had seen that +Jack wanted to speak to him, even if he had not heard the call. His +answer was a smile of mixed recognition and satire. He made a +gesture of appreciative understanding of the distinction in their +likeness by touching the mole on his cheek with his finger, which +was Jack's last glimpse of him before he was shot down into the +lower regions of the store. + +"He did it neatly!" Jack gasped, with a sense of defeat and chagrin. "And +it is plain that he does not care to get acquainted. Perhaps he takes it +for granted that I am not friendly and foresaw that I would ask him a lot +of questions about Little Rivers that he would not care to answer." At +all events, the only way to accept the situation was lightly, his reason +insisted. "Having heard about the likeness, possibly he came to the store +to have a look at me, and after seeing me felt that he had been libeled!" + +But his feelings refused to follow his reason in an amused view. + +"I do not like John Prather!" he concluded, as he took the next elevator +to the top floor. "Yes, I liked Pete Leddy better at our first meeting. I +had rather a man would swear at me than smile in that fashion. It is +much more simple." + +The incident had had such a besetting and disagreeable effect that Jack +would have found it difficult to rid his mind of it if he had not had a +more centering and pressing object in prospect in the citadel of the +push-buttons behind the glass marked "Private." + +John Wingfield, Sr. looked up from his desk in covert watchfulness to +detect his son's mood, and he was conscious of a quality of manner that +recalled the returning exile's entry into the same room upon his arrival +from the West. + +"Well, Jack," the father said, with marked cheeriness, "I hear you have +been taking a holiday. It's all right, and you will find motoring beats +pony riding." + +"In some ways," Jack answered; and then he came a step nearer, his hand +resting on the edge of the desk, as he looked into his father's eyes with +glowing candor. + +John Wingfield, Sr.'s eyes shifted to the pushbuttons and later to a +paper on the desk, with which his fingers played gently. He realized +instantly that something unusual was on Jack's mind. + +"Father," Jack went on, "I want a long talk quite alone with you. When it +is over I feel that we shall both know each other better; we can work +together in a fuller understanding." + +"Yes, Jack," answered the father, cautiously feeling his way with a +swift upward glance, which fell again to the paper. "Well, what is it +now? Come on!" + +"There are a lot of questions I want to ask--family questions." + +"Family questions?" The fingers paused in playing with the paper for an +instant and went on playing again. The soft hands were as white as the +paper. "Family questions, eh? Well, there isn't much to our family except +you and I and that old ancestor--and a long talk, you say?" + +"Yes. I thought that probably this would be a good time; you could give +me an hour now. It might not take that long." + +Jack's voice was even and engaging and respectful. But it seemed to fill +the room with many echoing whispers. + +"I have a very busy day before me," the father said, still without +looking up. He was talking to a little pad at one corner of the green +blotter which had a list of his appointments. "Your questions are not so +imperative that they cannot wait?" + +"Then shall it be at dinner?" Jack asked. + +"At dinner? No. I have an engagement for dinner." + +"Shall you be home early? Shall I wait up for you?" Jack persisted. + +"Yes, that's it! Say at nine. I'll make a point of it--in the library at +nine!" John Wingfield, Sr.'s hand slipped away from the papers and +patted the back of Jack's hand. "And come on with your questions. I will +answer every one that I can." He was looking up at Jack now, smilingly +and attractively in his frankness. "Every one that I can, from the first +John Wingfield right down to the present!" + +But the hand that lay on Jack's was cold and its movement nervous and +spasmodic. + +"Thank you, father. I knew you would. I haven't forgotten your wish that +I should bring all my doubts and questions to you," said Jack, happily. +And in an impulse which had the devoutness of a rising hope he took that +cold, soft hand in both of his and gave it a shake; and the feel of the +son's grip, firm and warm, remained with John Wingfield, Sr. while he +stared at the door through which Jack had passed out. When he had pulled +himself together he asked Mortimer to connect him with Dr. Bennington. + +"Doctor, I want a little talk with you to-night before nine," he said. +"Could you dine with me--not at the house--say at the club? +Yes--excellent--and make it at seven. Yes. Good-by!" + + + + +XXXII + +A CRISIS IN THE WINGFIELD LIBRARY + + +A library atmosphere was missing from the Wingfield library, with its +heavy panelling and rows of red and blue morocco backs. Rather the +suggestion was of a bastion of privacy, where a man of action might make +his plans or take counsel at leisure amid rich and mellow surroundings. +Here, John Wingfield, Sr. had gained points through post-prandial +geniality which he could never have won in the presence of the battery of +push-buttons; here, his most successful conceptions had come to him; +here, he had known the greatest moments of his life. He was right in +saying that he loved his library; but he hardly loved it for its books. + +When he returned to the house shortly before nine from his session with +Dr. Bennington, it was with the knowledge that another great moment was +in prospect. He took a few turns up and down the room before he rang for +the butler to tell Jack that he had come in. Then he placed a chair near +the desk, where its occupant would sit facing him. After he sat down he +moved the desk lamp, which was the only light in the room, so that its +rays fell on the back of the chair and left his own face in shadow--a +precaution which he had taken on many other occasions in adroitness of +stage management. He drew from the humidor drawer of his desk a box of +the long cigars with blunt ends which need no encircling gilt band in +praise of their quality. + +As Jack entered, the father welcomed him with a warm, paternal smile. And +be it remembered that John Wingfield, Sr. could smile most pleasantly, +and he knew the value of his smile. Jack answered the smile with one of +his own, a little wan, a little subdued, yet enlivening under the glow of +his father's evident happiness at seeing him. The father, who had +transgressed the rules of longevity by taking a second cigar after +dinner, now pushed the box across the desk to his son. Jack said that he +would "roll one"; he did not care to smoke much. He produced a small +package of flake tobacco and a packet of rice paper and with a deftness +that was like sleight of hand made a cigarette without spilling a single +flake. He had not always chosen the "makings" in place of private stock +Havanas, but it seemed to suit his mood to-night. + +"That is one of the things you learned in the West," the father observed +affably, to break the ice. + +"I can do them with one hand," Jack answered. "But you are likely to +have an overflow--which is all right when you have the whole desert for +the litter. Besides, in a library it would have the effect of gallery +play, I fear." + +He was seated in a way that revealed all the supple lines of his figure. +However relaxed his attitude before his father, it was always suggestive +of latent strength, appealing at once to paternal pride and paternal +uncertainty as to what course the strength would take. His face under the +light of the lamp was boyish and singularly without trace of guile. + +The father struck a match and held it to light his son's cigarette; +another habit of his which he had found flattering to men who were +brought into the library for conference. Jack took a puff slowly and, +after a time, another puff, and then dropped the cigarette on the ash +receiver as much as to say that he had smoked enough. Something told John +Wingfield, Sr. that this was to be a long interview and in no way +hurried, as he saw the smile dying on the son's lips and misery coming +into the son's eyes. + +"These last two days have been pretty poignant for me," Jack began, in a +simple, outright fashion; "and only half an hour ago I got this. It was +hard to resist taking the first train West." He drew a telegram from his +pocket and handed it to his father. + +"We want you and though we don't suppose you can come, we simply had to +let you know. + +"JAMES R. GALWAY." + +"It is Greek to me," said the father. "From your Little Rivers +friends, I judge." + +"Yes. I suppose that we may as well begin with it, as it drove everything +else out of my mind for the moment." + +John Wingfield, Sr. swung around in his chair, with his face in the +shadow. His attitude was that of a companionable listener who is prepared +for any kind of news. + +"As you will, Jack," he said. "Everything that pertains to you is my +interest. Go ahead in your own way." + +"It concerns John Prather. I don't know that I have ever told you about +him in my talks of Little Rivers." + +"John Prather?" The father reflectively sounded the name, the while he +studied the spiral of smoke rising from his cigar. "No, I don't think you +have mentioned him." + +It was Jack's purpose to take his father entirely into his confidence; to +reveal his own mind so that there should be nothing of its perplexities +which his father did not understand. He might not choose a logical +sequence of thought or event, but in the end nothing should be left +untold. Indeed, he had not studied how to begin his inquiries. That he +had left to take care of itself. His chief solicitude was to keep his +mind open and free of bitterness whatever transpired, and it was evident +that he was under a great strain. + +He told of the coming of John Prather to Little Rivers while he was +absent; of the mention of the likeness by his fellow-ranchers; and of the +fears entertained by Jim Galway and Mary. When he came to the scene in +the store that afternoon it was given in a transparent fulness of detail; +while all his changing emotions, from his first glimpse of Prather's +profile to the effort to speak with him and the ultimatum of Prather's +satirical gesture, were reflected in his features. He was the +story-teller, putting his gift to an unpleasant task in illumination of +sober fact and not the uses of imagination; and his audience was his +father's cheek and ear in the shadow. + +"Extraordinary!" John Wingfield, Sr. exclaimed when Jack had finished, +glancing around with a shrug. "Naturally, you were irritated. I like to +think that only two men have the Wingfield features--the features of the +ancestor--yes, only two: you and I!" + +"It was more than irritation; it was something profound and disturbing, +almost revolting!" Jack exclaimed, under the disagreeable spell of his +vivid recollection of the incident. "The resemblance to you was so +striking, father, especially in the profile!" Jack was leaning forward, +the better to see his father's profile, dim in the half light. "Yes, +recognizable instantly--the nose and the lines about the mouth! You have +never met anyone who has seen this man? You have never heard of him?" he +asked, almost morbidly. + +John Wingfield, Sr. broke into a laugh, which was deprecatory and +metallic. He looked fairly into Jack's eyes with a kind of inquiring +amazement at the boy's overwrought intensity. + +"Why, no, Jack," he said, reassuringly. "If I had I shouldn't have +forgotten it, you may be sure. And, well, Jack, there is no use of being +sensitive about it, though I understand your indignation--especially +after he flaunted the fact of the resemblance in such a manner and +refused to meet you. From what I have heard about that fight with +Leddy--Dr. Bennington told me--I can appreciate why he did not care to +meet you." He laughed, more genially this time, in the survey of his +son's broad shoulders. "I fear there is something of the old ancestor's +devil in you when you get going!" he added. + +So his father had seen this, too--what Mary had seen--this thing born in +him with the coming of his strength! + +"Yes, I suppose there is," he admitted, ruefully. "Yes, I have reason to +know that there is." + +His face went moody. Any malice toward John Prather passed. He was +penitent for a feeling against a stranger that seemed akin to the dormant +instinct that had made him glory in holding a bead on Pete Leddy. + +"And I am glad of it!" said John Wingfield, Sr., with a flash of stronger +emotion than he had yet shown in the interview. + +"I am not. It makes me almost afraid of myself," Jack answered. + +"Oh, I don't mean firing six-shooters--hardly! I mean backbone," he +hastened to add, almost ingratiatingly. "It is a thing to control, Jack, +not to worry about." + +"Yes, to control!" said Jack, dismally. + +He was hearing Ignacio's cry of "The devil is out of Senor Don't Care!" +and seeing for the thousandth time Mary's horrified face as he pressed +Pedro Nogales against the hedge. Now poise was all on the side of the +father, who glanced away from Jack at the glint of the library cases in +the semi-darkness in satisfaction. But only a moment did the son's absent +mood last. He leaned forward quivering, free from his spell of +reflection, and his words came pelting like hail. He was at grip with the +phantoms and nothing should loosen his hold till the truth was out. + +"Father, I could not fail to see the look on your face and the look on +Jasper Ewold's when you found him in the drawing-room!" + +At the sudden reversal of his son's attitude, John Wingfield, Sr. had +drawn back into the shadow, as, if in defensive instinct before the force +that was beating in Jack's voice. + +"Yes, I was startled; yes, very startled! But, go on! Speak everything +that you have in mind; for it is evident that you have much to say. Go +on!" he repeated more calmly, and turned his face farther into the +shadow, while he inclined his head toward Jack as if to hear better. One +leg had drawn up under him and was pressing against the chair. + +Jack waited a moment to gather his thoughts. When he spoke his +passion was gone. + +"We have always been as strangers, father," he began. "I have no +recollection of you in childhood until that day you came as a stranger to +the house at Versailles. I was seven, then. My mother was away, as you +will recall. I remember that you did not kiss me or show any affection. +You did not even say who you were. You looked me over, and I was very +frail. I saw that I did not please you; and I did not like you. In my +childish perversity I would speak only French to you, which you did not +understand. When my mother came home, do you remember her look? I do. She +went white as chalk and trembled. I was frightened with the thought that +she was going to die. It was a little while before she spoke and when she +did speak she was like stone. She asked you what you wanted, as if you +were an intruder. You said: 'I have been looking at the boy!' Your +expression told me again that you were not pleased with me. Without +another word you departed. I can still hear your steps on the walk as you +went away; they were so very firm." + +"Yes, Jack, I can never forget." The tone was that of a man racked. "What +else?" he asked. "Go on, Jack!" + +"You know the life my mother and I led, study and play together. And +that was the only time you saw me until I was fourteen. I was mortally in +awe of you then and in awe of you the day I went West with your message +to get strong. But I got strong; yes, strong, father!" + +"Yes, Jack," said the father. "Yes, Jack, leave nothing unsaid--nothing!" + +Now Jack swept back to the villa garden in Florence, the day of the +Doge's call; and from there to the Doge's glance of recognition that +first night in Little Rivers; then to the scene in front of the +bookstore, when the Doge hesitated about going to see the Velasquez. He +pictured the Doge's absorption over the mother's portrait; he repeated +Mary's story on the previous evening. + +All the while the profile, so dimly outlined in the outer darkness beyond +the lamp's circle of light, to which he had been speaking, had not +stirred. The father's cigar had gone out. It lay idly in his fingers, +which rested on the arm of the chair, above a tiny pile of ashes on the +rug. But there was no other sign of emotion, except his half affirmative +interjections, with a confessional's encouragement to empty the mind of +its every affliction. + +"Why were my mother and myself always in exile? What was this barrier +between you and her? Why was it that I never saw you? Why this bitterness +of Jasper Ewold against you? Why should that bitterness be turned against +me? I want to know, father, so that we can start afresh and right. I no +longer want to be in the dark, with its mystery, but in the light, where +I can grapple with the truth!" + +There was no rancor, no crashing of sentences; only high tension in the +finality of an inquiry in which hope and fear rose together. + +"Yes, Jack!" exclaimed John Wingfield, Sr., after a silence in which he +seemed to be passing all that Jack had said in review. "I am glad you +have told me this; that you have come to the one to whom you should come +in trouble. You have made it possible for me to speak of something that I +never found a way to speak about, myself. For, Jack, you truly have been +a stranger to me and I to you, thanks to the chain of influences which +you have mentioned." + +Very slowly John Wingfield, Sr. had turned in his chair. Distress was +rising in his tone as he leaned toward Jack. His face under the rim of +light of the lamp had a new charm, which was not that of the indulgent or +flattering or winning smile, or the masterful set of his chin on an +object. He seemed pallid and old, struggling against a phantom himself; +almost pitiful, this man of strength, while his eyes looked into Jack's +with limpid candor. + +"Jack, I will tell you all I can," he said. "I want to. It is duty. It is +relief. But first, will you tell me what your mother told you? What her +reasons were? I have a right to know that, haven't I, in my effort to +make my side clear?" He spoke in direct, intimate appeal. + +Jack's lips were trembling and his whole nature was throbbing in a +new-found sympathy. For the first time he saw his father as a man of +sensitive feeling, capable of deep suffering. And he was to have the +truth, all the truth, in kindness and affection. + +"After you had left the house at Versailles," said Jack, "she took me in +her arms and said that you were my father. 'Did you like him?' she asked; +and I said no, realizing nothing but the childish impression of the +interview. At that she was wildly, almost hysterically, triumphant. I was +glad to have made her so happy. 'You are mine alone! You have only me!' +she declared over and over again. 'And you must never ask me any +questions, for that is best.' She never mentioned you afterward; and in +all my life, until I was fourteen, I was never away from her." + +Again the palm of John Wingfield, Sr.'s hand ran back and forth over his +knee and the foot that was against the chair leg beat a nervous tattoo; +while he drew a longer breath than usual, which might have been either of +surprise or relief. His face fell back behind the rim of the lamp's rays, +but he did not turn it away as he had when Jack was talking. + +"You know only the Jasper Ewold who has been mellowed by time," he began. +"His scholarship was a bond of companionship for you in the isolation of +a small community. I know him as boy and young man. He was very +precocious. At the age of eight, as I remember, he could read his Caesar. +You will appreciate what that meant in a New England town--that he was +somewhat spoiled by admiration. And, naturally, his character and mine +were very different, thanks to the difference in our situations; for the +Ewolds had a good deal of money in those days. I was the type of boy who +was ready to work at any kind of odd job in order to get dimes and +quarters for my little bank. + +"Well, it is quite absurd to go back to that as the beginning of Jasper +Ewold's feelings toward me; but one day young Wingfield felt that young +Ewold was patronizing him. We had a turn at fisticuffs which resulted in +my favor. Jasper was a proud boy, and he never quite forgave me. In fact, +he was not used to being crossed. Learning was easy for him; he was +good-looking; he had an attractive manner, and it seemed only his right +that all doors should open when he knocked. Soon after our battle he went +away to school. Not until we were well past thirty did our paths cross +again. He was something of a painter, but he really had had no set +purpose in life except the pleasures of his intellectual diversions. I +will not say that he was wild, but at least he had lived in the abundant +freedom of his opportunities. He fell in love at the same time that I did +with Alice Jamison. You have seen your mother's picture, but that gives +you little idea of her beauty in girlhood." + +"I have always thought her beautiful!" Jack exclaimed spontaneously. + +"Yes. I am glad. She always was beautiful to me; but I like best to think +of her before she turned against me. I like to think of her as she was in +the days of our courtship. Fortune favored me instead of Jasper Ewold. I +can well understand the blow it was to him, that she should take the +storekeeper, the man without learning, the man without family, as people +supposed then, when he thought that she belonged entirely to his world. +But his enmity thereafter I can only explain by his wounded pride; by a +mortal defeat for one used to having his way, for one who had never known +discipline. Your mother and I were very happy for a time. I thought that +she loved me and had chosen me because I was a man of purpose, while +Jasper Ewold was not." + +John Wingfield, Sr. spoke deliberately, measuring his thought before he +put it into words, as if he were trying to set himself apart as one +figure in a drama while he aimed to do exact justice to the others. + +"It was soon after you were born that your mother's attitude changed. She +was, as you know, supersensitive, and whatever her grievances were she +kept them to herself. My immersion in my affairs was such that I could +not be as attentive to her as I ought to have been. Sometimes I thought +that the advertisement with our name in big letters in every morning +paper might be offensive to her; again, that she missed in me the +education I had had to forfeit in youth, and that my affection could +hardly take its place. I know that Jasper Ewold saw her occasionally, and +in his impulse I know that he said things about me that were untrue. But +that I pass over. In his place I, too, might have been bitter. + +"The best explanation I can find of your mother's change toward me is one +that belongs in the domain of psychology and pathology. She suffered a +great deal at your birth and she never regained her former strength. When +she rose from her bed it was with a shadow over her mind. I saw that she +was unhappy and nervous in my presence. Indeed, I had at times to face +the awful sensation of feeling that I was actually repugnant to her. She +was especially irritable if I kissed or fondled you. She dropped all her +friends; she never made calls; she refused to see callers. I consulted +specialists and all the satisfaction I had was that she was of a +peculiarly high-strung nature and that in certain phases of melancholia, +where there is no complete mental and physical breakdown, the patient +turns on the one whom she would hold nearest and dearest if she were +normal. The child that had taken her strength became the virtual passion +of her worship, which she would share with no one. + +"When she proposed to go to Europe for a rest, taking you with her, I +welcomed the idea. I rejoiced in the hope that the doctors held out that +she would come back well, and I ventured to believe in a happy future, +with you as our common object of love and care. But she never returned, +as you know; and she only wrote me once, a wild sort of letter about what +a beautiful boy you were and that she had you and I had the store and I +was never to send her any more remittances. + +"I made a number of trips to Europe. I could not go frequently, because +in those days, Jack, I was a heavy borrower of money in the expansion of +my business, and only one who has built up a great business can +understand how, in the earlier and more uncertain period of our banking +credits, the absence of personal attention in any sudden crisis might +throw you on the rocks. Naturally, when I went I wrote to Alice that I +was coming; but I always found that she had gone and left no address for +forwarding mail from the Credit Lyonnais. Once when I went without +writing she eluded me, and the second time I found that she had a cottage +at Versailles. That, as you know, was the only occasion when I ever saw +you or her until I came to bring you home after her sudden death." + +"Yes," Jack whispered starkly. "That day I had left her as well as +usual and came home to find her lying still and white on a couch, her +book fallen out of her hand onto the floor and--" the words choked in +his throat. + +"And the stranger, your father, who came for you seemed very hard and +forbidding to you!" + +"Yes," Jack managed to say. + +"But, Jack, when my steps sounded so firm the day I left you at +Versailles it was the firmness of force of will fighting to accept the +inevitable. For I had seen your face. It was like mine, and yet I had to +give you up! I had to give you up knowing that I might not see you again; +knowing that this tragic, incomprehensible fatality had set you against +me; knowing that any further efforts to see you meant only pain for Alice +and for me. Whatever happiness she knew came from you, and that she +should have. And remember, Jack, that out of all this tragedy I, too, had +my point of view. I had my moments of reproach against fate; my moments +of bitterness and anger; my moments when I set all my mind with, volcanic +energy into my affairs in order to forget my misfortune. I had to build +for the sake of building. Perhaps that hardened me. + +"When you came home I saw that you were mine in blood but not mine in +heart. All your training had been foreign, all of estrangement from the +business and the ways of the home-country; which you could not help, I +could not help, nothing now could help. But, after all, I had been +building for you; that was my new solace. I wanted you to be equal to +what was coming to you, and that change meant discipline. To be frank +with you, as you have been with me, you were sickly, hectic, dreamy; and +when word came that you must go to the desert if your life were to be +saved--well, Jack, I had to put affection aside and consider this blow +for what it was, and think not of kind words but of what was best for you +and your future. I knew that my duty to you and your duty to yourself was +to see you become strong, and for your sake you must not return until you +were strong. + +"Now, as for the scene in the drawing-room the other day: I could not +forget what Jasper Ewold had said of me. That was one thing. Another was +that I had detected his influence over you; an influence against the +purpose and steadiness that I was trying to inculcate in you; and +suddenly coming upon him in my own house, in view of his enmity and the +way in which he had spoken about me, I was naturally startled and +indignant and withdrew to avoid a scene. That is all, Jack. I have +answered your questions to the best of my knowledge. If others occur to +you I will try my best to answer them, too;" and the father seemed ready +to submit every recess of his mind to the son's inquisition. + +"You have answered everything," said Jack; "everything--fairly, +considerately, generously." + +There was a flash of triumph in the father's eyes. Slowly he rose and +stood with his finger-ends caressing the blotting-pad. Jack rose at +the same time, his movement automatic, instinctively in sympathy with +his father's. His head was bowed under stress of the emotion, +incapable of translation into language, which transfixed him. It had +all been made clear, this thing that no one could help. His feeling +toward his mother could never change; but penetrating to the depths in +which it had been held sacred was a new feeling. The pain that had +brought him into the world had brought misery to the authors of his +being. There was no phantom except the breath of life in his nostrils +which they had given him. + +Watchfully, respecting the son's silence, the father's lips tightened, +his chin went out slightly and his brows drew together in a way that +indicated that he did not consider the battle over. At length, Jack's +head came up and his face had the strength of a youthful replica of the +ancestor's, radiant in gratitude, and in his eyes for the first time, in +looking into his father's, were trust and affection. There was no word, +no other demonstration except the steady, liquid look that spoke the +birth of a great, understanding comradeship. The father fed his hunger +for possession, which had been irresistibly growing in him for the last +two months, on that look. He saw his son's strength as something that had +at last become malleable; and this was the moment when the metal was at +white heat, ready for knowing turns with the pincers and knowing blows of +the hammer. + +The message from Jim Galway was still on the table where the father had +laid it after reading. Now he pressed his fingers on it so hard that the +nails became a row of red spots. + +"And the telegram, Jack?" he asked. + +Jack stared at the yellow slip of paper as the symbol of problems that +reappeared with burning acuteness in his mind. It smiled at him in the +satire of John Prather triumphing in Little Rivers. It visualized +pictures of lean ranchers who had brought him flowers in the days of his +convalescence; of children gathered around him on the steps of his +bungalow; of all the friendly faces brimming good-will into his own on +the day of his departure; of a patch of green in desert loneliness, with +a summons to arms to defend its arteries of life. + +"They want me to help--I half promised!" he said. + +"Yes. And just how can you help?" asked his father, gently. + +"Why, that is not quite clear yet. But a stranger, they made me one of +themselves. They say that they need me. And, father, that thrilled me. It +thrilled the idler to find that there was some place where he could be of +service; that there was some one definite thing that others thought he +could do well!" + +The father proceeded cautiously, reasonably, with his questions, as one +who seeks for light for its own sake. Jack's answers were luminously +frank. For there was always to be truth between them in their new +fellowship, unfettered by hopes or vagaries. + +"You could help with your knowledge of law? With political influence? +Help these men seasoned by experience in land disputes in that region?" + +"No!" + +"And would Jasper Ewold, whom I understand is the head and founder of the +community, want you to come? Has he asked you?" the father continued, +drawing in the web of logic. + +"On the contrary, he would not want me." + +"And Miss Ewold? Would she want you?" + +There Jack hesitated. When he spoke, however, it was to admit the fact +that was stabbing him. + +"No, she would not. She has dismissed me. But--but I half promised," he +added, his features setting firmly as they had after Leddy had fired at +him. "It seems like duty, unavoidable." + +The metal was cooling, losing its malleability, and the father proceeded +to thrust it back into the furnace. + +"Then, I take it that your value to Little Rivers is your cool hand +with a gun," he said, "and the summons is to uncertainties which may +lead to something worse than a duel. You are asked to come because you +can fight. Do you want to go for that? To go to let the devil, as you +call it, out of you?" + +Now the metal was soft with the heat of the shame of the moment when Jack +had called to Leddy, "I am going to kill you!" and of the moment when he +saw Pedro Nogales's limp, broken arm and ghastly face. + +"No, no!" Jack gasped. "I want no fight! I never want to draw a bead on a +man again! I never want to have a revolver in my hand again!" + +He was shuddering, half leaning against the desk for support. His +father waited in observant comprehension. Convulsively, Jack +straightened with desperation and all the impassioned pleading to Mary +on the pass was in his eyes. + +"But the thing that I cannot help--the transcendent thing, not of logic, +not of Little Rivers' difficulties--how am I to give that up?" he cried. + +"Miss Ewold, you mean?" + +"Yes!" + +"Jack, I know! I understand! Who should understand if not I?" The father +drew Jack's hand into his own, and the fluid force of his desire for +mastery was flowing out from his finger-ends into the son's fibres, which +were receptively sensitive to the caress. "I know what it is when the +woman you love dismisses you! You have her to think of as well as +yourself. Your own wish may not be lord. You may not win that which will +not be won"--how well he knew that!--"either by protest, by persistence, +or by labor. You are dealing with the tender and intangible; with +feminine temperament, Jack. And, Jack, it is wise for you, isn't it, to +bear in mind that your life has not been normal? With the switch from +desert to city life homesickness has crept over you. From to-night things +will not be so strange, will they? But if you wish a change, go to +Europe--yes, go, though I cannot bear to think of losing you the very +moment that we have come to know each other; when the past is clear and +amends are at hand. + +"And, Jack, if your mother were here with us and were herself, would she +want you to go back to take up a rifle instead of your work at my side? I +do not pretend to understand Jasper Ewold's or Mary Ewold's thoughts. She +has preferred to make another generation's ill-feeling her own in a thing +that concerns her life alone. She has seen enough of you to know her +mind. For, from all I hear, you have not been a faint-hearted lover. Is +it fair to her to follow her back to the desert? Is it the courage of +self-denial, of control of impulse on your part? Would your mother want +you to persist in a veritable conquest by force of your will, whose +strength you hardly realize, against Mary Ewold's sensibilities? And if +you broke down her will, if you won, would there be happiness for you and +for her? Jack, wait! If she cares for you, if there is any germ of love +for you in her, it will grow of itself. You cannot force it into blossom. +Come, Jack, am I not right?" + +Jack's hands lay cold and limp in his father's; so limp that it seemed +only a case of leading, now. Yet there was always the uncertain in the +boy; the uncertain hovering under that face of ashes that the father was +so keenly watching; a face so clearly revealing the throes of a struggle +that sent cold little shivers into his father's warm grasp. Jack's eyes +were looking into the distance through a mist. He dropped the lids as if +he wanted darkness in which to think. When he raised them it was to look +in his father's eyes firmly. There was a half sob, as if this +sentimentalist, this Senor Don't Care, had wrung determination from a +precipice edge, even as Mary Ewold had. He gripped his father's hands +strongly and lifted them on a level with his breast. + +"You have been very fine, father! I want you to be patient and go on +helping me. The trail is a rough one, but straight, now. I--I'm too +brimming full to talk!" And blindly he left the library. + +When the door closed, John Wingfield, Sr. seized the telegram, rolled it +up with a glad, fierce energy and threw it into the waste-basket. His +head went up; his eyes became points of sharp flame; his lips parted in a +smile of relief and triumph and came together in a straight line before +he sank down in his chair in a collapse of exhaustion. After a while he +had the decanter brought in; he gulped a glass of brandy, lighted another +cigar, and, swinging around, fell back at ease, his mind a blank except +for one glowing thought: + +"He will not go! He will give up the girl! He is to be all mine!" + +It is said that the best actors never go on the stage. They play real +parts in private life, making their own lines as they watch the other +players. One of this company, surveying the glint of his bookcases, was +satisfied with the greatest effort of his life in his library. + + + + +XXXIII + +PRATHER SEES THE PORTRAIT + + +It did not occur to Jack to question a word of the narrative that had +reduced a dismal enigma to luminous, connected facts. With the swift +processes of reason and the promptness of decision of which he was +capable on occasion, he had made up his mind as to his future even as he +ascended the stairs to his room. The poignancy of his father's appeal had +struck to the bed-rock of his affection and his conscience, revealing +duty not as a thing that you set for yourself, but which circumstances +set for you. + +Never before had he realized how hopelessly he had been a dreamer. Firio, +P.D., Wrath of God, and Jag Ear became the fantastic memory of another +incarnation. His devil should never again rejoice in having his finger on +a trigger or send him off an easy traveller in search of gorgeous +sunrises. His devil should be transformed into a backbone of unremitting +apprenticeship in loving service for the father who had built for him in +love. Though his head split, he would master every detail of the +business. And when Jack stepped into the Rubicon he did not splash around +or look back. He went right over to the new country on the other bank. + +But there were certain persons whom he must inform of the crossing. +First, he wrote a telegram to Jim Galway: "Sorry, but overwhelming duty +here will not permit. Luck and my prayers with you." Then to Firio a +letter, which did not come quite so easily: "You see by now that you are +mistaken, Firio. I am not coming back. Make the most of the ranch--your +ranch--that you can." The brevity, he told himself, was in keeping with +Firio's own style. Besides, anything more at length would have opened up +an avenue of recollections which properly belonged to oblivion. + +And Mary? Yes, he would write to her, too. He would cut the last strand +with the West. That was best. That was the part of his new courage of +self-denial stripping itself of every trammeling association of +sentiment. Other men had given up the women of their choice; and he could +never be the man of this woman's choice. Somehow, his father's talk had +made him realize an inevitable outcome which had better be met and +mastered in present fortitude, rather than after prolonged years of +fruitless hope centering two thousand miles away. He started a dozen +letters to Mary, meaning each to be a fitting _envoi_ to their +comradeship and a song of good wishes. Each one he wrote in the haste of +having the task quickly over, only to throw away what he had written when +he read it. The touch that he wanted would not come. He was simply +flashing out a few of a thousand disconnected thoughts that ran away +incoherently with his pen. + +But wasn't any letter, any communication of any kind, superfluous? Wasn't +it the folly of weak and stupid stubbornness? She had spoken her final +word in their relations at the hotel door. There was no Little Rivers; +there was no Mary; there was nothing but the store. To enforce this fiat +he had only to send the wire to Jim and post the letter to Firio. This he +would do himself. A stroll would give him fresh air. It was just what he +needed after all he had been through that evening; and he would see the +streets not with any memory of the old restlessness when he and his +father were strangers, but kindly, as the symbol of the future. + +His room was on the second floor. As he left it, he heard the door-bell +ring, its electric titter very clear in the silence of the house. No +doubt it meant a telegram for his father. At the turn of the stairs on +the first floor he saw the back of the butler before the open door. +Evidently it was not a matter of a telegram, but of some late caller. +Jack paused in the darkness of the landing, partly to avoid the bother of +having to meet anyone and partly arrested by the manner of the butler, +who seemed to be startled and in doubt about admitting a stranger at that +hour. Indistinctly, Jack could hear the caller's voice. The tone was +familiar in a peculiar quality, which he tried to associate with a voice +that he had heard frequently. The butler, apparently satisfied with the +caller's appearance, or, at least, with his own ability to take care of a +single intruder, stepped back, with a word to come in. Then, out of the +obscurity of the vestibule, appeared the pale face of John Prather. Jack +withdrew farther into the shadows instinctively, as if he had seen a +ghost; as if, indeed, he were in fear of ghosts. + +"I will take your card to Mr. Wingfield," said the butler. + +Prather made a perfunctory movement as if for a card-case, but +apparently changed his mind under the prompting suggestion that it was +superfluous. + +"My name is John Prather," he announced. "Mr. Wingfield knows who I am +and I am quite sure that he will see me." + +While the butler, after rapping cautiously, went into the library with +the message, John Prather stood half smiling to himself as he looked +around the hall. The effect seemed to please him in a contemplative +fashion, for he rubbed the palms of his hands together, as he had in his +survey of the diamond counters. He was serenity itself as John Wingfield, +Sr. burst out of the library, his face hard-set. + +"I thought you were going this evening!" he exclaimed. "By what right do +you come here?" + +He placed himself directly in front of Prather, thus hiding Prather's +figure, but not his face, which Jack could see was not in the least +disturbed by the other's temper. + +"Oh, no! The early morning train has the connections I want for Arizona," +he answered casually, as if he were far from being in any hurry. "I was +taking a walk, and happening to turn into Madison Avenue I found myself +in front of the house. It occurred to me what a lot I had heard about +that ancestor, and seeing a light in the library, and considering how +late it was, I thought I might have a glimpse of him without +inconveniencing any other member of the family. Do you mind?" + +He put the question with an inflection that was at once engaging and +confident. + +"Mind!" gasped John Wingfield, Sr. + +"I am sure you do not!" Prather returned. Now a certain deference and a +certain pungency of satire ran together in his tone, the mixture being +nicely and pleasurably controlled. "Is it in there, in the drawing-room?" + +"And then what else? Where do you mean to end? I thought that--" + +"Nothing else," Prather interrupted reassuringly. "Everything is settled, +of course. This is sort of a farewell privilege." + +"Yes, in there!" snapped John Wingfield, Sr. "It's the picture on the +other side of the mantel. I will wait here--and be quick, quick, I tell +you! I want you out of this house! I've done enough! I--" + +"Thanks! It is very good-natured of you!" + +John Prather passed leisurely into the drawing-room and John Wingfield, +Sr. stood guard by the door, his hand gripping the heavy portieres for +support, while his gaze was steadily fixed at a point in the turn of the +stairs just below where Jack was obscured in the shadow. His face was +drawn and ashen against the deep red of the hangings, and torment and +fear and defiance, now one and then the other, were in ascendency over +the features which Jack had always associated with composed and +unchanging mastery until he had seen them illumined with affection only +an hour before. And the father had said that he had never met or heard of +John Prather! The father had said so quietly, decidedly, without +hesitation! This one thought kept repeating itself to Jack's stunned +brain as he leaned against the wall limp from a blow that admits of no +aggressive return. + +"The ancestor certainly must have been a snappy member of society in his +time! It has been delightful to have a look at him," said John Prather, +as he came out of the drawing-room. + +He paused as he spoke. He was still smiling. The mole on his cheek was +toward the stairway; and it seemed to heighten the satire of his smile. +The faces of the young man and the old man were close together and they +were standing in much the same attitude, giving an effect of likeness in +more than physiognomy. That note of John Prather's voice that had sounded +so familiar to Jack was a note in the father's voice when he was +particularly suave. + +"This is the end--that is the understanding--the end?" demanded John +Wingfield, Sr. + +"Oh, quite!" John Prather answered easily, moving toward the door. He +did not offer his hand, nor did John Wingfield, Sr. offer to take it. +But as he went out he said, his smile broadening: "I hope that Jack +makes a success with the store, though he never could run it as well as +I could. Good-by!" + +"Good-by!" gasped John Wingfield, Sr. + +He wheeled around distractedly and stood still, his head bowed, his +fingers working nervously before his hands parted in a shrugging, +outspread gesture of relief; then, his head rising, his body stiffening, +once more his arbitrary self, he started up the stairs with the firm yet +elastic step with which he mounted the flights of the store. + +If Jack remained where he was they would meet. What purpose in questions +now? The answer to all might be as false as to one. He was no more in a +mood to trust himself with a word to his father than he had been to trust +himself with a word to John Prather. He dropped back into the darkness +of the dining-room and sank into a chair. When a bedroom door upstairs +had closed softly he was sequestered in silence with his thoughts. + +His own father had lied to him! Lied blandly! Lied with eyes limpid with +appeal! And the supreme commandment on which his mother had ever insisted +was truth. The least infraction of it she would not forgive; it was the +only thing for which she had ever punished him. He recalled the one +occasion when she had seemed harsh and merciless, as she said: + +"A lie fouls the mouth of the one who utters it, Jack. A lie may torture +and kill. It may ruin a life. It is the weapon of the coward--and never +be a coward, Jack, never be afraid!" + +At the New England preparatory school which he had attended after he came +home, a lie was the abomination on which the discipline of student +comradeship laid a scourge. Out on the desert, where the trails run +straight and the battle of life is waged straight against thirst and +fatigue and distance, men spoke straight. + +And nothing had been explained, after all! The phantom was back, +definite of form and smiling in irony. For it had a face, now, the face +of John Prather! How was he connected with the story of the mother? the +father? the Doge? + +Then, like a shaft of light across memory, came the recollection of a +thing that had been so negligible to Jack at the time. It was Dr. +Bennington's first question in Jack's living-room; a question so +carelessly put and so dissociated from the object of his visit! Jack +remembered Dr. Bennington's curious glance through his eyebrows as he +asked him if he had met John Prather. And Dr. Bennington had brought Jack +into the world! He knew the family history! The Jack that now rose from +the chair was a Jack of action, driven by the scourge of John Prather's +smile into obsession with the one idea which was crying: "I will know! I +will know!" + +Downstairs in the hall he learned over the telephone that Dr. Bennington +had just gone out on a call. It would be possible to see him yet +to-night! An hour later, as the doctor entered his reception-room he was +startled by a pacing figure in the throes of impatience, who turned on +him without formality in an outburst: + +"Dr. Bennington, you asked me in Little Rivers if I had ever met John +Prather. I have met him! Who is he? What is he to me?" + +The doctor's suavity was thrown off its balance, but he did not lose +his presence of mind. He was too old a hand at his profession, too +capable, for that. + +"I refuse to answer!" he said quickly and decisively. + +"Then you do know!" Jack took a step toward the doctor. His weight was on +the ball of his foot; his eyes had the fire of a command that was not to +be resisted. + +"Heavens! How like the ancestor!" the doctor exclaimed involuntarily. + +"Then you do know! Who is he? What is he to me?" + +It seemed as if the ceiling were about to crack. The doctor looked away +to avoid the bore of Jack's unrelenting scrutiny. He took a turn up and +down, rapidly, nervously, his fingers pressed in against the palms and +the muscles of his forearms moving in the way of one who is trying to +hold himself in control by an outward expression of force against inward +rebellion. + +"I dined with your father to-night!" he exclaimed. "I counseled him to +tell you the truth! I said that if he did not want to tell it for its own +sake, as policy it was the only thing to you! I--I--" he stopped, facing +Jack with a sort of grisly defiance. "Jack, a doctor is a confessor of +men! He keeps their secrets! Good-night!" And he strode through the +office door, which he closed behind him sharply, in reminder that the +interview was at an end. + +As Jack went down the steps into the night, the face of John Prather, +with a satirical turn to the lips, was preceding him. Now he walked madly +up and down and back and forth across town to the river fronts, with +panting energy of stride, as he fastened the leash of will on quivering +nerves. When dawn came it was the dawn of the desert calling to a brain +that had fought its way to a lucid purpose. It started him to the store +in the fervor of a grateful mission, while a familiar greeting kept +repeating itself in his ears on the way: + +"You won't forget, Jack, about giving me a chance to come along if you +ever go out West again, will you?" + +The question was one in answer to a promise; a reminder from certain +employees into whom he had fused his own spirit of enthusiasm about dry +wastes yielding abundance. + +"But you must work very hard," he had told them. "Not until you have +callouses on your hands can you succeed or really know how to enjoy a +desert sunrise or sunset. After that, you will be able to stand erect and +look destiny in the face." + +"No February slush!" Burleigh, the fitter, had said. "No depending on +one man to hold your job!" + +"Your own boss! You own some land and you just naturally get what you +earn!" according to Joe Mathewson. + +"And from what I can make out," observed one of the automobile van +drivers whom Jack had accompanied on the suburban rounds, "it requires +about as much brains as running an automobile to be what you'd call a +first-class, a number one desert Rube, Jack!" + +"Yes," Jack told him. "The process that makes the earth fruitful is not +less complicated than a motor, simply because it is one of the earliest +inventions. You mix in nature's carbureter light and moisture with the +chemical elements of the soil." + +"I'm on!" the chauffeur rejoined. "If a man works with a plow instead of +a screwdriver, it doesn't follow that his mind is as vacant as a cow that +stands stockstill in the middle of the road to show you that you can't +fool her into thinking that radiators are good to eat." + +In explaining the labor and pains of orange-growing, which ended only +with the careful picking and packing, Jack would talk as earnestly as his +father would about the tedious detail which went into the purchase and +sale of the articles in any department of the store. He might not be able +to choose the best expert for the ribbon counter, but he had a certain +confidence that he could tell the man or the woman who would make good in +Little Rivers. No manager was more thorough in his observation of clerks +for promotion than Jack in observing would-be ranchers. He had given his +promise to one after another of a test list of disciples; and at times he +had been surprised to find how serious both he and the disciples were +over a matter that existed entirely on the hypothesis that he was not +going to stay permanently in New York. + +This morning he was at the store for the last time, arriving even before +the delivery division, to circulate the news that he was returning to +Little Rivers. Trouble was brewing out there, he explained, but they +could depend on him. He would make a place for them and send word when he +was ready; and all whom he had marked as faithful were eager to go. Thus +he had builded unwittingly for another future of responsibilities when he +had paused in the midst of the store's responsibilities to tell stories +of how a desert ranch is run. + +But one disciple did not even want to wait on the message. It was Peter +Mortimer, whom Jack caught on his way to the elevator at eight, his usual +hour, to make sure of having the letters opened and systematically +arranged when his employer should appear. + +"So you are going, Jack! And--and, Jack, you know?" asked Peter +significantly. + +"Yes, Peter. And I see that you know." + +"I do, but my word is given not to tell." + +Through that night's march Jack had guessed enough. He had guessed his +fill of chill misery, which now took the place of the hunger of inquiry. +The full truth was speeding out to the desert. It was with John Prather. + +"Then I will not press you, Peter," he said. "But, Peter, just one +question, if you care to answer; was it--was it this thing that drove my +mother into exile?" + +"Yes, Jack." + +Then a moment's silence, with Peter's eyes full of sympathy and Jack's +dull with pain. + +"And, Jack," Peter went on, "well, I've been so long at it that suddenly, +now you're going, I feel choked up, as if I were about to overflow with +anarchy. Jack, I'm going to give notice that I will retire as soon as +there is somebody to take my place. I want to rest and not have to keep +trying to remember if I have forgotten anything. I've saved up a little +money and whatever happens out there, why, there'll be some place I can +buy where I can grow roses and salads, as you say, if nothing more +profitable, won't there?" + +"Yes, Peter. I know other fertile valleys besides that of Little Rivers, +though none that is its equal. I shall have a garden in one of them and +you shall have a garden next to mine." + +"Then I feel fixed comfortable for life!" said Peter, with a perfectly +wonderful smile enlivening the wrinkles of his old face, which made Jack +think once more that life was worth living. + +Later in the morning, after he had bought tickets for Little Rivers, Jack +returned to the house. When he stood devoutly before the portrait, whose +"I give! I give!" he now understood in new depths, he thought: + +"I know that you would not want to remain here another hour. You would +want to go with me." + +And before the portrait on the other side of the mantel he thought, +challengingly and affectionately: + +"And you? You were an old devil, no doubt, but you would not lie! No, +you would not lie to the Admiralty or to Elizabeth even to save your +head! Yes, you would want to go with me, too!" + +Tenderly he assisted the butler to pack the portraits, which were put in +a cab. When Jack departed in their company, this note lay on the desk in +the library, awaiting John Wingfield, Sr.'s return that evening: + +"Father: + +"The wire to Jim Galway which I enclose tells its own story. It was +written after our talk. When I was going out to send it I saw John +Prather and you in the hall. You said that you knew nothing of him. I +overheard what passed between you and him. So I am going back to Little +Rivers. The only hope for me now is out there. + +"I am taking the portrait of my mother, because it is mine. I am taking +the portrait of the ancestor, because I cannot help it any more than he +could help taking a Spanish galleon. That is all I ask or ever could +accept in the way of an inheritance. + +"Jack." + + + + +XXXIV + +"JOHN WINGFIELD, YOU--" + + +John Wingfield, Sr. had often made the boast that he never worried; +that he never took his business to bed with him. When his head touched +the pillow there was oblivion until he awoke refreshed to greet the +problems left over from yesterday. Such a mind must be a reliably +co-ordinated piece of machinery, with a pendulum in place of a heart. It +is overawing to average mortals who have not the temerity to say +"Nonsense!" to great egos. Yet the best adjusted clocks may have a lapse +in a powerful magnetic storm, and in an earthquake they might even be +tipped off the shelf, with their metal parts rendered quite as helpless +by the fall as those of a human organism subject to the constitutional +weaknesses of the flesh. + +It was also John Wingfield, Sr.'s boast to himself that he had never been +beaten, which average mortals with the temerity to say "Nonsense!"--that +most equilibratory of words--might have diagnosed as a bad case of +self-esteem finding a way to forget the resented incidental reverses of +success. Yet, even average mortals noted when John Wingfield, Sr. +arrived late at the store the morning after Jack's departure for the West +that he had not slept well. His haggardness suggested that for once the +pushbutton to the switch of oblivion had failed him. The smile of +satisfied power was lacking. In the words of the elevator boy, +impersonal observer and swinger of doors, "I never seen the old man like +that before!" + +But the upward flight through the streets of his city, if it did not +bring back the smile, brought back the old pride of ownership and +domination. He still had a kingdom; he was still king. Resentment rose +against the cause of the miserable twelve hours which had thrown the +machinery of his being out of order. He passed the word to himself that +he should sleep to-night and that from this moment, henceforth things +would be the same as they had been before Jack came home. Yes, there was +just one reality for him. It was enthroned in his office. This morning +was to be like any other business morning; like thousands of mornings to +come in the many years of activity that stretched ahead of him. + +"A little late," he said, explaining his tardiness to his secretary; a +superfluity of words in which he would not ordinarily have indulged. "I +had some things to attend to on the outside." + +With customary quiet attentiveness, Mortimer went through the mail with +his employer, who was frequently reassuring himself that his mind was as +clear, his answers as sure, and his interest as concentrated as usual. +This task finished, Mortimer, with his bundle of letters and notes in +hand, instead of going out of the room when he had passed around the +desk, turned and faced the man whom he had served for thirty years. + +"Mr. Wingfield--" + +"Well, Peter?" + +John Wingfield, Sr. looked up sharply, struck by Mortimer's tone, which +seemed to come from another man. In Mortimer's eye was a placid, +confident light and his stoop was less marked. + +"Mr. Wingfield, I am getting on in years, now," he said, "and I have +concluded to retire as soon as you have someone for my place; the sooner, +sir, the more agreeable to me." + +"What! What put this idea into your head?" John Wingfield, Sr. snapped. +Often of late he had thought that it was time he got a younger man in +Peter's place. But he did not like the initiative to come from Peter; not +on this particular morning. + +"Why, just the notion that I should like to rest. Yes, rest and play a +little, and grow roses and salads," said the old secretary, respectfully. + +"Roses and salads! What in--where are you going to grow them?" + +There was something so serene about Peter that his highly imperious, +poised employer found it impertinent, not to say maddening. Peter had a +look of the freedom of desert distances in his eyes already. A lieutenant +was actually radiating happiness in that neutral-toned sanctum of power, +particularly this morning. + +"I am going out to Little Rivers, or to some place that Jack finds +for me, where I am to have a garden and work--or maybe I better call +it potter around--out of doors in January and February, just like it +was June." + +Peter spoke very genially, as if he were trying to win a disciple on his +own account. + +"With Jack! Oh!" gasped John Wingfield, Sr. He struck his closed fist +into the palm of his hand in his favorite gesture of anger, the +antithesis of the crisp rubbing of the palms, which he so rarely used of +late years. Rage was contrary to the rules of longevity, exciting the +heart and exerting pressure on the artery walls. + +"Yes, sir," answered Peter, pleasantly. + +"Well--yes--well, Jack has decided to go back!" Then there rose strongly +in John Wingfield, Sr.'s mind a suspicion that had been faintly signaled +to his keen observation of everything that went on in the store. "Are any +other employees going?" he demanded. + +"Yes, sir, I think there are; not immediately, but as soon as he finds a +place for them." + +"How many?" + +"I don't think it is any secret. About fifty, sir." + +"Name some of them!" + +"Joe Mathewson, that big fellow who drives a warehouse truck, and +Burleigh;" and Peter went on with those of the test proof list +whom he knew. + +Every one of them had high standing. Every one represented a value. While +at first John Wingfield, Sr. had decided savagely that Mortimer should +remain at his pleasure, now his sense of outraged egoism took an opposite +turn. He could get on without Mortimer; he could get on if every employee +in the store walked out. There were more where they came from in a city +of five millions population; and no one in the world knew so well as he +how to train them. + +"Very good, Peter!" he said rigidly, as if he were making a declaration +of war. "Fix up your papers and leave as soon as you please. I will have +one of the clerks take your place." + +"Thank you. That is very kind, Mr. Wingfield!" Mortimer returned, so +politely, even exultantly, that his aspect seemed treasonable. + +John Wingfield, Sr. tried to concentrate his attention on some long and +important letters that had been left on his desk for further +consideration; but his mind refused to stick to the lines of typewriting. + +"This one is a little complicated," he thought, "I will lay it aside." + +He tried the second and the third letters, with no better results. A +tanned face and a pair of broad shoulders kept appearing between him and +the paper. Again he was thinking of Jack, as he had all night, to the +exclusion of everything else. Unquestionably, this son had a lot of +magnetic force in him; he had command of men. Why, he had won fifty of +the best employees out of sheer sentiment to follow him out to the +desert, when they had no idea what they were in for! + +His gaze fell and rested for some time on the bunch of roses on his desk. +Every morning there had been a fresh bunch, in keeping with the custom +that Jack had established. The father had become so used to their +presence that he was unconscious of it. For all the pleasure he got out +of them, they might as well have been in the cornucopia vase in the +limousine. His hand went out spasmodically toward the roses, as if he +would crush them; crush this symbol of the thing drawn from the mother +that had invaded the calm autocracy of his existence. The velvety +richness of the petals leaning toward him above the drooping grace of +their stems made him pause in realization of the absurdity of his anger. +A feeling to which he had been a stranger swept over him. It was like a +breaking instinct of dependableness; and then he called up Dr. +Bennington. + +"Well, he has gone!" he told the doctor, desperately. + +"You did not tell him the truth!" came the answer; and he noted that the +doctor's voice was without its usual suavity. It was as matter-of-fact to +the man of millions as if it had been advising an operation in a +dispensary case. + +"No, not exactly," John Wingfield, Sr. confessed. + +"I told you what his nature was; how it had drawn on the temperament of +his mother. I told you that with candor, with a decently human humility +appealing to his affections, everything was possible. And remember, he is +strong, stronger than you, John Wingfield! There's a process of fate in +him! John Wingfield, you--" The sentence ended abruptly, as if the doctor +had dropped the receiver on the hooks with a crash. + +Phantoms were closing in around John Wingfield, Sr.... His memory +ranged back over the days of ardent youth, in the full tide of growing +success, when to want a thing, human or material, meant to have it.... +And in his time he had told a good many lies. The right lie, big and +daring, at the right moment had won more than one victory. With John +Prather out of the way, he had decided on an outright falsehood to his +son. Why had he not compromised with Dr. Bennington's advice and tried +part falsehood and part contrition? But no matter, no matter. He would +go on; he was made of steel. + +Again the tanned face and broad shoulders stood between him and the +page. Jack was strong; yes, strong; and he was worth having. All the old +desire of possession reappeared, in company with his hatred of defeat. +He was thinking of the bare spot on the wall in the drawing-room in place +of the Velasquez. There would be an end of his saying: "The boy is the +spit of the ancestor and just as good a fighter, too; only his abilities +are turned into other channels more in keeping with the spirit of the +age!" An end of: "Fine son you have there!" from men at the club who had +given him only a passing nod in the old days. For he was not displeased +that the boy was liked, where he himself was not. The men whom he admired +were those who had faced him with "No!" across the library desk; who had +got the better of him, even if he did not admit it to himself. And the +strength of his son, baffling to his cosmos, had won his admiration. No, +he would not lose Jack's strength without an effort; he wanted it for his +own. Perhaps something else, too, there in the loneliness of the office +in the face of that bunch of roses was pulling him: the thrill that he +had felt when he saw the moisture in Jack's eyes and felt the warmth of +his grasp before Jack left the library. + +And Jack and John Prather were speeding West to the same destination! +They would meet! What then? There was no use of trying to work in an +office on Broadway when the forces which he had brought into being over +twenty years ago were in danger of being unloosed out on the desert, with +Jack riding free and the fingers of the ancestor-devil on the reins. John +Wingfield, Sr. called in the general manager. + +"You are in charge until I return," he said; and a few hours later he was +in a private car, bound for Little Rivers. + + + + +PART III + +HE FINDS HIS PLACE IN LIFE + + + + +XXXV + +BACK TO LITTLE RIVERS + + +As with the gentle touch of a familiar hand, the ozone of high altitudes +gradually and sweetly awakened Jack. The engine was puffing on an +upgrade; the car creaked and leaned in taking a curve. Raising the shade +of his berth he looked out on spectral ranges that seemed marching and +tumbling through dim distances. With pillows doubled under his head he +lay back, filling sight and mind with the indistinctness and spacious +mystery of the desert at night; recalling his thoughts with his last +view of it over two months ago in the morning hours after leaving El +Paso and seeing his future with it now, where then he had seen his +future with the store. + +"Think of old Burleigh raising oranges! I am sure that the trees will be +well trimmed," he whispered. "Think of Mamie Devore in the thick of the +great jelly competition, while the weight of Joe Mathewson's shoulders +starts a spade into the soil as if it were going right to the centre of +the earth. Why, Joe is likely to get us into international difficulties +by poking the ribs of a Chinese ancestor! Yes--if we don't lose our +Little Rivers; and we must not lose it!" + +The silvery face of the moon grew fainter with the coming of a ruddier +light; the shadows of the mountains were being etched definitely on the +plateaus that stretched out like vast floors under the developing glow +of sunrise; and the full splendor of day had come, with its majestic +spread of vision. + +"When Joe sees that he will feel so strong he will want to get out and +carry the Pullman," Jack thought. "But Mamie will not let him for fear +that he will overdo!" + +How slow the train seemed to travel! It was a snail compared to Jack's +eagerness to arrive. He was inclined to think that P.D., Wrath of God, +and Jag Ear were faster than through expresses. He kept inquiring of the +conductor if they were on time, and the conductor kept repeating that +they were. How near that flash of steel at a bend around a tongue of +chaotic rock, stretching out into the desert sea, with its command to man +to tunnel or accept a winding path for his iron horse! How long in coming +to it in that rare air, with its deceit of distances! Landmark after +landmark of peak or bold ridge took the angle of some recollected view of +his five years' wanderings. It was already noon when he saw Galeria from +the far end of the long basin that he had crossed, with the V as the +compass of his bearings, on the ride that brought him to the top to meet +Mary and Pete Leddy. + +Then the V was lost while the train wound around the range that formed +one side of the basin's rim. The blaze of midday had passed before it +entered the reaches of the best valley yet in the judgment of a +connoisseur in valleys; and under the Eternal Painter's canopy a spot of +green quivered in the heat-rays of the horizon. His Majesty was in a +dreamy mood. He was playing in delicate variations, tranquil and +enchanting, of effects in gold and silver, now gossamery thin, now +thick and rich. + +"What is this thing crawling along on two silken threads and so afraid of +the hills?" he was asking, sleepily. "Eh? No! Bring the easel to me, if +you want a painting. I am not going to rise from my easy couch. There! +Fix that cushion so! I am a leisurely, lordly aristocrat. Palette? No, I +will just shake my soft beard of fine mist back and forth across the sky, +a spectrum for the sunrays. So! so! I see that this worm is a railroad +train. Let it curl up in the shadow of a gorge and take a nap. I will +wake it up by and by when I seize my brush and start a riot in the +heavens that will make its rows of window-glass eyes stare." + +"I am on this train and in a hurry!" Jack objected. + +"Do I hear the faint echo of a human ego down there on the earth?" +demanded the Eternal Painter. "Who are you? One of the art critics?" + +"One of Your Majesty's loving subjects, who has been away in a foreign +kingdom and returns to your allegiance," Jack answered. + +"So be it. I shall know if what you say is true when I gaze into your +eyes at sunset." + +"I am bringing you a Velasquez!" Jack added. + +"Good! Put him where he can have a view out of the window of his first +teacher at work in the studio of the universe." + +The train crept on toward the hour of the Eternal Painter's riot and +toward Little Rivers, while the patch of green was softly, impalpably +growing, growing, until the crisscross breaks of the streets developed +and Jack could identify the Doge's and other bungalows. He was on the +platform of the car before the brakes ground on the wheels, leaning out +to see a crowd at the station, which a minute later became a prospect of +familiar, kindly, beaming faces. There was a roar of "Hello, Jack!" in +the heavy voices of men and the treble of children. Then he did not see +the faces at all for a second; he saw only mist. + +"Not tanned, Jack, but you'll brown up soon!" + +"Gosh! But we've been lonesome without you!" + +"Cure any case of sore eyes on record!" + +Jack was too full of the glory of this unaffected welcome in answer to +his telegram that he was coming to find words at first; but as he fairly +dropped off the steps into the arms of Jim Galway and Dr. Patterson he +shouted in a shaking voice: + +"Hello, everybody! Hello, Little Rivers!" + +He noted, while all were trying to grasp his hands at once, that the men +had their six-shooters. A half-dozen were struggling to get his suit +case. Not one of his friends was missing except the Doge and Mary. + +"Let the patient have a little air!" protested Dr. Patterson, as some +started in to shake hands a second time. + +"Fellow-citizens, if there's anything in the direct primary I feel sure +of the nomination!" said Jack drily. + +"You're already elected!" shouted Bob Worther. + +Around at the other side of the station Jack found Firio waiting his turn +in patient isolation, with P.D., Wrath of God, and Jag Ear. + +"_Si! si_!" called Firio triumphantly to all the sceptics who had told +him that Jack would not return. + +Jack took the little Indian by the shoulders and rocked him back and +forth in delight, while Firio's eyes were burning coals of jubilation. + +"You knew!" Jack exclaimed. "You were right! I have come back!" + +"_Si, si_! I know!" repeated Firio. + +"No stopping him from bringing the whole cavalcade to the station, +either," said Jim Galway. "And he wouldn't join the rest of us out in +front of the station. He was going to be his own reception committee and +hold an overflow meeting all by himself!" + +There was no disguising the fact that the equine trio of veterans +remembered Jack. With P.D. and Jag Ear the demonstration was +unrestrained; but however exultant Wrath of God might be in secret, he +was of no mind to compromise his reputation for lugubriousness by any +public display of emotional weakness. + +"Wrath of God, I believe you were a cross-eyed Cromwellian soldier in +your previous incarnation!" said Jack; "and as it is hard for a horse to +be crosseyed, you could not retain the characteristic. Think of that! +Wouldn't a cross-eyed Cromwellian soldier strike fear to the heart of any +loyalist? And Jag Ear, you're getting fat!" + +"I keep his hoofs hard. When he fat he eat less on trail!" explained +Firio, becoming almost voluble. "All ready for trail!" he hinted. + +"Not now, Firio," said Jack. "And, Firio, there's a package at the +station, a big, flat case. It came by express on the same train with +me--the most precious package in the world. See that it is taken to +the house." + +"Si! You ride?" asked Firio, offering P.D.'s reins. + +"No, we'll all walk." + +The procession had started toward the town when Jack felt something soft +poking him in the small of the back and looked around to find that the +cause was P.D.'s muzzle. Wrath of God and Jag Ear might go with Firio, +but P.D. proposed to follow Jack. + +"And after I have ridden you thousands of miles and you've heard all my +songs over and over! Well, well, P.D., you are a subtle flatterer! Come +along!" Then he turned to Jim Galway: "Has John Prather arrived?" + +"Yes, last night." + +"He is here now?" Jack put in quickly. + +"No; he pulled out at dawn on his way to Agua Fria." + +"Oh!" Jack was plainly disappointed. "He has the grant for the +water rights?" + +"Yes," said Jim, "though he hasn't made the fact public. He does +everything in his smooth, quiet fashion, with a long head, and I suppose +he hasn't things just right yet to spring his surprise. But there is no +disputing the fact--he has us!" + +One man henceforth was in control of the water. His power over the +desert community would be equivalent to control of the rains in a +humid locality. + +"You see," Jim continued, "old man Lefferts' partners had really never +sold out to him; so his transfer to the Doge wasn't legal. He turned his +papers over to Prather, giving Prather full power to act for him in +securing the partners' surrender of their claims and straighten out +everything with the Territory and get a bonafide concession. That is as I +understand it, for the whole business has been done in an underhand way. +Prather represented to the Doge that he was acting entirely in the +interests of the community and his only charge would be the costs. The +Doge quite believed in Prather's single-mindedness and public spirit. +Well, with the use of money and all the influences he could command, +including the kind that Pete Leddy exercises, he got the concession and +in his name. It was very smart work. I suppose it was due to the crafty +way he could direct the Doge to do his wishes that the Doge happened to +be off the scene at the critical stage of the negotiations. When he went +to New York all that remained was for him to obtain the capital for his +scheme. Lefferts and his partners had the underlying rights and the Doge +the later rights, thanks to his improvements, and Prather has them both. +Well, Leddy and his crowd have been taking up plots right and left; +that's their share in the exploitation. They're here, waiting for the +announcement to be made and--well, the water users' association is still +in charge; but it won't be when Prather says the word." + +"And you have no plans?" Jack asked. + +"None." + +"And the Doge?" + +"None. What can the old man do? Though nobody exactly blames him, a good +many aren't of a mind to consult him at all. The crisis has passed beyond +him. Three or four men, good men, too, were inclined to have it out with +John Prather; but that would have precipitated a general fight with +Leddy's gang. The conservatives got the hot-heads to wait till you came. +You see, the trouble with every suggestion is that pretty much everybody +is against it except the fellow who made it. The more we have talked, +the more we have drifted back to you. It's a case of all we've got in the +world and standing together, and we are ready to get behind you and take +orders, Jack." + +"Yes, ready to fight at the drop of the hat, seh, or to sit still on our +doorsteps with our tongues in our cheeks and doing the wives' mending, as +you say!" declared Bob Worther. "It's right up to you!" + +"You are all of the same opinion?" asked Jack. + +They were, with one voice, which was not vociferous. For theirs was that +significantly quiet mood of an American crowd when easy-going good nature +turns to steel. Their partisanship in pioneerdom had not been with +six-shooters, but with the ethics of the Doge; and such men when aroused +do not precede action with threats. + +"All right!" said Jack. + +There was a rustle and an exchange of satisfied glances and a chorus of +approval like an indrawing of breath. + +"First, I will see the Doge," Jack added; "and then I shall go to +the house." + +Galway, Dr. Patterson, Worther, and three or four others went on with him +toward the Ewold bungalow. They were halted on the way by Pete Leddy, +Ropey Smith, and a dozen followers, who appeared from a side street and +stopped across Jack's path, every one of them with a certain slouching +aggressiveness and staring hard at him. Pete and Ropey still kept faith +with their pledge to Jack in the _arroyo_. They were without guns, but +their companions were armed in defiance of the local ordinance which had +been established for Jack's protection. + +"Howdy do, Leddy?" said Jack, as amiably as if there had never been +anything but the pleasantest of relations between them. + +"Getting polite, eh! Where's your pretty whistle?" Leddy answered. + +"I put it in storage in New York," Jack said laughing; then, with a +sudden change to seriousness: "Leddy, is it true that you and John +Prather have got the water rights to this town?" + +"None of your d----d business!" Leddy rapped out. "The only business I've +got with you has been waiting for some time, and you can have it your way +out in the _arroyo_ where we had it before, right now!" + +"As I said, Pete, I put the whistle in storage and I have already +apologized for the way I used it," returned Jack. "I can't accommodate +you in the _arroyo_ again. I have other things to attend to." + +"Then the first time you get outside the limits of this town you will +have to play my way--a man's way!" + +"I hope not, Pete!" + +"Naturally you hope so, for you know I will get you, you--" + +"Careful!" Jack interrupted. "You'd better leave that out until we are +both armed. Or, if you will not, why, we both have weapons that nature +gave us. Do you prefer that way?" and Jack's weight had shifted to the +ball of his foot. + +Plainly this was not to Pete's taste. + +"I don't want to bruise you. I mean to make a clean hole through you!" +he answered. + +"That is both courteous and merciful; and you are very insistent, Leddy," +Jack returned, and walked on. + +"Just as sweet as honey, just as cool as ice, and just as sunny as +June!" whispered Bob Worther to the man next him. + +Again Jack was before the opening in the Ewold hedge, with its glimpse +of the spacious living-room. The big ivory paper-cutter lay in its +accustomed place on the broad top of the Florentine table. In line with +it on the wall was a photograph of Abbey's mural in the Pennsylvania +capitol and through the open window a photograph of a Puvis de Chavannes +was visible. Evidently the Doge had already hung some of the +reproductions of masterpieces which he had brought from New York. But no +one was on the porch or in the living-room; the house was silent. As +Jack started across the cement bridge he was halted by a laugh from his +companions. He found that P.D. was taking no risks of losing his master +again; he was going right on into the Doge's, too. Jim took charge of +him, receiving in return a glance from the pony that positively reeked +of malice. + +Again Jack was on his way around the Doge's bungalow on the journey he +had made so many times in the growing ardor of the love that had mastered +his senses. The quiet of the garden seemed a part of the pervasive +stillness that stretched away to the pass from the broad path of the +palms under the blazonry of the sun. As he proceeded he heard the +crunching of gravel under a heavy tread. The Doge was pacing back and +forth in the cross path, fighting despair with the forced vigor of his +steps, while Mary was seated watching him. As the Doge wheeled to face +Jack at the sound of his approach, it was not in surprise, but rather in +preparedness for the expected appearance of another character in a +drama. This was also Mary's attitude. They had heard of his coming and +they received his call with a trace of fatalistic curiosity. The Doge +suddenly dropped on a bench, as if overcome by the weariness and +depression of spirits that he had been defying; but there was something +unyielding and indomitable in Mary's aspect. + +"Well, Sir Chaps, welcome!" said the Doge. "We still have a seat in the +shade for you. Will you sit down?" + +But Jack remained standing, as if what he had to say would be soon said. + +"I have come back and come for good," he began. "Yes, I have come back to +take all the blue ribbons at ranching," he added, with a touch of garden +nonsense that came like a second thought to soften the abruptness of his +announcement. + +"For good! For good! You!" The Doge stared at Jack in incomprehension. + +"Yes, my future is out here, now." + +"You give up the store--the millions--your inheritance!" cried the Doge, +still amazed and sceptical as he sounded the preposterousness of this +idea to worldly credulity. + +"Quite!" + +There was no mistaking the firmness of the word. "To make your fortune, +your life, out here?" + +The Doge's voice was throbbing with the wonder of the thing. + +"Yes!" + +"Why? Why? I feel that I have a right to ask why!" demanded the Doge, in +all the majesty of the moment when he faced John Wingfield, Sr. in the +drawing-room. + +"Because of a lie and what it concealed. Because of reasons that may not +be so vague to you as they are to me." + +"A lie! Yes, a lie that came home!" the Doge repeated, while he passed +his hand back and forth over his eyes. The hand was trembling. Indeed, +his whole body was trembling, while he sought for self-control and to +collect his thoughts for what he had to say to that still figure awaiting +his words. When he looked up it was with an expression wholly new to +Jack. Its candor was not that of transparent mental processes in serene +philosophy or forensic display, but that of a man who was about to lay +bare things of the past which he had kept secret. + +"Sir Chaps, I am going to give you my story, however weak and blameworthy +it makes me appear," he said. "Sir Chaps, you saw me in anger in the +Wingfield drawing-room, further baffling you with a mystery which must +have begun for you the night that you came to Little Rivers when we +exchanged a look in which I saw that you knew that I recognized you. I +tried to talk as if you were a welcome stranger, when I was holding in my +rancor. There was no other face in the world that I would not rather have +seen in this community than yours! + +"How glad I was to hear that you were leaving by the morning train! How I +counted the days of your convalescence after you were wounded! How glad I +was at the news that you were to go as soon as you were well! With what a +revelry of suggestion I planned to speed your parting! How demoralized I +was when you announced that you were going to stay! How amazed at your +seriousness about ranching--but how distrustful! Yet what joy in your +companionship! At times I wanted to get my arms around you and hug you as +a scarred old grizzly bear would hug a cub. And, first and last, your +success with everybody here! Your cool hand in the duel! That iron in +your will which would triumph at any cost when you broke Nogales's arm! +For some reason you had chosen to stop, in the play period of youth, on +the way to the inheritance to overcome some obstacle that it pleased you +to overcome and to amuse yourself a while in Little Rivers--you with your +steadiness in a fight and your airy, smiling confidence in yourself!" + +"I--I did not know that I was like that!" said Jack, in hurt, groping +surprise. "Was I truly?" + +The Doge nodded. + +"As I saw you," he said. + +Jack looked at Mary, frankly and calmly. + +"Was I truly?" he asked her. + +"As I saw you!" she repeated, as an impersonal, honest witness. + +"Then I must have been!" he said, with conviction. "But I hope that I +shall not be in the future." And he smiled at Mary wistfully. But her +gaze was bent on the ground. + +"And you want it all--all the story from me?" the Doge asked, hesitating. + +"All!" Jack answered. + +"It strikes hard at your father." + +"The truth must strike where it will, now!" + +"Then, your face, so like your father's, stood for the wreck of two +lives to me, and for recollections in my own career that tinged my view +of you, Jack. You were one newcomer to Little Rivers to whom I could not +wholly apply the desert rule of oblivion to the past and judgment of +every man solely by his conduct in this community. No! It was out of the +question that I could ever look at you without thinking who you were. + +"You know, of course, that your father and I spent our boyhood in +Burbridge. Once I found that he had told me an untruth and we had our +difference out, as boys will; and, as I was in the right, he confessed +the lie before I let him up. That defeat was a hurt to his egoism that he +could not forget. He was that way, John Wingfield, in his egoism. It was +like flint, and his ambition and energy were without bounds. I remember +he would say when teased that some day he should have more money than all +the town together, and when he had money no one would dare to tease him. +He had a remarkable gift of ingratiation with anyone who could be of +service to him. My uncle, who was the head of the family, was fond of +him; he saw the possibilities of success in this smart youngster in a New +England village. It was the Ewold money that gave John Wingfield his +start. With it he bought the store in which he began as a clerk. He lost +a good part of the Ewold fortune later in one of his enterprises that did +not turn out well. But all this is trifling beside what is to come. + +"He went on to his great commercial career. I, poor fool, was an egoist, +too. I tried to paint. I had taste, but no talent. In outbursts of +despair my critical discrimination consigned my own work to the rubbish +heap. I tried to write books, only to find that all I had was a head +stuffed with learning, mixed with the philosophy that is death to the +concentrated application that means positive accomplishment. But I could +not create. I was by nature only a drinker at the fountain; only a +student, the pitiful student who could read his Caesar at eight, learn a +language without half trying, but with no ability to make my knowledge of +service; with no masterful purpose of my own--a failure!" + +"No one is a failure who spreads kindliness and culture as he goes +through life," Jack interrupted, earnestly; "who gives of himself +unstintedly as you have; who teaches people to bring a tribute of flowers +to a convalescent! Why, to found a town and make the desert bloom--that +is better than to add another book to the weight of library shelves or to +get a picture on the line!" + +"Thank you, Jack!" said the Doge, with a flash of his happy manner of +old, while there was the play of fleeting sunshine over the hills and +valleys of his features. "I won't call it persiflage. I am too selfish, +too greedy of a little cheer to call it persiflage. I like the illusion +you suggest." + +He was silent for a while, and when he spoke again it was with the tragic +simplicity of one near his climax. + +"Your father and I loved the same girl---your mother. It seemed that in +every sympathy of mind and heart she and I were meant to travel the long +highway together. But your father won her with his gift for ingratiation +with the object of his desire, which amounts to a kind of genius. He won +her with a lie and put me in a position that seemed to prove that the +lie was truth. She accepted him in reaction; in an impulse of heart-break +that followed what she believed to be a revelation of my true character +as something far worse than that of idler. I married the woman whom he +had made the object of his well-managed calumny. My wife knew where my +heart was and why I had married her. It is from her that Mary gets her +dark hair and the brown of her cheeks which make her appear so at home on +the desert. Soon after Mary's birth she chose to live apart from me--but +I will not speak further of her. She is long ago dead. I knew that your +mother had left your father. I saw her a few times in Europe. But she +never gave the reason for the separation. She would talk nothing of the +past, and with the years heavy on our shoulders and the memory of what we +had been to each other hovering close, words came with difficulty and +every one was painful. Her whole life was bound up in you, as mine was in +Mary. It was you that kept her from being a bitter cynic; you that kept +her alive. + +"Some of the Ewold money that John Wingfield lost was mine. You see how +he kept on winning; how all the threads of his weaving closed in around +me. I came to the desert to give Mary life with the fragments of my +fortune; and here I hope that, as you say, I have done something worthier +than live the life of a wandering, leisurely student who had lapsed into +the observer for want of the capacity by nature or training to do +anything else. + +"But sometimes I did long for the centres of civilization; to touch +elbows with their activities; to feel the flow of the current of +humanity in great streets. Not that I wanted to give up Little Rivers, +but I wanted to go forth to fill the mind with argosies which I could +enjoy here at my leisure. And Mary was young. The longing that she +concealed must be far more powerful than mine. I saw the supreme +selfishness of shutting her up on the desert, without any glimpse of the +outer world. I sensed the call that sent her on her lonely rides to the +pass. I feared that your coming had increased her restlessness. + +"But I wander! That is my fault, as you know, Sir Chaps. Well, we come to +the end of the weaving; to the finality of John Wingfield's victory. +Little Rivers was getting out of hand. I could plan a ranch, but I had +not a business head. I had neither the gift nor the experience to deal +with lawyers and land-grabbers. I knew that with the increase of +population and development our position was exciting the cupidity of +those who find quicker profit in annexing what others have built than in +building on their own account. I knew that we ought to have a great dam; +that there was water to irrigate ten times the present irrigated area. + +"Then came John Prather. I saw in him the judgment, energy, and ability +for organization of a real man of affairs. He was young, self-made, +engaging and convincing of manner. He liked our life and ideals in Little +Rivers; he wanted to share our future. In his resemblance to you I saw +nothing but a coincidence that I passed over lightly. He knew how to +handle the difficult situation that arose with the reappearance of old +man Lefferts' partners. He would get the water rights legalized beyond +dispute and turn them over to the water users' association; he would +bring in capital for the dam; the value of our property would be +enhanced; Little Rivers would become a city in her own right, while I was +growing old delectably in the pride of founder. So he pictured it and so +I dreamed. I was so sure of the future that I dared the expense of a trip +to New York. + +"And always to me, when I looked at you and when I thought of you, you +were the son of John Wingfield; you incarnated the inheritance of his +strength. But when, from the drawing-room, I saw your father, whom I had +not seen for fifteen years, then--well, the thing came to me in a burning +second, the while I glimpsed his face before he saw mine. He was smiling +as if pleased with himself and his power; he was rubbing the palms of his +hands together; and I saw that it was John Prather who was like John +Wingfield in manner, pose, and feature. You were like the fighting man, +your ancestor, and your airy confidence was his. And I, witless and +unperceiving, had been won by the same methods of ingratiation with which +John Wingfield had won the assistance of the Ewold fortune for the first +step of his career; with which he had won Alice Jamison and kept me +unaware of his plan while he was lying to her. + +"Finally, let us say, in all charity, that your father is what he is +because of what is born in him and for the same reason that the snowball +gathers size as it rolls; and I am what I am for the same reason that the +wind scatter the sands of the desert--a man full of books and tangent +inconsequence of ideas, without sense; a simpleton who knows a painting +but does not know men; a garrulous, philosophizing, blind, old +simpleton, whose pompous incompetency has betrayed a trust! Through me, +men and women came here to settle and make a home! Through me they +lose--to my shame!" + +The Doge buried his face in his hands and drew a deep breath more +pitiful than a sob, which, as it went free of the lungs, seemed to leave +an empty ruin of what had once been a splendid edifice. He was in +striking contrast to Mary, who, throughout the story fondly regarding +him, had remained as straight as a young pine. Now, with her rigidity +suddenly become so pliant that it was a fluid thing mixed of +indignation, fearlessness, and compelling sympathy, she sprang to his +side. She knew the touchstone to her father's emotion. He did not want +his cheek patted in that moment of agony. He wanted a stimulant; some +justification for living. + +"There is no shame in believing in those who speak fairly! There is +honor, the honor of faith in mankind!" she cried penetratingly. "There is +no shame in being the victim of lies!" + +"No! No shame!" the Doge cried, rising unsteadily to his feet +under the whip. + +"And we are not afraid for the future!" she continued. "And the other men +and women in Little Rivers are not afraid for the future!" + +"No, not afraid under this sun, in this air. Afraid!" + +An unconquerable flame had come into his eyes in answer to that in +Mary's. + +"The others have asked me to act for them, and I think I may yet save our +rights," said Jack. "Will you also trust me?" + +"Will I trust you, Jack? Trust you who gave up your inheritance?" +exclaimed the Doge. "I would trust you on a mission to the stars or to +lead a regiment; and the wish of the others is mine." + +Jack had turned to go, but he looked back at Mary. + +"And you, Mary? I have your good wishes?" + +He could not resist that question; and though it was clear that nothing +could stay him--as clear as it had been in the _arroyo_ that he would +keep his word and face Leddy--he was hanging on her word and he was +seeing her eyes moist, with a bright fire like that of sunshine on still +water. She was swaying slightly as a young pine might in a wind. Her eyes +darkened as with fear, then her cheeks went crimson with the stir of her +blood; and suddenly, her eyes were sparkling in their moisture like water +when it ripples under sunshine. + +"Yes, Jack," she said quietly, with the tense eagerness of a good cause +that sends a man away to the wars. + +"That is everything!" he answered. + +So it was! Everything that he could ask now, with his story and hers so +fresh in mind! He started up the path, but stopped at the turn to look +back and wave his hand to the two figures in a confident gesture. + +"Luck with you, Sir Chaps!" called the Doge, with all the far-carrying +force of his oldtime sonorousness. + +"Luck! luck!" Mary called, on her part; and her voice had a flute note +that seemed to go singing on its own ether waves through the tender +green foliage, through all the gardens of Little Rivers, and even away +to the pass. + +"Mary! Mary!" he answered, with a ring of cheeriness. "Luck for me will +always come at your command!" + +A moment later Galway and the others saw him smiling with a hope that ran +as high as his purpose, as he passed through the gateway of the hedge. + +"It will all be right!" he told them. + +With P.D. keeping his muzzle close to the middle of Jack's back, the +party started toward his house, which took them almost the length of the +main street. + +"Prather went by the range trail, of course?" Jack asked Galway. + +"No, straight out across the desert," said Galway. + +"Straight out across the desert!" exclaimed Jack, mystified. + +For one had a choice of two routes to Agua Fria, which was well over the +border in Mexico. Not a drop of water was to be had on the way across the +trackless plateau, but halfway on the range trail was a camping-place, +Las Cascadas, where a spring which spouted in a tiny cascade welcomed the +traveller. Under irrigation, most of the land for the whole stretch +between the two towns would be fertile. There was said to be a big +underground run at Agua Fria that could be pumped at little expense. + +"All I can make out of Prather's taking a straight line, which really is +slower, as you know, on account of the heavy sand in places, is to look +over the soil," said Galway. "He may be preparing to get a concession in +Mexico at the same time as on this side, so as to secure control of the +whole valley. It means railroads, factories, new towns, millions--but you +and I have talked all this before in our dreams." + +"Who was with him?" Jack asked. + +"Pedro Nogales. He seems to have taken quite a fancy to Pedro and Pedro +is acting as guide. Leddy recommended him, I suppose." + +"No one else?" + +"No." + +"Good!" said Jack. + +As they turned into the side street where the front of Jack's bungalow +was visible, Jim Galway observed that they had seen nothing of Leddy or +any of his followers. + +"Maybe he's gone to join Prather," said Bob Worther. + +But Jack paid no attention to the remark. He was preoccupied with the +first sight of his ranch in over two months. + +"It will be all right!" he called out to the crowd in his yard; for the +others who had met him at the station were waiting for him there. "Bob, +those umbrella-trees could shade a thin, short man now, even if he didn't +hug the trunk! Firio has done well, hasn't he?" he concluded, after he +had walked through the garden and surveyed the fields and orchards in +fond comparison as to progress. + +"The best I ever knew an Indian to do!" said Jim Galway. + +"And everything kept right on growing while I was away! That's the joy of +planting things. They are growing for somebody, if not for you!" + +Inside the house he found Firio, with the help of some of the ranchers, +taking the pictures out of their cases. Firio surveyed the buccaneer +for some time, squinting his eyes and finally opening them saucer-wide +in approval. + +"You!" he said to Jack. And of the Sargent, after equally deliberate +observation, he said: "A lady!" + +That seemed about all there was to say and expressed the thought of the +onlookers. + +"And, Firio, now it's the trail!" said Jack. + +"_Si, si_!" said Firio, ever so softly. "We take rifles?" + +"Yes. Food for a week and two-days' water." + +It pleased Jack to hang the portraits while Firio was putting on Jag +Ear's pack; and he made it a ceremony in which his silence was +uninterrupted by the comments of the ranchers. They stood in wondering +awe before John Wingfield, Knight, hung where he could watch the Eternal +Painter at his sunset displays and looking at the "Portrait of a Lady" +across the breadth of the living-room, whose neutral tones made a perfect +setting for their dominant genius. + +"I believe they are at home," said Jack, with a fond look from one to the +other, when Firio came to say that everything was ready. + +"Senor Jack," whispered Firio insinuatingly, "for the trail you wear the +grand, glad trail clothes and the big spurs. I keep them shiny--the big +spurs!" He was speaking with the authority of an expert in trail +fashions, who would consider Jack in very bad form if he refused. + +"Why, yes, Firio, yes; it is so long since we have been on the trail!" +And he went into the bedroom to make the change. + +"I've never seen him quite so dumb quiet!" said Worther. + +Jack certainly had been quiet, ominously quiet and self-contained. When +he came out of the bedroom he was without the jaunty freedom of manner +that Little Rivers always associated with his full regalia. In place of +the dreamy distances in his eyes on such occasions were a sad +preoccupation and determination. When they went outside to Firio and the +waiting ponies, the Eternal Painter was in his evening orgy of splendor. +But even Jack did not look up at the sky this time as he walked along in +silence with his fellow-citizens to the point where the farthest furrow +of his ranch had been drawn across the virgin desert. His foot was +already in the stirrup when Jim Galway spoke the thought of all: + +"Jack, there's only two of you, and if it happened that you met +Leddy--" + +"It is Prather that I want to see," Jack answered. + +"But Leddy's whole gang! We don't know what your plans are, but if +there's going to be a mix-up, why, we've got to be with you!" + +"No!" said Jack, decidedly. "Remember, Jim, you were to trust me. This is +a mission that requires only two; it is between Prather and me. We are +going to get acquainted for the first time." + +Already Firio, riding Wrath of God, had started, and the bells of Jag Ear +were jingling, while the rifles, their bores so clean from Firio's care, +danced with the gleams of sunset in their movement with the burro's +jogging trot. Jack sprang into the saddle, his face lighting as the foot +came home in the stirrup. + +"It will be all right!" he called back. + +P.D. in the freshness of his long holiday, feeling a familiar pressure of +a leg, hastened to overtake his companions; and the group of Little +Riversites watched a chubby horseman and a tall, gaunt horseman, bathed +in gold, riding away on a hazy sea of gold, with Jag Ear's bells growing +fainter and fainter, until the moving specks were lost in the darkness. + + + + +XXXVI + +AROUND THE WATER-HOLE + + +Easy traveller had turned speedy traveller, on a schedule. Never had he +and Firio ridden so fast as in pursuit of John Prather, who had eight +hours' start of them on a two-days' journey. Jag Ear had to trot all the +time to keep up. Ounce by ounce he was drawing on his sinking fund of fat +in a constitutional crisis. + +"I keep his hoofs good. I keep his wind good. All right!" said Firio. + +It was after midnight before the steady jingle of Jag Ear's orchestra had +any intermission. An hour for food and rest and the little party was off +again in the delicious cool of the night, toward a curtain pricked with +stars which seemed to be drawn down over the edge of the world. + +"What sort of horses had Prather and Nogales?" Jack asked. He must reach +the water-hole as soon as Prather; for it was not unlikely that Prather +might have fresh mounts waiting there to take him on to the nearest +railroad station in Mexico. + +"Look good, but bad. Nogales no know horses!" Firio answered. + +"And they rode in the heat of the day!" said Jack, confidently. + +"_Si_! And we ride P.D. and Wrath of God!" + +There were no sign-posts on this highway of desert space except the +many-armed giant cacti, in their furrowed armor set with clusters of +needles, like tawny auroras gleaming faintly; no trail on the hard earth +under foot, mottled with bunches of sagebrush and sprays of low-lying +cacti, all as still as the figures of an inlaid flooring in the violet +sheen, with an occasional quick, irregular, shadowy movement when a +frightened lizard or a gopher beat a precipitate retreat from the +invading thud of hoofs in this sanctuary of dust-dry life. And the course +of the hoofs was set midway between the looming masses of the mountain +walls of the valley. + +Firio listened for songs from Senor Jack; he waited for stories from +Senor Jack; but none came. He, the untalkative one of the pair, the +living embodiment of a silent and happy companionship back and forth from +Colorado to Chihuahua, liked to hear talk. Without it he was lonesome. +If, by the criterion of a school examination, he never understood more +than half of what Jack said, yet, in the measure of spirit, he understood +everything. + +Now Jack was going mile after mile with nothing except occasional urging +words to P.D. His close-cut hair well brushed back from his forehead +revealed the sweep of his brow, lengthening his profile and adding to the +effect of his leanness. The moonlight on his face, which had lost its +tan, gave him an aspect of subdued and patient serenity in keeping with +the surroundings. You would have said that he could ride on forever +without tiring, and that he could go over a precipice now without even +seeing any danger sign. He had never been like this in all Firio's +memory. The silence became unsupportable for once to Indian taciturnity. +If Jack would not talk Firio would. Yes, he would ask a question, just to +hear the sound of a voice. + +"We go to fight?" + +"No, Firio." + +"Not to fight Prather?" + +"No." + +"To fight Leddy?" + +"I hope not." + +"Why we go? Why so--why so--" he had not the language to express the +strange, brooding inquiry of his mind. + +"I go to save Little Rivers." + +"_Si_!" said Firio, but as if this did not answer his question. + +"I go to get the end of a story, Firio--my story!" continued Jack. "I +have travelled long for the story and now I shall have it all from +John Prather." + +"_Si, si_!" said Firio, as if all the knowledge in the world had flashed +into his head quicker than the hand of legerdemain could run the leaves +of a pack of cards through its fingers. "And then?" + +At last Firio had won a smile from the untanned face which could not be +the same to him until it was tanned. + +"Then I shall plant seeds and keep the ground around them soft and +the weeds out of it; and I shall wear my heart on my sleeve and lay a +siege--a siege in the open, without parallels or mines! A siege in +the open!" + +Firio did not understand much about parallels or mines or, for that +matter, about sieges; but he could see the smile fading from Jack's lips +and could comprehend that the future of which Jack was speaking was very +far from another prospect, which was immediate and vivid in his mind. + +"But you must fight Leddy! _Si, si_! You must fight Leddy first!" + +"Then I must, I suppose," said Jack, absently. "All things in their turn +and time." + +"_Si_!" answered Firio. All things in their turn and time! This desert +truth was bred in him through his ancestry, no less than in the Eternal +Painter himself. + +Again the silence of the morning darkness, with all the stars twinkling +more faintly and some slipping from their places in the curtain into the +deeper recesses of the broad band of night on the surface of the rolling +ball. The plodding hoofs kept up their regular beat of the march of their +little world of action in the presence of the Infinite; plodding, +plodding on into the dawn which sent the last of the stars in flight, +while the curtain melted away before blue distances swimming with light. +Still bareheaded, Jack looked into the face of the sun which heaved above +an irregular roof of rocks. It blazed into the range on the other side of +the valley. It slaked its thirst with the slight fall of dew as a great, +red tongue would lick up crumbs. Sun and sky, cactus and sagebrush, rock +and dry earth and sand, that was all. Nowhere in that stretch of basin +that seemed without end was there a sign of any other horseman or of +human life. + +But at length, as they rode, their eyes saw what only eyes used to desert +reaches could see, that the speck in the distance was not a cactus or +even two or three cacti in line, but something alive and moving. +Perceptibly they were gaining on it, while it developed into two riders +and a pack animal in single file. Now Jack and Firio were coming into a +region of more stunted vegetation, and soon the two figures emerged into +a stretch of gray carpet on which they were as clearly silhouetted as a +white sail on a green sea. + +"Very thick sand there--five or six miles of it. It make this the +long way," said Firio. "They call it the apron of hell to fools who +ride at noon." + +"And beyond that how many miles to the water-hole?" + +"Five or six." + +But Firio knew a way around where the going was good. It made a +difference of two or three miles in distance against them, but two or +three times that in their favor in time and the strength taken out of +their ponies. + +"How long will Prather be in getting through the sand?" Jack asked. + +Firio squinted at the objects of their pursuit for a while, as if he +wanted to be exact. + +"Almost as many hours as miles," he said. + +Near the zenith now, the sun was a bulging furnace eye, piercing through +shirts into the flesh and sucking the very moisture of the veins. A +single catspaw was all that the Eternal Painter had to offer over that +basin shut in between the long, jagged teeth of the ranges biting into +the steel-blue of the sky. The savage, merciless hours of the desert day +approached; the hours of reckoning for unknowing and unprepared +travellers. + +Jag Ear's bells had a faint plaintiveness at intervals and again their +jingling was rapid and hysterical, as he tried to make up the distance +lost through a lapse in effort. He had ceased altogether to wiggle the +sliver of ear--the baton with which he conducted his orchestra--because +this was clearly a waste of energy. P.D.'s steps still retained their +dogged persistence, but their regular beat was slower, like that of a +clock that needs winding. His head hung low. Wrath of God was no more and +no less melancholy than when he was rusticating in Jack's yard. It seemed +as if his sad visage, so reliably and grandly sad, might still be +marching on toward the indeterminate line of the horizon when his legs +were worn off his body. + +"Firio, you brown son of the sun," said Jack, with a sudden display of +his old-time trail imagery, "you prolix, garrulous Firio, you knew! You +had the great equine trio ready, and look at the miles they have done +since sunset to prove it! You, P.D., favorite trooper of our household +cavalry! You, Wrath of God, don't be afraid to make an inward smile, for +your face will never tell on you! You, Jag Ear, beat a tattoo with the +fragment of the gothic glory of burrohood, for we rest, to go on all the +faster when the heat of the day is past!" + +While Prather and Nogales were riding over hell's apron, their pursuers +had saddles off hot, moist backs, over which knowing hands were run to +find no sores. After they had eaten, P.D. and Wrath of God and Jag Ear +stood in drooping relaxation which would make the most of every moment of +respite. Jack and Firio, with a blanket fastened to the rifles as +standards, made a patch of shade in which they lay down. + +"Have a nap, Firio," said Jack. "I will wake you when it is time +to start." + +"And you--you no sleep?" asked Firio. + +"I could not sleep to-day," Jack answered. "I don't feel as if I could +sleep until I've seen Prather and heard his story--my story--Firio!" And +he lay with eyes half closed, staring at the steel blue overhead. + +It was well after midday when they mounted for the remainder of the +journey. The Eternal Painter was shaking out the silvery cloud-mist of +his beard across a background that had a softer, kindlier, deeper blue. +The shadows of the ponies and their riders and Jag Ear and his pack no +longer lay under their bellies heavily, but were stretched out to one +side by the angle of the sun, in cheerful, jogging fraternity. Prather +and Nogales had again become only a speck. + +"Do you think that they are out of the sand?" asked Jack. + +"Very near," Firio answered. + +"Their ponies had a whole night's rest--we must not forget that," said +Jack; "and they must be in a hurry, for certainly Nogales had sense +enough to rest over noon." + +"_Quien sabe_!" answered Firio. "But we catch them--_si, si_!" + +Leading the way, Firio turned toward the eastern range until he came to a +narrow tongue of shale almost as hard to the hoofs as asphalt, that ran +like a shoal across that sea of sand. Rest had given the great equine +trio renewed life. P.D., reduced in rank to second place, could not think +of allowing more than a foot between his muzzle and the tail of Wrath of +God, who was bound to make up the time he had lost in pursuit of the +horizon. Another hypothesis of Jack's as to the cause of Wrath of God's +melancholy was that solemn Covenanter's inability to get any nearer to +the edge of the earth. Once he could poke his nose through the blue +curtain and see what was on the other side, the satisfaction of his +eternal curiosity might have made him a rollicking comedian. As for Jag +Ear, his baton was once more conducting his orchestra in spirited tempo. +He, who was nearest of all three in heart to Firio, might well have been +saying to himself: "I knew! I knew we were not going through the sand! +Firio and I knew!" + +So rapidly were they gaining that, when past the sand and they turned +back westward, it was only a question of half an hour or so to come up +with Prather and Nogales. Nogales had been riding ahead; but now Prather, +after gazing over his shoulder for some time at his pursuers, took the +lead. He was urging his horse as if he would avoid being overtaken. +Evidently Nogales did not share that desire, for he let Prather go on +alone. But Prather's horse was too tired after its effort in the sand and +he halted and waited until Nogales, at a slow walk, closed up the gap +between them, when they proceeded at their old, weary gait. + +As Jack and Firio came within hailing distance, both Prather and Nogales +glanced at them sharply; but no word was spoken on either side. The +absence of any call between these isolated voyagers of the desert sea was +strangely unlike the average desert meeting. Prather and Nogales did not +look back again, not even when Jack and Firio were very near. A neigh by +P.D., a break into a trot by him and Wrath of God, and Firio was saying +to Nogales: + +"You went right through the sand!" + +"_Si_!" answered Pedro, with a grin. + +Still Prather did not so much as turn his head to get a glimpse of Jack, +nor did he offer any sign of knowledge of Jack's presence when Jack +reined alongside him so close that their stirrup leathers were brushing. +Prather was gazing at the desert exactly in front of him, the reins +hanging loose, almost out of hand. His horse was about spent, if not on +the point of foundering. Jack was so near the mole on the cheek of the +peculiar paleness that never tans that by half extending his arm he might +have touched it. After all, it was only a raised patch of blue, a blemish +removable by the slightest surgical operation which its owner must have +preferred to retain. + +Firio and Nogales, also riding side by side, were also silent. There was +no sound except Jag Ear's bells, now sunk to a faint tinkle in keeping +with the slow progress of Prather's beaten horse. Looking at Prather's +hands, Jack was thinking of another pair of hands amazingly like them. In +the uncanniness of its proximity he was imagining how the profile would +look without the birthmark, and he found himself grateful for the +silence, which spoke so powerfully to him, in the time that it provided +for bringing his faculties under control. + +"How do you do?" he said at last, pleasantly. + +Probably the silence had been equally welcome to Prather in charting his +own course in the now unavoidable interview. He looked around slowly, and +he was smiling with a trace of the satire that Jack had seen in the +elevator, but smiling watchfully in a way that covers the apprehension of +a keen glance. And he saw features that were calm and eyes that were +still as the sky. + +"How do you do?" he answered; and paused as one who is about to slip a +point of steel home into a scabbard. "How do you do, brother?" he +added, as if uttering a shibboleth that could protect him from any +physical violence. + +"Brother! Brother! Yes!" repeated Jack, with dry lips. + +This shaping of conviction into fact so nakedly, so coolly, made all the +desert and the sky swim before him in kaleidoscopic patches of blue and +gray, shot with zigzag flashes. He half reeled in the saddle; his hands +gripped the pommel to hold himself in place. It was as if a long strain +of nervous tension had come to an end with a crack. Prather's smile took +a turn of deeper satisfaction. It was like John Wingfield, Sr.'s after +Jack had left the library. + +"This is the first time we have ever met to speak," said Prather, easily. + +"Yes!" assented Jack, the gray settling back into desert and the blue +into sky and the zigzag flashes becoming only the brilliance of late +afternoon sunshine. + +"Certainly it is time that we got acquainted, brother," said Prather. + +"It is!" agreed Jack. "It is time that I knew your story!" + +"Which you have hardly heard from your--I mean, our father!" The pause +between the "your" and the "our" was made with an appreciative +significance. "Well, you see, I was the brother who had the mole on +his cheek!" + +"Yes--pitifully yes!" said Jack, with a kind of horror at the expression +of this face in his father's likeness, no less than at the words. + +"Why, no! I've often thought of _you_ rather pitifully!" said Prather. + +"You well might!" Jack answered, feelingly. "We may well share a common +pity for each other." + +There was no sign that John Prather subscribed to the sentiment except in +a certain quizzical turn of his lips, as he looked away. + +"Yes, the story has been kept from me. I have come for it!" said Jack. + +"That is raking out the skeletons. But why not rake out our skeletons +together, you and I?" said Prather. + +It was clear that he enjoyed the prospect as an opportunity for +retributive enlightenment. + +"To begin with, I have the rights of primogeniture in my favor," he said. +"I was born a day before you were, in the same city of New York. My +mother's name was not down in the telephone list as Mrs. Wingfield, +however--I look at it all philosophically, you understand--and it was +just that which made the difference between you and me, outside of the +difference of our natures. But I am proud of my birth on both sides, in +my own way. My mother was won without marriage and she was true to +father. A woman of real ability, my mother! She was well suited to be +John Wingfield's wife; better, I think, in the practical world of +materialism than your mother. By a peculiar coincidence, unknown to +father, my mother called in Dr. Bennington. So you and I have a further +bond, in that the same doctor brought us into the world." + +"And my mother must have known this!" Jack exclaimed, in racking horror. + +At last the cause of her exile was clear in all its grisly monstrousness; +the source of the pain in her eyes in the portrait had been traced home. +Again he saw her white and trembling when she returned to the house in +Versailles to find a visitor there; and now he realized the fulness of +her relief when the frail boy said that he did not like his father. Her +travels had spoken the restlessness of flight in search of oblivion to +the very fact of his paternity. The "I give! I give!" of the portrait was +the giving of the infinity of her fine, sensitive being to him to make +him all hers. His feeling which had held him on the desert when he should +have gone home, that feeling of literal revulsion toward his inheritance, +was a thing born in him which had grown under her caresses and her +training. She had been living solely for him to that last moment when the +book dropped out of her hand; and the incarnation of that which had +killed her was riding beside him now in the flesh. He felt a weaving of +his muscles, a tightening of his nerves, as if waiting on the spark of +will, and all the strength that he had built in the name of the store was +madly tempted. But no! John Prather was not to blame, any more than +himself. He would listen to John Prather, as justice listens to evidence, +and endure his stare to the end. + +"Yes, your mother knew," continued Prather. "My mother made a point of +having her know. That was part of my mother's own bitterness. That was +her teaching to me from the first. She had no illusions. She knew the +advantages and the disadvantages of her position. She was and is one of +the few persons in the world of whom my father is a little afraid." + +"Then she still lives?" asked Jack sharply. + +"Yes, she is in California," Prather returned. "She often referred to the +mole on my cheek as the symbol of my handicap in the world of convention. +'But for the mole, Jack, you would have the store,' she often said. It +delighted her that I had my father's face. As I grew older the +resemblance became more marked. I could see that I pleased my father with +my practical ideas of life, which I developed when quite young. He saw to +it that my mother and I lived well and that I went to a good school. From +my books I drew the same lesson as from my peculiar inheritance; the +lesson that my mother was always inculcating. 'A bank account,' she would +repeat, 'will erase even a mole patch on the cheek. It is the supreme +power that will carry you anywhere, Jack. You must make money!' + +"When father came to see her he would talk with a candor with which I am +sure he never talked to your mother. He would tell of his successes, +revealing the strategy and system by which they were won, finding her +both understanding and sympathetic. I became a little blade that +delighted to get sharp against his big blade by asking him questions. He +did not want me about the store, and this was one of the things in which +my mother humored him. She knew just when to humor and just when to +threaten the play of the strong card which she always held. + +"All the while her ambition was laying its plans. It was that I should +have the Wingfield store one day, myself. Out of school hours I would +range the other department stores. You see, I had not only inherited my +father's face more strikingly than you had, but also his talents. I +spent the summer vacations of my fourteenth and fifteenth years in a +store. I won the attention of my superiors and promise of promotion. I +foresaw the day when I should so prove my ability that father would take +me into his own store, and then, gradually, I would make my place, +secure, while you were idling about Europe. And in those days you were +frail and I was vigorous. + +"There was no mistaking that father's sense of convention was the one +thing that stood between him and my desire. He feared the world's opinion +if the truth became known, and deep down in heart he could never get over +the pride of having married into your mother's family. You had very good +blood on the maternal side, as they say, while my mother had begun in the +cloak department and was self-made, like father. Again, I was so truly +his son in every instinct that he may have been a little jealous of me. +Father does not like to think that any other man was ever quite as great +as he is. I confess that is the way I feel, too. That is what life is, +after all--it is yourself. Yes, I saw the store as mine--surely mine, +with time!" + +Prather's reins lay across the pommel of the saddle drawn taut by the +drooping head of his horse, which was barely dragging one foot after +another. He gave Jack a glance of flashing resentment and then, in his +first impulse of real emotion, made a fist of one hand and drove it +angrily into the palm of the other before continuing. + +"Then father went to Europe to bring you home. He had decided for the +son of convention, the son of blood! Though self-made, he was for family +as against talent. Besides, it was a victory for him. At last you were +his. After your return there was a scene between mother and him, a cool, +bitter argument. He defied her to play her last card. He said that you +knew the truth and that she could at best only make a row. And he wanted +us out of New York; the place for me was a new country. He would make us +a handsome allowance. So my mother agreed to his terms and we went to the +Pacific coast. There I was to enter one of the colleges. My mother wanted +me to have a college education, you see. The last meeting between father +and me was very interesting, blade playing on blade. He really hated to +let me go, for by this time he knew how hopeless you were. He embraced me +and said that I would get on, anyway. I told him that the only trouble +was that while I was the real son, I had a mole on my cheek. + +"The West was best. There we could claim the favor of convention, Mrs. +Prather and her son. I matriculated at Stanford, but I saw nothing in it +for me. It was all dream stuff. Greek and Latin don't help in building a +fortune. They handicap you with the loss of time it takes to learn them, +at least; and I meant to be worth a million before I was thirty. Now I +know that I shall be worth two or three or four millions at thirty, if +all goes as I plan. So I cut college and broke for Goldfield. I ran a +store and was a secret partner in a saloon that paid better than the +store. I was in the game morning, noon, and night; it beat marching to +class to recite Horace and fiddle with the binomial theorem, as it must +for every man who counts for something in the world." + +Throughout, Prather's tone, except for the one moment of anger, had been +that of an even recital of facts by one who does not allow himself to +consider anything but facts in the judgment of his position. At times he +gave Jack covert glances out of the tail of his eye and saw Jack's face +white and drawn and his head lowered. Now Prather became the victim--so +he would have put it, no doubt--of another outburst of feeling. + +"But it was not like having the store!" he said. "No, my heart was in the +store; and that morning when you saw me looking down from the gallery I +was permitting myself to dream. I was thinking of what had come to you, +the fairy prince of good fortune, who had no talent for your inheritance, +and of what I might have done with it. I was thinking how I could win men +to work for me"--and there he was smiling with the father's charm--"and +of the millions to come if I could begin to build on the foundation that +father had laid. I saw branches in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia--a great +chain of stores all co-ordinated under my directing hand--I the master!" + +He rubbed the palms of his hands together as he had over the +scintillation of the jewelry counters. Though Jack had not looked around, +his ear recognized that crisp sound of exultant power. + +"Yes," Jack murmured thoughtfully, as if inviting Prather to go on with +anything further he might have to say. + +"All mine--mine!" Prather concluded, in a sort of hypnosis with his +own picture. + +Jack still stared at the earth, his profile limned in gold and the side +of his face toward Prather in shadow. They were nearing the clump of +cotton-woods around the water-hole at the base of a tongue of the range +which ran out into the desert, and Firio rode up to whisper in Spanish: + +"Senor Jack, see there! Horsemen!" + +Jack raised his head with a returning sense of his surroundings to see +some mounted men, eight in all he counted, riding along the range trail a +half mile nearer the water-hole than themselves. Their horses had the +gait of exhaustion after a long, hard ride. + +"You know who it is?" Firio whispered. + +"Yes," Jack answered. "They had the better trail and have outridden us. +All right, Firio!" + +"Leddy--Pete Leddy and some of his men!" exclaimed Prather, shading his +eyes to watch the file of figures now passing under the cotton-woods. It +seemed to relieve him. "I suppose he came on my account," he added, +nodding to Nogales. + +"Yes," said Nogales, with a grin. He always either grinned or his face +had a half savage impassiveness. + +"I wonder if Leddy thought I was in danger," and Prather gave Jack a +knowing glance of satisfaction. "We shall all camp together," he +added, smiling. + +Jack did not answer for a moment. He was intent on the cotton-woods. +Leddy and his companions appeared on the other side, the figures of +riders and horses bathed in the sunset glow. Then they disappeared as if +the earth had swallowed them up. + +"They are going on! They are not going to stop!" said Prather +apprehensively. + +"There is a basin beyond the water-hole and the seepage makes a little +pasture," Jack explained. "You will see them back in a moment." + +"Oh, yes!" said Prather, with a thrill in his voice; and again the +palms of his hands were making that refrain of delight. "But I have +told my story," he resumed. "Now may I ask you a question? Why have you +come back?" + +Jack looked around frankly and dispassionately. + +"To save Little Rivers from you! I understand that you have secured the +water rights." + +"Well, then, I have!" declared Prather, confidently, "and I mean to have +the rights for the whole valley!" and he struck his fist into his palm. +"You see," he went on, with another flash of satire, "it is not exactly +fair that you should have the store and Little Rivers, too. I had heard +of the possibilities here from my friend Leddy, who was also at +Goldfield. A useful man in his place! He got his sixth notch there. When +I came and looked around and saw that here was the opportunity I wanted, +I wired father that in any fair division of territory everything west of +the Mississippi belonged to me"--he was showing some bravado in his sense +of security now, when he saw that Leddy and his men were returning +through the cotton-woods to the water-hole--"and I should like to have +you out of my way. I told him you were the picture of health, even if you +didn't have anything in your head, and if you were ever going to learn +the business it was time that you began. But father is always careful. +Naturally he wanted to check off my report with another's; for he didn't +want you back if you were ill. So he sent Dr. Bennington out to get +professional confirmation of my statement." + +"And you told Jasper Ewold that you wanted the rights only to turn them +over to the water users' association and then bring in capital to build a +dam, with everybody sharing alike in the prosperity that was to come." + +"Yes, and Jasper Ewold was so simple! Well, what I told him was +strategy--strategy of which I think father would approve. When you have a +big object in view the end must justify the means. Look at the situation! +Two hundred thousand acres of land waiting on water to be the most +fertile in the world! Why, when I rode up the valley the first time and +saw what could be done, I was amazed to think that such an opportunity +should be lying around loose. Little Rivers was so out of the way that +other promoters had overlooked it, and everybody had sort of taken it for +granted that Jasper Ewold and his water users' association really had +legal possession. It was my chance. I thought big. That dam should be +mine. I had the money I had made in Goldfield, but it was not enough for +my purpose. + +"Where should I turn for outside capital that would not demand a +majority interest in the project? I concluded that it was time father +did something for me in return for giving up the store. Besides this +call of justice I had another influence with him. I was sure that when +he told my mother that you knew the truth he was making a statement that +suited his purpose. I was sure that you knew nothing of my story and +that father did not want you to know it. I was ready to tell if he did +not meet my demands. + +"Well, you know how he can talk when he wants to gain a point. I fancy +that I talked as well as father when I showed him how that dam would pay +for itself in five years in tolls and twenty per cent on the capital +after that; when I showed him how a population ten times that of his +store would have to take their water from me; when I showed him all the +side issues of profit from town sites and the increase of values of the +big holdings which Leddy's men would take up for me. You ought to have +seen his eyes glow. He could not withstand his pride in me. 'You have the +gift, the one gift!' he said. I told him yes, it was in the blood; and I +struck while the iron was hot. I got an outright sum from him; and he +could not resist a chance to share all that profit when capital was to be +had in New York for three or four per cent. He went in as silent partner, +as I was in the saloon at Goldfield; as a partner with a minority +interest." + +John Prather paused to laugh to himself over his victory, while the +movement of palm on palm was rapid and prolonged. + +"Our arrangement amounted to the commercial division of territory for the +family, which I had suggested," he went on with appreciative irony. "You +and he were to have the east side of the Mississippi and I was to have +the west, and you were never to know my story. Publicly, father and I +were strangers and quits, and we came to this agreement in the room of a +down-town hotel. + +"The day before I started West I simply had to have a look through the +store--the store that I loved and that I had to lose. Yes, the store is +far more to my taste than this rough western life. Naturally, as my +existence was to be kept a secret from you, when you followed me to the +elevator and tried to get acquainted I couldn't have it." + +"But as the elevator descended you pointed to the mole," said Jack. + +"Did I? I suppose that was an involuntary, instinctive pleasantry. The +previous evening father and I had had a farewell visit together. We went +into the country." + +"The night after the scene in the drawing-room!" Jack thought. + +"I knew that father was worried because he had to make an effort to show +that he was not. Usually he can cover his worries perfectly. He said that +he might have a fight in order to keep you and that he very much wanted +you to stay. But he did not succeed," concluded Prather, fist driving +into palm. "You came on the express after me." + +"Because, fortunately, you went to the house to have a look at the +ancestor!" + +"Yes," said Prather. "But I did not see you." + +"However, I saw you from the landing and overheard what passed between +you and father!" + +"No matter!" cried Prather harshly. "I am prepared for you!" He looked +toward the water-hole significantly. "And the concession is mine! The dam +will be mine!" + +"The dam could be built and all the valley might bloom without so much +power passing into the hands of one man," said Jack. + +P.D. scenting the pasturage and feeling the pangs of thirst was starting +forward at a smarter pace; but Jack held him back to the snail's crawl of +Prather's pony. + +"Who would do it? Jasper Ewold? Jim Galway?" Prather demanded. "What +these men need is a leader. They don't realize what I am doing for them. +Do they think I want to put in ten years out here for nothing? For every +dollar that they make for me they are going to make one for themselves. +That's the rule of prosperity. I am not robbing them. I am taking only my +fair share in return for creative business genius. The fellows in Little +Rivers who sulk and don't get on will have only themselves to thank." + +"But they lose their independence," Jack was arguing quietly, as if he +would thrash out the subject. "There are other things than money in +this world." + +"There's nothing much money won't do!" said Prather. + +"It will not give one self-respect or courage or moral fibre; it will not +bring the gift of poetry, music, or painting; or turn a lie into truth; +or bring back virtue to a woman who has been defiled; or make the courage +to face death calmly." + +"It will do all I want!" Prather answered. "Father not having been true +to his agreement by keeping you in New York, why should I keep his +secret? He breaks faith; I break faith. It seems to me as if there were +no escaping the penalty of my birth. I no sooner arrive than I find the +whole town knows of your return; and not only that, but a wire comes from +father saying that we had better not meet until he comes." + +"Until he comes! Yes, go on!" + +"Well, as you say, you are here to save Little Rivers and that meant an +interview with me, and--well," again the palms in their crisp movement, +"before I started out I told Pete Leddy that if you came after me I +should look to him for protection, and it seems he is on time." + +"Yes," said Jack, without looking at Prather. All the while he had kept +watch on the water-hole, and he received Prather's announcement stoically +as a confirmation of his suspicions. + +"So, if you will take my advice, brother, the best thing for you to do is +to ride back before we reach the water-hole, unless you prefer Leddy's +company. This time he will fight you in his way." + +"My horse is tired and there is neither water nor feed for him except +there." Jack stated this quietly and stubbornly, as he nodded toward the +cotton-woods. Then he looked around to Prather. Suddenly Prather found +himself looking at a face that seemed to have only the form of that face +by the side of which he had been riding. It was as if another man had +taken Jack's place in the saddle. The ancestor was rising in Jack. +Prather saw an electric spark in Jack's eyes, the spark of the high +voltage that made his muscles weave and a flutter come in his cheeks. +"No, I am not going back until I have recovered the rights that you have +taken from Little Rivers!" he said. + +Prather in sudden confusion realized that he had let his feelings go too +soon. They were not yet at the water-hole, and he was within easy reach +of that hand working on the reins in a way that promised an outburst. + +"You think of physical violence against me--your own flesh and blood!" he +said defensively. + +He saw Jack shudder in reaction and knew that he was safe for the moment. +When Jack looked away at the water-hole Prather's fingers slipped to his +own six-shooter and rested there, twitching nervously; and in the rear +Firio was watching both him and Nogales shrewdly. + +From any outward sign now, Jack might have been starting on another +journey with quiet eagerness; a journey that might end at a precipice a +few yards ahead or at the other side of the world. Of this alone you +could be sure from the resoluteness of his features, that he was going +straight on; while Firio, in the telepathy of desert companionship, +understood that he was missing no developing detail within the narrow +range of vision in front of P.D.'s nose. Trusting all to Jack, Firio was +on wires, ready for a spring in any direction. + +They were coming to the edge of a depression of an old watercourse that +wound around past the cotton-woods to the ridge itself and included the +basin where Leddy and his followers had tethered their horses. But this +part of it was dry sand. The standing figures around the water-hole had +sunk down. Jack could see them as lumps in a row. A blade of flame from +the setting sun fell on them, revealing the glint of rifle barrels. + +"Firio! Quick--down! P.D., down!" Jack called, dismounting with a leap; +and as though in answer to his warning came the singing of bullets about +their ears. + +P.D. had been trained to sink on all fours at a word and he and Jack +together dropped into the cover of the _arroyo_, below the desert line. +When he looked around Firio was at his side, still holding the reins of +Wrath of God. But Wrath of God's sturdy, plodding nature had little +facility in learning tricks. A tiny stream of blood was flowing down his +forehead and he lay still. At last, all in loyal service, he had reached +the horizon. His bony, homely, good old face seemed singularly peaceful, +as if satisfied with the reward at his journey's end. Jag Ear was +standing beside P.D. and Prather's burro next to him, both unharmed. +Nogales's horse had also been killed, but its rider was safe. Prather was +crawling down the side of the _arroyo_ on his belly, digging his hands +into the dirt, his face white and contorted and his eyes shifting back +and forth in ghastly incomprehension. His horse followed him and sank +down in final surrender to exhaustion. + +By common impulse, Jack and Firio seized the rifles from Jag Ear's pack, +while Nogales, a spectator, squatted beside Prather. + +"What--what does it mean?" Prather gasped, spasmodically. "I--I--was it +Leddy that fired on us?" + +"Yes," said Jack over his shoulder, as he and Firio started up the bank +of the _arroyo_ facing the water-hole. "No doubt of it." + +"It was you they wanted--not me--not me! I--I--" + +"I don't know. At all events, I do not mean they shall rush us!" Jack +answered, as he and Firio hugged the slope with their rifles resting on +top and only their heads showing above it. + +"No! It couldn't be that they recognized me. They will let me by! They +expect me!" + +"Yes, you belong on their side!" Jack called back. + +"I will send out a flag of truce!" said Prather, brightening with +the thought. "You, Nogales, take my handkerchief and go and explain +to Leddy!" + +Nogales seemed agreeable to the suggestion. Indeed, he was very +expeditious in starting. While Jack never took his eye off the sight of +his barrel, Nogales walked across the gleaming interval between the two +parties waving Prather's handkerchief. Leddy rose on his knee watchfully, +rifle in hand, while he spoke with Nogales. Then Nogales started back +with his head thrown up jubilantly, but stopped when he was within +calling distance and sang out, truculently: + +"Leddy get you both! He get everything!" + +He turned on his heel and soon was another lump around the water-hole. + +"That makes nine, Firio!" said Jack. + +He smiled in relief to be rid of Nogales; smiled in happy confidence, as +if he were truly the ancestor's child. + +"_Si_!" answered Firio, as if he had just as soon there were a regiment +against them. He was happy beyond words. He patted his rifle barrel; he +spread out his big red bandanna beside his elbow and on it nicely +arranged a couple of extra charges of cartridges. + +Prather remained flat on the bottom of the _arroyo_, overwhelmed. It was +some time before he could speak. + +"I--I don't understand! It isn't possible!" he said finally. + +"Everything is possible with Leddy. It seems that there can be peace +between him and me in this valley in only one way," Jack answered. + +"But me! I suppose he found out that I--" Prather stopped without +finishing the sentence. "What am I to do?" he asked Jack in livid appeal. + +"Why, it is three against nine, if you choose!" Jack answered. "You have +a rifle, and it is for your life." + +"My life!" Prather gasped, another wave of fear submerging him. + +"Yes. We have no horses with which to make our escape and we should be +winged as soon as we exposed ourselves. Leddy means that we shall die of +thirst, or die fighting." + +Through all this dialogue Jack had been speaking to the head that lay +between his eye and a target. As Prather reached up a trembling hand to +take his rifle from the back of his burro one of the lumps around the +water-hole rose, possibly to change position. When it became the +silhouette of a kneeling man, Jack fired and the figure plunged forward +like an automaton that had had its back broken. + +"Eight!" whispered Firio. + +"Duck!" Jack told him; for a response instantly came in a volley that +kicked up the dust around their heads. + +But Jack's rifle lay in limp hands. + +"Eight!" he repeated, dazedly. "And I shot to kill--to kill!" + +His face blanched with horror at the thing that he had done. It seemed as +if the strength had been struck out of him. He appeared ready to let +destiny overtake him rather than fire again. Then as in a flash, the +ancestor in him reappeared and in his features was written that very +process of fate which Dr. Bennington had said was in him. Again his hand +was firm on the barrel and his eye riveted on the sight, as he drew +himself up until he lay even with the bank of the _arroyo_. + +The volley from the cotton-woods had swept over Prather's head at the +instant that he had taken hold of his rifle. It dropped from his grasp. +He burrowed in the sand under the pressure of that near and sinister rush +of singing breaths. + +"I can't! I can't!" he said helplessly. + +He was leaden flesh, without the power to move. At his words Jack glanced +back to see a dropped jaw and glassy, staring eyes. + +"You are suffering!" exclaimed Jack. "Are you hit?" + +"No!" Prather managed to say, and reached out for his rifle in clumsy +desperation, as if he were feeling for it in the dark. + +"Take your time!" said Jack encouragingly, as one would to a victim of +stage fright. "There isn't any danger for the moment, while advantage of +position is with us--the sun over our shoulders and in their faces." + +The lumps around the water-hole grew smaller. Evidently, as a result of +the lesson, they were creeping backward on their stomachs to a less +exposed position. Two had quite disappeared, or else the brilliant play +of light had melted them into the golden carpet of reflected sunshine on +which they rested. Directly, Jack saw two figures creeping over the rim +of the pasturage basin. + +"So, that's it!" he said to Firio. + +Firio nodded his understanding of Leddy's plan to take them in flank +under cover of the _arroyo_. + +"We shall have to respond in kind!" said Jack. + +He left his hat where his head had been and began crawling along the side +of the _arroyo_, but paused to call to Prather, who, now that no bullets +were flying, was trying the mechanism of his rifle with a somewhat +steadier hand: + +"Prather, if you could manage to get up there beside Firio and join him +in pouring out a magazine full at the right moment, it would help! If +not, put your hat up there beside mine. You can do that without exposing +yourself." + +Jack's tone was that of one who urges a tired man to take a few more +steps, or an invalid without any appetite to try another sup of broth. It +had no hint of irony. + +"No matter," said Firio. "Leddy know he can't fight. Leddy know there is +only two of us!" His tone was without satire, but its sting was sharper +than satire; that of an Indian shrug over a negligible quantity. It +started Prather on all fours laboriously toward him. + +"I am going to the turn in the _arroyo_ that commands the next turn," +Jack explained. "When I whistle you empty your magazines. Keep your heads +down and fire fast, no matter if not accurately, so as to disturb their +aim at me!" + +"_Si_!" said Firio. "I know!" No one could deny that he was having a very +good time making war in the company of Senor Jack. "Yes, Mister Prather," +he added, when, after toiling painfully on his belly for the few feet he +had to go, Prather lay with his stark face near Firio's; a face strangely +like that of John Wingfield, Sr. when he saw Jasper Ewold from the +drawing-room doorway. "For your life, Mister Prather! _Si_! Up a little +more! Chin high as mine, so! Eye on sight, so!" + +Prather obeyed in an abyssmal sort of shame which, for the time being, +conquered his fear, though not his palsy; for his rifle barrel trembled +on its rest. + +Meanwhile, Jack had crept to the bend in the _arroyo_. He was listening. +It would not do to show his head as a warning of his presence. Faintly he +heard men moving in the sand, moving slowly and cautiously. At the moment +he chose as the right one, with rifle cocked and finger on trigger, he +gave his signal. Then he sprang to the top of the bank, fully exposed to +the marksmen at the water-hole. For no half measure would do. He must +have a full view of the bottom of the next bend. There he saw two +crawling figures. He fired twice and dropped down with three or four +stinging whispers in his ears and a second volley overhead as he was +under cover. Again he sprang up over the bank in the temptation to see +the result of his aim. One of the would-be flankers lay prostrate and +still, face downward. The other was disappearing beyond the second bend. + +"Seven, now!" he thought miserably, in comprehension of the whole +business as ridicule in human savagery. "They won't trouble us again +immediately. They will wait on darkness and thirst," he concluded; and +called, as he turned back, to Firio: "It worked like a charm, O son of +the sun! They could not fire at all straight with your bullets flying +about their heads, disturbing their--" His speech ended at sight of +Prather, half rolling, half tumbling down the slope, his hands over his +face, while he uttered a prolonged moan. + +"Bullet hit a rock under sand!" said Firio, as Jack hastened to assist +Prather, who had come to a halt at the very bottom of the _arroyo_ and +lay gasping on his side. Jack took hold of Prather's wrists to draw his +hands away from the wound. + +"My God! Out here, like a rat in a trap!" Prather groaned. "When I have +all life before me! In sight of millions and power--a rat in a trap out +on this damnable desert, as if I were of no more account than a rancher!" + +"Let me see!" said Jack; for Prather was holding his hands tight against +his face, as if he feared that all the blood in his body would pour out +if he removed them. "Let me see! Maybe it is not so bad!" + +Prather let his hands drop and the right one which was over the cheek +with the mole was splashed red between the fingers. On the cheek was a +raw spot, from which ran a slight trickle. The mole had gone. A splinter +of rock, or perhaps a bullet, with its jacket split, ricocheting +sidewise, had torn it clean from the flesh. + +"Not at all dangerous!" said Jack. + +"No?" exclaimed Prather, in utter relief. + +"It will heal in a fortnight!" + +A small medicine case was among the regular supplies that were always +packed on that omnibus of a burro, Jag Ear. While Jack was bandaging the +wound, Firio, who kept watch, had no news to report. + +"Nothing matters! They will get us, anyway!" Prather moaned. The shock of +being hit had quite finished any pretence at concealing his mortal fear +of the outcome. + +"Oh, I wouldn't say that! We already have them down to seven!" said Jack +encouragingly, as he made a pillow of a blanket and bade Prather rest +his head on it. + +But he knew well that they were a seven who had learned wisdom from the +fate of their comrades. From Nogales, Leddy must have heard of the loss +of two horses. At best, but one of the beleaguered three had any means of +escape. Leddy could well afford to curb his impatience as he camped +comfortably by the water-hole, while his own horses grazed. + +The sun was still above the western ridge in the effulgence of its adieu +for the day. Jack was on his knee, with the broad, level glare full on +him, looking at Prather, who was in the shadow; and his reflections were +mixed with that pity which one feels toward another who is lame or blind +or suffers for the want of any sense or faculty that is born to the +average human being. For a man of true courage rarely sees a coward as +anything but a man ailing; he is grateful for nature's kindness to +himself. And the spark of John Wingfield, Knight, skipping generations +before it settled on a descendant, had not chosen John Prather for its +favor. The ancestor was all Jack's. + +Prather, in his agony of mind, had moments of wondering envy as he +watched Jack's changing expression. He could see that Jack, in entire +detachment from his problem of fighting Leddy, was thinking soberly in +the silence of the desert, unconscious in his absorption of the presence +of any other human being. Suddenly his eyes opened wide in the +luminousness of a happy discovery; his lips turned a smile of supreme +satisfaction, and his face seemed to be giving back the light of the sun. + +"It's all right!" he said. "Yes, everything is going to be all right!" + +"How?" asked Prather wistfully, feeling the infection of the confident +ring of Jack's tone. + +"There is one horse left," said Jack. "He is in better condition than +Leddy imagines. When darkness comes you can get away with him and by +morning he will have brought you to water at Las Cascadas, halfway on the +range trail. Then you will be quite safe." + +"Yes! Yes!" Prather half rose, his breath coming fast, his eyes ravenous. + +"And in return you will give Little Rivers back its water rights! Is that +a bargain?" Jack asked. + +"Give up my concession and all it means to me! Give it up absolutely--its +millions!" objected Prather, in an uncontrollable impulse of greed. + +"King Richard III, you remember," Jack declared, with a trace of his old +humor breaking out over the new aspect of the situation, "said he would +give his kingdom for a horse. He could not get the horse and he lost both +his kingdom and his life. If he had been able to make the trade he might +have saved his life and perhaps--who knows?--have won another kingdom." + +"I will save my life!" Prather concluded; but under his breath he added +bitterly: "And you get both the store and Little Rivers!" in the +prehensile instinct which gains one thing only to covet another. + +"You have the papers for the concession with you?" Jack asked. + +"I--I--" + +"Yes!" interposed Jack firmly. + +"Yes!" Prather admitted. + +"And you have pencil and paper to make some sort of transfer that will be +the first legal step in undoing what you have done?" + +"Yes." + +While Prather was occupied with this, Jack found pencil and paper on his +own account and by the light of the sun's last rays and in the happiness +of one who has brought a story to a good end, he wrote to his father: + +"John Prather will tell you how he and I met out on the desert before you +came and of the long talk we had. + +"You wanted a son who would go on building on the great foundation you +had laid. You have one. He said that you wanted to give him the store. +The reason why you might not give it to him no longer exists. The mole is +gone. Of course there will be a scar where the mole was. I, too, shall +have to carry a scar. But the means is in your power to go far toward +erasing his, for his mother, Mrs. Prather, is still living. + +"So everything is clear. Everything is coming out right. John Prather and +I change places, as nature intended that we should. You need have no +apprehensions on my account. Though I had not a cent in the world I could +make my living out here--a very sweet thought, this, to me, with its +promise of something real and practical and worth while, at which I can +make good. I know that you are going to keep the bargain that Prather and +I have made; and think of me as over the pass and very happy as I write +this, in the confidence that at last all accounts have been balanced and +we can both turn to a fresh page in the ledger. JACK." + +When Jack, after he had received the transfer, gave the letter to Prather +to read, Prather was transfixed with incredulity. + +"You mean this?" he gasped blankly, as his surprise became articulate. + +"Yes. You have quite the better of King Richard--you gain both the +kingdom and the horse." + +"The store, yes, the store--mine! Mine--the store!" said Prather, in a +slow, passionate monotone, his fingers trembling with the very triumph of +possession as he thrust the letter into his pocket. "The store, yes, the +store!" he repeated, amazement mixed with exultation. "But--" his keen, +practical mind was recovering its balance; he was on guard again. Between +him and the realization of his inheritance lay the shadow of the fear of +the miles in the night. "But--there is no trick?" he hazarded in +suspicion. + +"No!" + +Jack spoke in such a way that it removed the last doubt for Prather, who +kneaded his palms together in a kind of frenzy, oblivious of all except +the moneyed prospect of the kingdom craved that had become a kingdom won. + +"How long before I start?" he asked. + +"As soon as the first darkness settles and before the moon rises." + +"I shall need some food," Prather went on ingratiatingly. "And they say +wounds bring on fever. Have you any water to drink on the way?" + +"We will fix you up the best we can. I will divide what water remains +between you and P.D. He shall have his share now and you can drink +yours later." + +The sun had set. The afterglow was fading, and in a few minutes, when the +light was quite out of the heavens, Jack announced that it was time for +Prather to start. + +"How shall I know the direction?" Prather asked. + +"Trust P.D. He will find it," said Jack. He held the stirrup for Prather +to mount with the relief of freeing himself at last from the clinging +touch of the phantoms. "You are perfectly safe. In two days you will be +mounting the steps of a Pullman on your way to New York." + +"And you? What--what are you going to do?" Prather inquired hectically, +with a momentary qualm of shame. + +"Why, if Firio and I are to have water to make coffee for breakfast we +must take the water-hole!" Jack answered, as if this were a thing of +minor importance beside seeing Prather safely on his way. "Be sure not to +overwater P.D. after the night's ride, and don't overdo him on the final +stretch, and turn him over to Galway when you arrive. Home, P.D.! Home!" +he concluded, striking that good soldier with the flat of his hand on the +buttocks. And P.D. trotted away into the night. + +Jack listened to the hoof-beats on the soft earth dying away and then +crept up beside Firio on the bank and gazed into the black wall in the +direction of the cotton-woods. A slight glow in the basin, which must be +Leddy's camp-fire, was the only sign of life in the neighborhood. The +silence was profound. He had not spoken a word to Firio. With one +problem forever solved, he was absorbed in another. + +"Leddy drinks, eats, waits!" whispered Firio. "If we try to go they +hunt us down!" + +"Yes," said Jack. + +"And we not go, eh? We stay? We fight?" + +"For water, Firio, yes! Two against seven!" + +"_Si_!" Firio had no illusions about the situation. "_Si_!" he repeated +stoically. + +"And, Firio--" Jack's hand slipped with a quick, gripping caress onto +Firio's shoulder. An inspiration had come to the mind of action, just as +a line comes to a poet in a flash; as one must have come to the ancestor +many times after he had gone into a tight place trusting to his wits and +his blade to bring him out. "And, Firio, we are going to change our base, +as the army men say--and change it before the moon rises. Jag Ear, we +shall have to leave you behind," he added, when they had dropped back to +the burro's side. "Just make yourself comfortable. Leddy surely wouldn't +think of killing so valuable a member of the non-combatant class. We will +come for you, by and by. It will be all right!" + +He gave the sliver of ear an affectionate corkscrew twist before he and +Firio, taking all their ammunition, crawled along the bottom of the +_arroyo_ and up the ridge where they settled down comfortably behind a +ledge commanding the water-hole at easy range. + +"It's lucky we learned to shoot in the moonlight!" Jack whispered. + +"_Si"!_ Firio answered, in perfect understanding. + + + + +XXXVII + +THE END OF THE WEAVING + + +For over a week a private car had stood on a siding at Little Rivers. +Every morning a porter polished the brasswork of the platform in heraldry +of the luxury within. Occasionally a young man with a plaster over a +wound on his cheek would walk up and down the road-bed on the far side of +the car. Indeed, he had worn a path there. He never went into town, and +any glances that he may have cast in that direction spoke his desire to +be forever free of its sight. Not a train passed that he did not wish +himself aboard and away. But as heir-apparent he had no thought of +endangering his new kingdom by going before his father went. He meant to +keep very close to the throne. He had become clingingly, determinedly +filial. At times the gleam of the brasswork would exercise the same +hypnosis over his senses as the scintillation of the jewelry counters of +the store, and he would rub his hands crisply together. + +John Wingfield, Sr. spent little time in the car. Morning and afternoon +and evening he would go over to Dr. Patterson's with the question: "How +is he?" which all Little Rivers was asking. The rules of longevity were +in oblivion and the routine channels of a mind, so used to teeming +detail, had become abysses as dark and void as the canyons of the range. + +On the day of his arrival in Little Rivers he found a town peopled +mostly by women and children. All of the men who could bear arms and get +a horse had departed, and with them Mary. Thereby hangs a story all to +the honor of little Ignacio. After Jack had ridden away with his +insistent refusal of assistance, apprehension among the group that +watched him disappear in the gathering darkness was allayed by reports of +men who had been at the store, where they found the Leddyites hanging +about as usual. True, no one had seen either Pete or Ropey Smith, but +Lang said that they were upstairs playing poker, a favorite relaxation +from the strain of their intellectual life. + +But Ignacio learned from another Indian in Lang's service that Pete and +seven of his best shots had started for Agua Fria about the same time as +Jack, while the rest of the gang that had been left behind were making it +their business to cover the leader's absence. Distrusting Ignacio, they +locked him in a closet off the bar. In the early hours of the morning he +succeeded in escaping with his news, which he carried first to Mary. She +was not asleep when he rapped at her door. It had been a night of +wakefulness for her, recalling the night after her meeting with Jack on +the pass before the duel in the _arroyo_. + +"I for Senor Don't Care, now! I for every devil in him! And they go to +kill him!" was the incoherent way in which he began his announcement. + +In an hour the alarm had travelled from house to house. While the gang +slept at Lang's or in their tents, a solemn cavalcade set forth quietly +into the night, with rifles slung over their shoulders or lying across +the pommels of their saddles, bound to rescue Jack Wingfield. They had +protested against Mary's going with all the old, familiar arguments that +occur to the male at thought of a woman in physical danger. + +"It is the least that any of us can do," she declared. + +"But of what service will you be?" Dr. Patterson asked. + +"No one can say yet," she replied. "And no one shall stop me!" She was +driven by the same impulse that had sent her across the _arroyo_ in face +of the ruffians on the bank to Jack's side after he was wounded. "My pony +can keep up with the best of yours," she added. + +Leddy had eight hours' start on a two-days' journey. It was not in +horse-flesh to gain much on his fast and hardened ponies. There was +little chance that Jack could hold out against such odds as he must face, +even if he had escaped an ambush. So they rode in desperation and in +silence, each too certain of what was in the minds of the others to make +pretence of a hope that was not in the heart. + +Their only stop for rest was at Las Cascadas in the hot hours of midday. +Darkness had fallen when they overtook a solitary horseman coming from +Agua Fria. John Prather drew rein well to one side of the trail. He had +a moment, as they approached, in which to think out his explanation of +his position. + +"It's Prather, and riding P.D.!" Galway announced. + +"Where is Jack Wingfield?" came the merciless question as in one +voice from all. + +"You are his friends! You have come to rescue him!" Prather cried. + +He seemed overcome by his relief. At all events, the wildness of his +exclamation in face of the force barring the trail was without +affectation. + +"There is time? There is hope?" + +"Yes! yes!" gasped Prather, as the men began to surround him. + +"Why are you here? Why on his horse?" + +"Leddy turned on me, too! I was fighting at Wingfield's side! We got two +of them before dark! Then I was wounded and couldn't see to shoot. And I +came for help. And you will be in time! He's in a good position!" + +"I think you are lying!" said Galway. + +"He couldn't help it!" said Bob Worther. + +"How--how would I have his horse if he weren't willing?" protested +Prather, frantically. + +"By stealing it, in keeping with your character!" + +"Yes! On general principles we ought to--" + +"I have a piece of rope!" called a voice from the rear. + +"There isn't any tree. But we can drop him over the wall of a chasm!" + +Spectral figures with set faces appallingly grim in the thin moonlight +pressed close to Prather. + +"My God! No!" he pleaded, throatily. "We fought together, I tell you! We +drew lots to see which one should take the risk of riding through danger +to save the other!" + +"Lying again!" + +"Here's the rope! All we've got to do is to slip a noose over his head!" + +"It's a clean piece of rope, isn't it?" said the Doge, in his mellow +voice. "I don't think it's worth while soiling a clean piece of +rope. Come! Taking his life is no way to save Jack's. Come, we are +losing time!" + +"Right, Doge!" said the man with the rope. "But it is some satisfaction +to give him a scare." + +"And take care of P.D.!" called another. + +"Yes, if you founder Jack's pony you'll hear from us a-plenty!" + +This was their adieu to John Prather, who was left to pursue his way in +safety to his kingdom, while they rode on, following a hard path at the +base of the range. Those with the best horses took the lead, while the +heavier men, including the Doge, whose weight was telling on their +mounts, fell to the rear. Mary was at the head, between Dr. Patterson and +Jim Galway. + +The stars flickered out; the moon grew pale, and for a while the horsemen +rode into a wall of blackness, conscious of progress only by the sound of +hoof-beats which they were relentlessly urging forward. Then dawn flashed +up over the chaos of rocks, pursuing night with the sweep of its +broadening, translucent wings across the valley to the other range. The +tops of the cotton-woods rose out of the sparkling sea, floating free of +any visible support of trunks, and the rescuers saw that they were near +the end of their journey. + +There was a faint sound of a shot; then of another shot and another. +After that, the radiant, baffling silence of daybreak on uninhabited +wastes, when the very active glory of the spreading, intensifying light +ought, one feels, to bring paeans of orchestral splendor. It set +desperation in the hearts of the riders, which was communicated to weary +ponies driven to a last effort of speed. And still no more shots. The +silence spoke the end of some tragedy with the first streaks from the +rising sun clearing a target to a waiting marksman's eye. + +Around the cotton-woods was no sign of human movement; nothing but +inanimate, dark spots which developed into prostrate human forms, in +pantomimic expression of the story of that night's work done in the +moonlight and finished with the first flush of morning. Two of the +outstretched figures were lying head to head a few yards apart on either +side of the water-hole. The one on the side toward the ridge was +recognized as Jack, still as death. Another a short distance behind him, +at the sound of hoof-beats looked up with face blanched despite its dark +skin, the parched lips stretched over the teeth; but in Firio's eyes +there was still fire, as he whispered, "All right!" before he sank back +unconscious. A wound in his shoulder had been bandaged, but the wrist of +his gun hand lay beside a fresh red spot on the earth. + +Jack had a bullet hole in the upper left arm plugged with a bit of +cotton; and a deep furrow across the temple, which was bleeding. His +rigid fingers were still gripping his six-shooter. He lay partly on his +side, facing Leddy, who had rolled over on his back dead. + +Mary and Dr. Patterson dropped from their horses simultaneously. The +doctor pressed his hand over Jack's heart, to find it still beating. + +"Jack!" they whispered. "Jack!" they called aloud. + +He roused slightly, lifting his weary eyelids and gazing at them as if +they were uncertain shadows who wanted some kind of an explanation from +him which he had not the strength to give. + +"We must drink--blaze away, Leddy," he murmured. "I'm coming down after +the stars go out--close--close as you like--we must drink!" + +"No vital hit!" said the doctor; while Mary bringing water assisted him +to bathe the wounds before he dressed them. "No, not from a bullet!" he +added, after the dressing was finished and he had one hand on Jack's hot +brow and the other on his pulse. + +Then he attended to Firio, who was talking incoherently: + +"Take water-hole--boil coffee in the morning--quail for dinner, Senor +Jack--_si, si_!" + +When they had moved Jack and Firio into the shadow of the cotton-woods +and forced water down their throats, Firio revived enough to recognize +those around him and to cry out an inquiry about Jack; but Jack himself +continued in a stupor, apparently unconscious of his surroundings and +scarcely alive except for breathing. Yet, when litters of blankets and +rifles tied together had been fashioned and attached to the pack-saddles +of tandem burros, as he was lifted into place for the return he seemed to +understand that he was starting on a journey; for he said, disjointedly: + +"Don't forget Wrath of God--and Jag Ear is thirsty--and bury Wrath of God +fittingly--give him an epitaph! He was gloomy, but it was a good gloom, a +kind of kingly gloom, and he liked the prospect when at last he stuck his +head through the blue blanket of the horizon." + +Those of the party who remained behind for the last duty to the dead +counted its most solemn moment, perhaps, the one that gave Wrath of God +the honorable due of a soldier who had fallen face to the enemy. Bob +Worther wrote the epitaph with a pencil on a bit of wood: "Here lies the +gloomiest pony that ever was. The gloomier he was the better he went and +the better Jack Wingfield liked him;" which was Bob's way of interpreting +Jack's instructions. + +Then Worther and his detail rode as fast as they might to overtake the +slow-marching group in trail of the litters with the question that all +Little Rivers had been asking ever since, "How is he?" A ghastly, +painfully tedious journey this homeward one, made mostly in the night, +with the men going thirsty in the final stretches in order that wet +bandages might be kept on Jack's feverish head; while Dr. Patterson was +frequently thrusting his little thermometer between Jack's hot, +cracking lips. + +"If he were free of this jouncing! It is a terrible strain on him, but +the only thing is to go on!" the doctor kept repeating. + +But when Jack lay white and still in his bedroom and Firio was rapidly +convalescing, the fever refused to abate. It seemed bound to burn out the +life that remained after the hemorrhage from his wounds had ceased. Men +found it hard to work in the fields while they waited on the crisis. John +Wingfield, Sr. sat for hours under Dr. Patterson's umbrella-tree in +moody absorption. He talked to all who would talk to him. Always he was +asking about the duel in the _arroyo_ which was fought in Jack's way. He +could not hear enough of it; and later he almost attached himself to the +one eye-witness of the final duel, which had been fought in Leddy's way. + +When Firio was well enough to walk out he was to be found in a long +chair on Jack's porch, ever raising a warning finger for silence to +anyone who approached and looking out across the yard to Jag Ear, who was +winning back the fat he had lost in a constitutional crisis, and P.D., +who, after bearing himself first and last in a manner characteristic of a +pony who was P.D. but never Q., seemed already none the worse for the +hardships he had endured. The master of twenty millions would sit on the +steps, while Firio occupied the chair and regarded him much as if he were +a blank wall. But at times Firio would humor the persistent inquirer with +a few abbreviated sentences. It was out of such fragments as this that +John Wingfield, Sr. had to piece the story of the fight for the +water-hole. + +"Senor Jack and Mister Prather, they no look alike," said Firio one day, +evidently bound to make an end of the father's company. "Anybody say +that got bad eyes. Mister Prather"--and Firio smiled peculiarly--"I call +him the mole! He burrow in the sand, so! His hand tremble, so! He act +like a man believe himself the only god in the world when he in no +danger, but when he get in danger he act like he afraid he got to meet +some other god!" + +"But Jack? Now, after Prather had gone?" persisted the father greedily. + +"We glad the mole go. It sort of hurt inside to think a man like him. He +make you wonder what for he born." + +John Wingfield, Sr. half rose in a sudden movement, as if he were about +to go, but remained in response to another emotion that was stronger than +the impulse. + +"And Jack? He kept his head! He figured out his chances coolly! Now, +that trick he played by going up on the ridge under cover of darkness?" + +"No trick!" said Firio resentfully, in instinctive defence. "That the +place to fight! Senor Jack he see it." + +"And all through the night you kept firing?" + +"_Si,_ after moon very bright and over our shoulders in their faces! +_Si_, at the little lumps that lie so still. When they move quick like +they stung, we know we hit!" + +"Ah, that was it! You hit! You hit! And the other fellows couldn't. You +had the light with you--everything! Jack had seen to that! He used his +head! He--he was strong, strong!" + +Quite unconsciously, John Wingfield, Sr. rubbed his palms together. + +"When you pleased you always rub your hands same as Mister Prather," +observed Firio. + +"Oh! Do I? I--" John Wingfield, Sr. clasped his fingers together +tightly. "Yes, and the finish of the fight--how was that?" + +"Sometimes, when there no firing, Senor Jack and Leddy call out to each +other. Leddy he swear hard, like he fight. Senor Jack he sing back his +answers cheerful, like he fight. Toward morning we both wounded and +only Leddy and one other man alive on his side. When a cloud slip over +the moon and the big darkness before morning come, we creep down from +the ridge and with first light we bang-bang quick--and I no remember +any more." + +"Forced the fighting--forced it right at the end!" cried John Wingfield, +Sr. in the flush of a great pride. + +"The aggressive, that is it--that is the way to win, always!" + +"But Senor Jack no fight just to win!" said Firio. "He no want to fight. +In the big darkness, before we crawl down to the water-hole, he call out +to Leddy to make quits. He almost beg Leddy. But Leddy, he say: 'I never +quit and I get you!' 'Sorry,' says Senor Jack, with the devil out again, +'sorry--and we'll see!' No, Senor Jack no like to fight till you make him +fight and the devil is out. He fight for water; he fight for peace. He no +want just to win and kill, but--but--" bringing his story to an end, +Firio looked hard at the father, his velvety eyes shot with a +comprehending gleam as he shrugged his shoulders--"but you no understand, +you and the mole!" + +John Wingfield, Sr. shifted his gaze hurriedly from the little Indian. +His face went ashen and it was working convulsively as he assisted +himself to rise by gripping the veranda post. + +"Why do you think that?" he asked. + +"I know!" said Firio. + +His lips closed firmly. That was all he had to say. John Wingfield, Sr. +turned away with the unsteady step of a man who is afraid of slipping or +stumbling, though the path was hard and even. + +Out in the street he met the cold nods of the people of a town where his +son had a dominion founded on something that was lacking in his own. And +one of those who nodded to him ever so politely was a new citizen, who +had once been a unit of his own city within a city. + +Peter Mortimer had arrived in Little Rivers only two days after his late +employer. Peter had been like some old tree that everybody thinks has +seen its last winter. But now he waited only on the good word from the +sick-room for the sap of renewed youth to rise in his veins and his +shriveled branches to break into leaf at the call of spring. + +And the good word did come thrilling through the community. The physical +crisis had passed. The fever was burning itself out. But a mental crisis +developed, and with it a new cause for apprehension. Even after Jack's +temperature was normal and he should have been well on the road to +convalescence, there was a veil over his eyes which would not allow him +to recognize anybody. When he spoke it was in delirium, living over some +incident of the past or of sheer imagination. + +Now he was the ancestor, fitting out his ship: + +"No, you can't come! A man who is a malingerer on the London docks would +be a malingerer on the Spanish Main. I don't want bullies and boasters. +Let them stay at home to pick quarrels in the alleys and cheer the Lord +Mayor's procession!" + +Now his frigate was under full sail, sighting the enemy: + +"Suppose they have two guns to our one! That makes it about even! We'll +get the windward side, as we have before! Who cares about their guns once +we start to board!" + +Another time he was on the trail: + +"I'll grow so strong, so strong that he can never call me a weakling +again! He will be proud of me. That is my only way to make good." + +Then he was apprenticed to the millions: + +"All this detail makes me feel as if my brains were a tangled spool of +thread. But I will master it--I will!" + +Again, he was happily telling stories to the children; or tragically +pleading with Leddy that there had been slaughter enough around the +water-hole; or serenely planning the future which he foresaw for himself +when the phantoms were laid: + +"I may not know how to run the store, but I do seem to fit in here. We +can find the capital! We will build the dam ourselves!" + +His body grew stronger, with little appreciable change otherwise. For an +instant he would seem to know the person who was speaking to him; then he +was away on the winds of delirium. + +"His mind is too strong for him not to come out of this all right. It is +only a question of time, isn't it?" insisted the father. + +"There was a far greater capacity in him for suffering in that hellish +fight than there was in Pete Leddy," said Dr. Patterson. "He had +sensitiveness to impressions which was born in him, at the same time that +a will of steel was born in him--the sensitiveness of the mother, +perhaps, and the will of the ancestor. His life hung by a thread when we +found him and his nerves had been twisted and tortured by the ordeal of +that night. And that isn't all. There was more than fighting. Something +that preceded the fight was even harder on him. I knew from his look when +he set out for Agua Fria that he was under a terrible strain; a strain +worse than that of a few hours' battle--the kind that had been weighing +day after day on the will that grimly sustained its weight. And that +wound in the head was very close, very, and it came at the moment when +he collapsed in reaction after that last telling shot. Something snapped +then. There was a fracture of the kind that only nature can set. Will he +come out of this delirium, you ask? I don't know. Much depends upon +whether that strain is over for good or if it is still pressing on his +mind. When he rises from his bed he may be himself or he may ride away +madly into the face of the sun. I don't know. Nobody on earth can know." + +"Yes, yes!" said John Wingfield, Sr. slowly. + +In Jack's wildest moments it was Mary's voice that had the most telling +effect. However low she spoke he seemed always to recognize the tone and +would greet it with a smile and frequently break into verses and scraps +of remembered conversations of his boyhood exile in villa gardens. One +morning, when she and Dr. Patterson had entered the room together, Jack +called out miserably: + +"Just killing, killing, killing! What will Mary say to me, now?" + +He raised his hands, fingers spread, and stared at them with a ghastly +look. She sprang to the bedside and seized them fast in hers, and bending +very close to him, as if she would impart conviction with every quivering +particle of her being, she said: + +"She thinks you splendid! She is glad, glad! It is just what she wanted +you to do. She wished every bullet that you fired luck--luck for your +sake, to speed it straight to the mark!" + +He seemed to understand what she was saying, as one understands that +shade is cool after the broiling torment of the sun. + +"Luck will always come at your command, Mary!" he whispered, repeating +his last words when he left the Ewold garden to go to the wars. + +"And she wants you to rest--just rest--and not worry!" + +This had the effect of a soothing draught. Smilingly he fell back on the +pillow and slept. + +"You put some spirit into that!" said the doctor, after he and Mary had +tiptoed out of the room; "a little of the spirit in keeping with a +dark-eyed girl who lives in the land of the Eternal Painter." + +"All I had!" answered Mary, with simple earnestness. + +At noon Jack was still sleeping. He slept on through the last hours +of the day. + +"The first long stretch he has had," ran the bulletin, from tongue to +tongue, "and real sleep, too--the kind that counts!" + +In the late afternoon, when the coolness and the shadows of evening were +creeping in at the doors and windows, the doctor, Peter Mortimer, the +father, and Firio were on the veranda, while Mrs. Galway was on watch by +the bedside. + +"He's waking!" she came out to whisper. + +The doctor hastened past her into the sick-room. As he entered, Jack +looked up with a bright, puzzled light in his eyes. + +"Just what does this mean?" he asked. "Just how does it happen that I am +here? I thought that I--" + +"We brought you in some days ago," the doctor explained. "And since you +took the water-hole your mind has been enjoying a little vacation, while +we moved your body about as we pleased." + +"I took the water-hole, then! And Firio? Firio? He--" + +"He is just waiting outside to congratulate you on the re-establishment +of the old cordial relations between mind and body," the doctor returned; +and slipped out to call Firio and to announce: "He is right as rain, +right as rain!" news that Mrs. Galway set forth immediately to herald +through the community. + +As for Firio, he strode into Jack's presence with the air of conqueror, +sage, and prophet in one. + +"Is it really you, Firio? Come here, so that I can feel of you and make +sure, you son of the sun!" + +Jack put out his thin, white hand to Firio, and the velvet of Firio's +eyes was very soft, indeed. + +"Did you know when they brought you in?" Jack asked. + +"When burro stumble I feel ouch and see desert and then I drift away +up to sky again," answered Firio. "All right now, eh? Pretty soon +you so strong I have to broil five--six--seven quail a day and still +you hungry!" + +The doctor who had been looking on from the doorway felt a vigorous touch +on the arm and turned to hear John Wingfield, Sr. asking him to make +way. With a grimace approaching a scowl he drew back free of Jack's sight +and held up his hand in protest. "You had better not excite him!" he +whispered. + +"But I am his father!" said John Wingfield, Sr. with something of his +old, masterful manner in a moment of irritation, as he pushed by the +doctor. He paused rather abruptly when his eyes met Jack's. A faint +flush, appearing in Jack's cheeks, only emphasized his wanness and the +whiteness of his neck and chin and forehead. + +"Well, Jack, right as rain, they say! I knew you would come out all +right! It was in the blood that--" and the rest of John Wingfield, Sr.'s +speech fell away into inarticulateness. + +It was a weak, emaciated son, this son whom he saw in contrast to the one +who had entered his office unannounced one morning; and yet the father +now felt that same indefinable radiation of calm strength closing his +throat that he had felt then. Jack was looking steadily in his father's +direction, but through him as through a thin shadow and into the +distance. He smiled, but very faintly and very meaningly. + +"Father, you will keep the bargain I have made," he said, as if this were +a thing admitting of no dispute. "It is fair to the other one, isn't it? +Yes, we have found the truth at last, haven't we? And the truth makes it +all clear for him and for you and for me." + +"You mean--it is all over--you stay out here for good--you--" said John +Wingfield, Sr. gropingly. + +Then another figure appeared in the doorway and Jack's eyes returned from +the distances to rest on it fondly. In response to an impulse that he +could not control, Peter Mortimer was peering timidly into the sick-room. + +"Why, Peter!" exclaimed Jack, happily. "Come farther in, so I can see +more of you than the tip of your nose." + +After a glance of inquiry at the doctor, which received an affirmative +nod, Peter ventured another step. + +"So it's salads and roses, is it, Peter?" Jack continued. "Well, I think +you may telegraph any time, now, that the others can come as soon as they +are ready and their places are filled." + +Thus John Wingfield, Sr. had his answer; thus the processes of fate that +Dr. Bennington had said were in the younger man had worked out their end. +Under the spur of a sudden, powerful resolution, the father withdrew. In +the living-room he met Jasper Ewold. The two men paused, facing each +other. They were alone with the frank, daring features from Velasquez's +brush and with the "I give! I give!" of the Sargent, both reflecting the +afterglow of sunset; while the features of the living--John Wingfield, +Sr.'s, in stony anger, and Jasper Ewold's, serene in philosophy--told +their story without the touch of a painter's genius. + +"You have stolen my son, Jasper Ewold!" declared John Wingfield, Sr. +with the bitterness of one whose personal edict excluded defeat from his +lexicon, only to find it writ broad across the page. "I suppose you think +you have won, damn you, Jasper Ewold!" + +The Doge flushed. He seemed on the point of an outburst. Then he +looked significantly from the portrait of the ancestor to the portrait +of the mother. + +"He was never yours to lose!" was the answer, without passion. + +John Wingfield, Sr. recoiled, avoiding a glance at the walls where the +pictures hung. The Doge stepped to one side to leave the way clear. John +Wingfield, Sr. went out unsteadily, with head bowed. But he had not gone +far before his head went up with a jerk and he struck fist into palm +decisively. Rigidly, ignoring everyone he passed and looking straight +ahead, he walked rapidly toward the station, as if every step meant +welcome freedom, from the earth that it touched. + +His private car was attached to the evening express, and while it started +homeward with the king and the determinedly filial heir-apparent to the +citadel of the push-buttons, through all the gardens of Little Rivers ran +the joyous news that Jack was "right as rain." It was a thing to start a +continual exchange of visits and to keep the lights burning in the houses +unusually late. + +But all was dark and silent out at Bill Lang's store. After their return +from Agua Fria, the rescuing party, Jim Galway leading, had attended to +another matter. The remnants of Pete Leddy's gang, far from offering any +resistance, explained that they had business elsewhere which admitted of +no delay. There was peace in the valley of Little Rivers. Its phantoms +had been laid at the same time as Jack's. + + + + +XXXVIII + +THEIR SIDE OF THE PASS + + +"Persiflage! Persiflage!" cried the Doge. + +He and Jack were in the full tilt of controversy, Jack pressing an +advantage as they came around the corner of the Ewold house. It was like +the old times and better than the old times. For now there was +understanding where then there had been mystery. The stream of their +comradeship ran smoothly in an open country, with no unsounded depths. + +"But I notice that you always say persiflage just as I am getting the +better of the argument!" Jack whipped back. + +"Has it taken you all this time to find that out? For what purpose is +the word in the English vocabulary? But I'll take the other side, which +is the easy one, next time, and then we'll see! Boom! boom!" The Doge +pursed out his lips in mock terrorization of his opponent. "You are +pretty near yourself again, young sir," he added, as he paused at the +opening in the hedge. + +"Yes, strength has been fairly flooding back the last two or three days. +I can feel it travelling in my veins and making the tissues expand. It is +glorious to be alive, O Doge!" + +"Now, do you want me to take the other side on that question so you can +have another unearned victory? I refuse to humor the invalid any longer +and I agree. The proposition that it is glorious to live on such an +afternoon as this is carried unanimously. But I will never agree that you +can grow dates the equal of mine." + +"Not until my first crop is ripe; then there will be no dispute!" + +"That is real persiflage!" the Doge called after Jack. + +Jack had made his first visit to the Doge's garden since he had left it +to meet Prather and Leddy rather brief when he found that Mary was not at +home. She had ridden out to the pass. Her trips to the pass had been so +frequent of late that he had seen little of her during his convalescence. +Yet he had eaten her jelly exclusively. He had eaten it with his bread, +his porridge, his dessert, and with the quail that Firio had broiled. He +had even intimated his willingness to mix it with his soup. She advised +him to stir it into his coffee, instead. + +When he was seated in the long chair on the porch and she called to ask +how he was, they had kept to the domain of nonsense, with never a +reference to sombre memories; but she was a little constrained, a little +shy, and he never gave her cause to raise the barrier, even if she had +been of the mind in face of a possible recurrence of former provocations +while he was weak and easily tired. It was enough for him to hear her +talk; enough to look out restfully toward the gray masses of the range; +enough to know that the desert had brought him oblivion to the past; +enough to see his future as clear as the V of Galeria against the sky, +sharing the life of the same community with her. + +And what else? He was almost in fear of the very question that was never +out of his mind. She might wish him luck in the wars, but he knew her too +well to have any illusions that this meant the giving of the great thing +she had to give, unless in the full spontaneity of spirit. This +afternoon, with the flood of returning strength, the question suddenly +became commanding in a fresh-born suspense. + +As he walked back to the house he met Belvy Smith and some of the +children. Of course they asked for a story, and he continued one about a +battered knight and his Heart's Desire, which he had begun some days +previously. + +"He wasn't a particularly handsome knight or particularly good--inclined +to mischief, I think, when he forgot himself--but he was mightily in +earnest. He didn't know how to take no. Say 'No!' to him and push him off +the mountain top and there he was, starting for the peak again! And he +was not so foolish as he might seem. When he reached the top he was happy +just to get a smile from his Heart's Desire before he was tossed back +again. His fingers were worn clear down to the first joint and his feet +off up to the knees, so he could not hold on to the seams of canyons as +well as before. He would have been a ridiculous spectacle if he weren't +so pitiful. And that wasn't the worst of it. He was pretty well shot to +pieces by the brigands whom he had met on his travels. With every ascent +there was less of him to climb, you see. In fact, he was being worn down +so fast that pretty soon there wouldn't be much left of him except his +wishbone. That was indestructible. He would always wish. And after the +hardest climb of all, here he is very near the top again, and--" + +"And--and--" + +"I'll have to finish this story later," said Jack, sending the youngsters +on their way, while he went his own to call to Firio, as he entered the +yard: "Son of the sun, I feel so strong that I am going for a ride!" + +"You wear the big spurs and the grand chaps?" Firio asked. + +Jack hesitated thoughtfully. + +"No, just plain togs," he answered. "I think we will hang up that +circus costume as a souvenir. We are past that stage of our career. My +devil is dead." + +It was Firio's turn to be thoughtful. + +"_Si_! We had enough fight! We get old and sober! _Si_, I know! We settle +down. I am going to begin to shave!" he concluded, stroking the black +down on his boyish lip. + +With the town behind him and the sinking sun over his shoulder, the +battered knight rode toward the foothills and on up the winding path, +oblivious of the Eternal Painter's magic and conscious only that every +step brought him nearer his Heart's Desire. Here was the rock where she +was seated when he had first seen her. What ages had passed since then! +And there, around the escarpment, he saw her pony on the shelf! Dropping +P.D.'s reins, he hurried on impetuously. With the final turn he found +Mary seated on the rock where she had been the day that he had come to +say farewell before he went to battle with the millions. Now as then, she +was gazing far out over that sea of singing, quivering light, and the +crunch of his footsteps awakened her from her revery. + +But how differently she looked around! Her breaths were coming in a happy +storm, her face crimsoning, her nostrils playing in trembling dilation. +In her eyes he saw open gates and a long vista of a fair highway in a +glorious land; and the splendor of her was something near and yielding. +He sank down beside her. Her hands stole into his; her head dropped on +his shoulder; and he felt a warm and palpitating union with the very +breath of her life. + +"What do I see!" cried the Eternal Painter. "Two human beings who have +climbed up as near heaven as they could and seem as happy as if they had +reached it!" + +"We have reached it!" Jack called back. "And we like it, you +hoary-bearded, Olympian impersonality!" + +Thus they watched the sun go down, gilding the foliage of their +Little Rivers, seeing their future in the fulness and richness of the +life of their choice, which should spread the oasis the length of +that valley, and knowing that any excursions to the world over the +pass would only sink their roots deeper in the soil of the valley +that had given them life. + +"Jack, oh, Jack! How I did fight against the thing that was born in me +that morning in the _arroyo_! I was in fear of it and of myself. In fear +of it I ran from you that day you climbed down to the pine. But I +shan't run again--not so far but that I can be sure you can catch me. +Jack, oh, Jack! And this is the hand that saved you from Leddy--the +right hand! I think I shall always like it better than the left hand! +And, Jack, there is a little touch of gray on the temples"--Mary was +running her fingers very, very gently over the wound--"which I like. But +we shall be so happy that it will be centuries before the rest of your +hair is gray! Jack, oh, Jack!" + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Over the Pass, by Frederick Palmer + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OVER THE PASS *** + +***** This file should be named 10932.txt or 10932.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/9/3/10932/ + +Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's +eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII, +compressed (zipped), HTML and others. + +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over +the old filename and etext number. The replaced older file is renamed. +VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving +new filenames and etext numbers. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000, +are filed in directories based on their release date. If you want to +download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular +search system you may utilize the following addresses and just +download by the etext year. + + https://www.gutenberg.org/etext06 + + (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99, + 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90) + +EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are +filed in a different way. The year of a release date is no longer part +of the directory path. The path is based on the etext number (which is +identical to the filename). The path to the file is made up of single +digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename. For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: + https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + + diff --git a/old/10932.zip b/old/10932.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e9e5498 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10932.zip |