“Pat’s rightful owners have found him and put in their claim!” She got up and began to pace the floor. “I know it,” she declared with conviction. “I know it as well as I know I’m in this room. Pat–Pat has been–been taken and–and–” Tears choked back her words. Again she turned to her bed and gave way to a paroxysm of grief.
Her tears lasted until sleep mercifully descended. And thus she lay, outstretched and disheveled, until the sun, slanting across the room, settled its mellow rays upon her. And even though the touch was light and gentle and somehow sympathetic, it awoke her. She rose and hurried to a window. Out in the corral all was quiet. She dropped into a chair and turned her eyes to the east–out over the mesa to the distant mountains. The mountains were draped in their evening purple, which seemed to her like mourning for her lost happiness–a happiness that might have been hers always with the horse.
CHAPTER IX
THE SECOND GREAT LESSON
Next morning Pat, imprisoned in a tiny stable, tried to get out by thrusting his head against the door. But the door would not give. Alone in semi-darkness, therefore, he spent the day. Twice a Mexican youth came to feed and water him, but always the quantity was insufficient, and always the boy carefully locked the door after him. Because of this, together with the poor ventilation, Pat became irritable. He longed for the freedom of the big corral–its sunlight, the visits of his mistress–but these were steadfastly denied him. And so through another night and another day, until he became well-nigh distracted. He stamped the floor, fought flies, dozed, dreamed strange dreams, stamped the floor again. After three days of this, sounds outside told him of the return of man and horses. But not till the next morning, and then quite late, was he released from the odious confinement.
Felipe bustled in, all eager for business. He drove his recent acquisition out into the corral and set to work harnessing one of the team–the mate of the aged mare. When she was bridled and standing in the trail in front of his empty wagon, he hurriedly returned to the new horse, placed a bridle upon his head, led him forth, and swung him close beside the other horse. He winced just a little at the incongruity of the team, though he did not let it delay him. He picked up the half of the harness and tossed it over the mare’s back. Then he caught up the other half, and, preparing to toss it upon the black, began to straighten out deep and unexpected tangles.
“Well, you black devil,” he began, as he twisted and turned the much-bepatched harness, “you doin’ soom work now! All you’ life you havin’ mooch good times! Eet is not for thee fun thot you live, you know?” he went on, academically, continuing to disentangle the harness. “Eet is for thee work thot you live! Work–thot’s thee answer!” Then, having straightened the harness at last, with a grunt of satisfaction he tossed it lightly up.
Instantly there was wild commotion. With a kick and a plunge the horse flung off the harness.
Felipe stood dumfounded. It had never occurred to him that the horse was not broken to harness. Horses reared as this one evidently had been reared ought certainly to be educated to all kinds of service. Yet this horse evidently was not. He scratched his head in perplexity. To break a horse to harness was no child’s play, as he well knew. To break a horse of this character to harness, as he well understood also, was a task that required exceptional patience and hardihood. What should he do? There was his constant press for money. The aged mare having almost dropped in the trail the evening before, was unfit for toil, and to break a horse to harness meant loss of time, and, as every one knows, loss of time meant loss of money. So what should he do? He was utterly at a loss.
Striding to the doorstep, he sat down and regarded the horse with malevolent disgust. After a time, jerking off his hat savagely, he burst out into a thundering tirade.
“You black devil! You haf give me more trouble than anyt’ing I haf ever own–chickens, burro, pigs, horses, money–money, even–money I haf owe thot robber Pedro! First you haf run away thot time! Then you haf mek me steal you out of thot place couple days before! And now”–he suddenly leaped to his feet–“now you haf mek me break you to thees wagon and harness!” He advanced to the startled horse and brandished his fist. “But I break you!” he snarled–“I break you like a horse never was broke before! And–and if I don’ break you–if you don’ do what I haf say–I break every bone inside!” With this he began feverishly to peel off his coat.
And this is the lot of the dumb. Merely for not knowing what a man believed he should know, Pat was to be humiliated, was to be punished far beyond justice and decency. And because he was a horse abnormally highstrung and sensitive, this punishment was to be doubly cruel. To him a blow was more painful than to the average horse, even as a word of kindness sank deeper and remained longer to soften his memory. On his maternal side he was the offspring of native stock, but he was blooded to the last least end of him, and while from his mother he had inherited his softer traits, like his affection for those who showed affection for him, it was from his sire, unknown though he was, that he inherited an almost human spirit of rebellion when driven by lash or harsh word, and also the strength to exercise it. In the face of these qualities, then, he was to be broken to harness and a wagon by a man!
Felipe lost little time in preparation. He set out through the settlement, his destination a distant and kindly neighbor. He moved at a stride so vigorous that the good townspeople, roused by the rare spectacle of a man in a hurry, interrupted their passive loafing beside well and in doorway, and turned wondering eyes after him. But if their eyes showed wonderment at his going, on his return they showed amazement and a kind of horror. For Felipe, acting for once in the capacity of work-horse, was straining along at the end of a huge wagon-tongue affixed to a crude and mastodonic axle which in turn supported two monolithic cart-wheels. It was a device by which he meant to break the horse to harness, and, perspiring freely, and swearing even more freely, he dragged it shrieking for grease through the settlement, really at work, but work which was not to be admired. Reaching the clearing in front of his house, he dropped the heavy tongue and whipped out a red handkerchief with a sigh of relief. Also, as he wiped away the perspiration on his forehead and neck and arms, he turned baleful eyes upon the innocent cause of his toil.
“You black devil!” he growled, after a moment. “I feex you now–bet you’ life! And you can keeck–and keeck and keeck! You don’ worry thees cart mooch! You black devil!”
Then he became active again. He strode back into the corral, sought out an old harness and a huge collar, and dragged them forward into the trail. Flinging them aside in the direction of the cart, he then turned to the mare, removed the work-harness from her, and led her into position before the warlike vehicle. Again perspiring freely, but losing no breath now in abusive talk, he quickly harnessed her up and then strode forward to the black. After eying him narrowly a moment, he seized his bridle and led him back alongside the mare, where he proceeded nervously to harness him.
“We see now,” he began, as he picked up the massive collar. “You can stond still–thot’s right! And maybe you can take thees t’ing–we see!”
The collar was much too large for workaday use, but it was not too large for this purpose. Its very size gave it freedom to pass over the head without the usual twisting and turning. Nor did the horse rebel when it was so placed–a fact which gave Felipe much relief, since he now believed that he would not have the trouble he had anticipated. Also, with the collar in position, he was but a moment in adjusting the hames, making fast the bottom strap, and hooking the tugs securely. With everything in readiness he then caught up the reins and the whip, and stepped away to begin the real work of breaking.
“Haya!” he cried, and touched up the off-horse. She started forward, as always with this command from her master. But she did not go far.
Pat was the cause of the delay. Understanding neither the contraption at his heels, nor the word of command from the man, he held himself motionless and pleasantly uninterested, gazing slowly about at the landscape. Nor did he offer to move when the man cut him viciously with the whip. The lash pitted his tender flesh and hurt mightily; but even though he now understood what was required of him, he only became stubborn–bracing his legs and flattening his ears, forcefully resisting the counter efforts of the mare beside him.
And this was his nature. Long before he had demonstrated that he would not be governed by a whip. That day in the Richardses’ corral, when he was broken to saddle, cruelty alone would never have conquered him. Cruelty there had been, and much of it; but with the cruelty there had been other things–evidence of affection at the right moment, both in his mistress and in the men about him, and these, coupled with quick understanding, had made the breaking a success. And had there been evidence of kindness now, somewhere revealed early by this man, Pat might have drawn the cart as the straining mate at his side was attempting to draw it. But there was no evidence of kindness, and as a result he remained stubborn and wilful, standing braced and trembling, true in every particular to the spirit of his forebears.
Nor was Felipe less true to the spirit within himself. Infuriated, uncompromising, believing this to be merely the cussedness natural with the native horses, he abandoned all hope of instant success and gave way to brutality. Dropping the reins and reversing the whip in his hands, he began to beat the horse unmercifully, bringing the heavy butt down again and again, each mighty thwack echoing down the canyon. The result was inevitable. The horse began to kick–straight back at first, then, finding his hoofs striking the cart, he swung sideways to the tongue and kicked straight out. This last was sudden, and narrowly missed Felipe, who leaped to one side. Then, unable to reach the horse with the butt, he reversed the whip again and resumed his first torture, that of pitting the legs of the horse with the lash.
“Keeck!” he snarled, continuing to swing the whip. “Keeck! Keeck! I can keeck, too!” He swung his arm till it ached, when he stopped.
Whereupon the horse settled down. But his eyes were ablaze and he was trembling all over. Also, while undoubtedly suffering added distress from the taut and binding traces, he continued to stand at right angles to the mare–head high, nostrils quivering, mouth adrip with white slaver–until the spirit of rebellion appeared to grip him afresh. With a convulsive heave he moved again, making another quarter turn, which brought him clear of the tongue and facing the vehicle. Then he set up a nervous little prancing, whisking his tail savagely, now and again lifting his heels as if to strike. That was all. He gained no ground forward, nor did it appear as if he would ever move forward.
“You–you–” began Felipe, then subsided, evidently too wrathful for words. And he remained silent, gazing wearily toward the settlement, as though about to call assistance.
The stillness was heavy and portentous. Both horses were motionless. Felipe continued silent. Off toward the settlement all was still. Overhead, the early-morning sky pressed low, spotless and shimmering, brooding. Around and about, the flies seemed to stop buzzing. Everywhere lurked the quiet. The earth appeared bowed in humiliation, hushed in prayer as for the unfortunate one, while up and down the trail, basking in world-old light, lay dust of centuries, smug and contented in its quiescence. All nature was still, gripped in tense quiet.
The crack of a whip broke it. Felipe, suddenly bestirring himself, had sprung forward and dealt the horse a blow with the butt. Across the nose, it had sounded hollow and distant; and the horse, whipping up his head in surprised pain, now turned upon the man a look at once sorrowful and terrible, a look which spelled death and destruction. Nor did he only look. With a strange outcry, shrill and piercing, awaking the canyon in unnatural echoes, he whirled in his harness and reared, reared despite his harness, and struck out with venomous force. It was quick as a lightning flash, but, quick as it was, Felipe avoided it. And it was fortunate that he did. Terror-stricken and dropping the whip, he sped to the rear, to a point behind the cart, and there turned amazed eyes at the pirouetting horse.
What manner of horse was this, he asked himself. Could it be that this horse, black as night, was truly of the lower regions? Certainly he looked it, balancing there on his hind legs, with his reddened eyes and inflamed nostrils! And–But what was this? From the corral had come a shrill nicker, the voice of the aged mare. But that was not it! With the outcry, seemingly an answer to the black’s maddened outcry, the black dropped to all-fours again, turning quick ears and eyes in the direction of the sound! What manner of horse was this, anyway? Never before had he seen such a horse! He felt himself go limp.
There is a call in nature that sounds for life against death. It is a call put forth in innumerable different tongues around the world, and it sounds somewhere every second of the day and darkness–through jungles, across swamps, down mountains, over plains, out of valleys. It is a cry of warning, a cry to disarm foes. It is an outcry of good as against evil–the squawk of a hen to her chicks, the bleat of a sheep to her lambs, the grunt of a sow to her sucklings, the bellow of a cow to her calf, the purr of a cat to her kittens, the whine of a dog to her puppies, the drum of a partridge to her young. A cry from the heart to the heart, an appeal of flesh to its own flesh, it is the world-old mother-call.
And the horse heard this call. He probably did not recognize in it a call of the mother-heart, any more than it was possible for the aged mare to recognize in his outcry the voice of her own flesh. What he did hear, no doubt, was the voice of a friend, one who understood and pitied, and would help if it could help. At any rate, he stood very still, seemingly grateful for the evidence of a champion, seemingly anxious that it sound again. But it did not sound again. Yet he made no further effort to give battle. He held to his attitude of intent listening, ears cocked forward and eyes straining and tail at rest, until Felipe, stung into action by an idea wrought out of all this, hastened out from behind the cart and away in the direction of the corral. At sight of him the horse became restless again, squaring himself once more to the mare, stamping his feet and champing his bit nervously. He seemed to lose all recollection of the outcry, all the peace it had engendered within him. Of such are the kingdom of the dumb.
Possessed by his idea, an idea so brilliant that he himself marveled, Felipe was not long in putting it to test. He hurriedly bridled the aged mare and led her out into the trail. He placed her alongside the black–for reasons which, had the compadre Franke been present, Felipe might have suggested with a crafty wink–then hastily began to unhitch the team-mate. And it was just here that he proved his foresight. In the work of unhitching the mate, he should have encountered, and had expected, trouble from the black. But he did not. The mare sounded another friendly nicker when arranged beside him, and the black, pricking up his ears sharply, turned to her and proceeded to establish his friendship by licking her. So Felipe did not meet with difficulty from that direction; nor did he have trouble in the direction of the team-mate herself. She seemed glad to be relieved from her unsuccessful task, and Felipe, glad to relieve her in the light of his brilliant idea, led her off to one side quickly, then returned and swung the old mare into her place. He hitched her up, picked up the reins and whip, and set about with his test.
“We see now,” he began, his voice quiet and encouraging. “Maybe you work wit’ thee old woman! We see!” And he gave a low command.
With the command Pat started forward, urged to it by the aged mare–pulling more than his share of the load. Perhaps it was due to her presence; perhaps to the note of kindness in Felipe’s voice. At any rate, he moved, and he moved forward, and he moved with a steady pull. Yet he did not proceed far. Though he did not stop through rebellion. It was simply to renew his attentions to the old mare. He began to caress her as if he really recognized in this rack of an animal his own lost mother. But recognition, of course, was impossible. Long before, the only source of recognition, appeal made through digestive organs, had disappeared. Nevertheless, he lavished upon her unwonted affection until Felipe gently but firmly urged him forward again. Then again he proceeded, pulling all of the load this time, bringing about a slack in the traces of the mare and a consequent bumping of her hind legs against the cart which seemed to awaken some of her dying spirit.
Up and down the trail they moved, the mare sedately, the horse actively, prancing gaily, appearing to take gleeful pleasure in his task, until Felipe, kindled with elation and pride, decided to drive on into the settlement and there become the object of covetous eyes. Therefore he urged the team forward to a point in front of the general store, where in lordly composure sat Pedro, occupying his customary seat on an empty keg on the porch. At sight of him Felipe’s joy leaped to the heavens, and he pulled up the team, ostensibly to adjust a forward buckle, but in reality to afford Pedro an uninterrupted view of the beautiful black. Moving forward to the head of the horses, he watched out of the tail of his eye Pedro’s lazy survey of the team.
“Where you got thot horse?” inquired Pedro, after a long moment, as he slowly removed a cigarette from between his lips. “I mean,” he added, “where you haf steal thot caballo?”
Felipe winced. But he did not immediately retort. He carried out his bluff, unbuckling and buckling one of the straps, then mildly straightened up and faced the man.
“Pedro,” he began, tensely, “you haf know–José, Juan, Manuel, Francisco, Carlotta–all haf know–thot eet is only one t’ief in all thees place! And thot man–thot t’ief–is Pedro Garcia!”
Pedro grunted. “Where you haf steal thot horse?” he repeated, without show of anger. “You can give me thot horse,” he continued, placidly. “You haf owe me mooch money. I take thot horse for payment–everyt’ing. You give thot caballo to me.”
Felipe turned to the team. “I give you one keeck in thee belly!” he roared. Then he touched up the horses and started back toward the house. Gone was all elation, all pride, all gleeful consciousness of possession.
Gaining the clearing, he decided to try out the other horse with the black. He realized that the aged mare was unfit, even though in the last hour she had appeared greatly to improve, and he must accordingly match up a team. So he unhitched her and swung the mate into place. He met with disagreeable surprise, however. The black would not pull with this horse. Instead, he held himself quietly at rest, gazing about sleepily over the landscape, a trick of his, as Felipe had learned, when quietly rebelling. Felipe looked at him a moment, but did not try to force him with tongue or lash. For he was coming to understand this horse, and, concluding that sooner or later, under proper treatment, he would probably accept duty with any mate, determined to abandon work for the day. Whereupon he unhitched the horses and led them all back into the corral. Then he put up the bars and set out in the direction of the settlement.
Which ended Pat’s second great lesson at the hand of man. He was sore and somewhat stiff from the struggle, but he did not fret long over his condition, for he soon awoke to the presence of that beside him in the corral which caused him to forget himself completely. It was the worn-out structure of skin and bones who had befriended him in his hour of trial. He gazed at her a moment, then approached and fell to caressing her, showing in this attention his power to forget self–aches, sores, troubles–in his affection and gratitude toward all things warranting affection and gratitude.
CHAPTER X
THE STRANGER AGAIN
Meantime, Helen was becoming desperate over her loss. Unwilling to accept the theory of her household, which was that Pat had been stolen by a band of organized thieves and ere this was well out of the neighborhood and probably the county, she had held firmly to her original idea, viz., that the horse was in the possession of his rightful owners, and so could not be far out of the community. Therefore, the morning following his disappearance, having with sober reflection lightened within her the seriousness of it all, she had set out in confident search for him, mounted on her brown saddler. But though she had combed the town and the trails around the town, quietly interviewing all such teamsters and horsemen as might by any chance know something about it, yet in answer to her persistent inquiries all she had received was a blank shake of the head or an earnest expression of willingness to assist her. So, because she had continued her search for three days without success, inquiring and peering into every nook and corner of the community, she finally had come to regard her quest as hopeless, and to become more than ever an image of despair.
The evening of the fourth day there was a dance. It was one of the regular monthly affairs, and because Helen was a member of the committee she felt it her duty to attend. One of the young men, accompanied by his mother and sister, drove out for her, but she left the house with reluctance and a marked predisposition not to enjoy herself. But she forgot this when she presently beheld the young man from the East whom she had encountered on the mesa. He was standing close beside a rather frail little woman, undoubtedly his mother, who with the matrons of the town was seated near a fireplace watching the dancers. He was introduced. Later they sat out one of his numbers alone together in a corner behind some potted palms. In the course of their conversation Helen informed him of the disappearance of her horse, and asked him, as she asked everybody she met now, if he knew anything or had heard anything concerning the loss. The young man knew nothing of the great disappearance, however, though he did offer it as his belief that a horse of Pat’s obvious value could not long remain in obscurity. This was encouraging, and Helen felt herself become hopeful again. But when he offered his services in the search, as he did presently, she felt not only hopeful again, but somehow quite certain now that it would all be cleared up. For there was that in this young gentleman which caused confidence. What she told him, however, was that she was grateful for his offer, and should be greatly pleased to have him with her.
And thus it was that, on the morning of the fifth day, Helen Richards and Stephen Wainwright–the young man’s name–together with two of Helen’s close friends, were riding slowly across the mesa, alert for any combination in harness which might reveal the lost Pat. Helen and Stephen were well in the lead, and Helen had broken the silence by addressing Stephen as a native, recalling their first meeting. Whereupon the young man, smiling quietly, had wanted to know why; but after she had explained that it was because he had enlisted himself in the search for a horse, adding that in doing so he had conformed with one of the unwritten laws of the country, he still confessed himself in the dark. This had been but a moment before, and she now settled herself to explain more fully.
“A horse is, or was, our most valued property,” she began. “I reckon the past tense is better–though we’ll never quite live down our interest in horses.” She smiled across at him. “Long ago,” she went on, “in the days of our Judge Lynch, you know, a stolen horse meant a hanged man–or two or three–as not infrequently happened. But all that is history now. Yet the feeling remains. And whenever one of our horses disappears–it is rare now–we all take it more or less as a personal loss. In your willingness to help find Pat, therefore, you declare yourself one of us–and are gladly admitted.”
He rode along in silence. “Why was the feeling so intense in the old days?” he inquired, after a time.
“It was due to physical conditions,” she replied–“the geography of the country. Water-holes were few and very far apart, and to get from one to another often entailed a journey impossible to a man without a horse. To steal his horse, therefore, was to deprive him of his sole means of getting to water–practically to deprive him of his life. If he didn’t die of thirst, which frequently he did, at best it was a very grave offense. It isn’t considered so now–not so much so, at any rate–unless in the desert wastes to the west of us. Yet the feeling still lurks within us, and a stolen horse is a matter that concerns the whole community.”
He nodded thoughtfully, but remained silent. Suddenly Helen drew rein. Before her was a horned toad, peculiarly a part of the desert, blinking up at them wickedly. He drew rein and followed her eyes.
“A horned toad, isn’t it?”
Helen shook her head. “Are you interested in such things?” she inquired.
“In a way–yes,” he affirmed, doubtfully. “Though I can’t see good reason for their existence.” His eyes twinkled. “Can you?”
Helen was thoughtful a moment. “Well, no,” she admitted, finally. “Yet there must be a good reason. Reptiles must live for some good purpose. All things do–don’t you think?” Then, before he could make a rejoinder, she went on: “I sometimes feel that these creatures were originally placed here to encourage other and higher forms of life to come and locate in the desert–were placed here, in other words, to prove that life is possible in all this desolation.”
He glanced at her. “Certainly it has worked out that way, at any rate,” he ventured. “Good old Genesis!” He smiled.
“It seems to have,” she agreed, thoughtfully. “Because you and I are here. But it goes a long way back–to Genesis–yes. Following the initial placing, other and higher organisms, finding in their migratory travels this evidence of life, accepted the encouragement to remain, and did remain, feeding upon the life found here in the shape of toads and lizards–to carry the theory forward a step–even as the toads and lizards–to carry it back again–fed upon the insects which they in their turn found here. Then along came other forms of life, higher in the cosmic setting, and these, finding encouragement in the presence of the earlier arrivals, fed upon them and remained. And so on up, to the forerunners of our present-day animals–coyotes and prairie-dogs. And after these, primitive man–to find encouragement in the coyotes and prairie-dogs–and to feed upon them and remain. Then after primitive man, the second type–the brown man; and after the brown man, the red man; and after the red man, the white man–all with an eye to sustenance, and finding it, and remaining.”
Stephen’s eyes swept around the desert absently. He knew–this young man–that he was in the presence of a personality. For he could not help but draw comparisons between the young woman beside him and the young women of his acquaintance in the East. While he had found Eastern girls vivacious, and attractive with a kind of surface charm, never had he known one to take so quiet and unassuming an outlook upon so broad a theme. It was the desert, he told himself. Here beside him was a type unknown to him, and one so different from any he had as yet met with, he felt himself ill at ease in her presence–a thing new to him, too–and which in itself gave him cause to marvel. Yes, it was the desert. It must be the desert! In this slender girl beside him he saw a person of insight and originality, a girl assuredly not more than twenty years of age, attractive, and thoroughly feminine. How ever did they do it?
He harked back in his thoughts to her theory. And he dwelt not so much upon the theory itself as upon her manner of advancing it. Running back over these things, recalling the music of her voice, together with her spoken musings, he came to understand why, with that first encounter, he had found himself almost instantly curious concerning desert folk. Not that he had known why at the time, or had given that phase of it consideration. He did remember that he had been strongly impressed by the way she had managed her bolting horse. But aside from that, there had been something in her personality, an indefinable calm and sureness, a grip upon herself, that he had felt the very first moment. Undoubtedly all this had flicked him into a novel curiosity. He pulled himself together with an effort.
“I like your theory,” he answered, smiling. “And it must be true, because I am told horned toads are fast disappearing. Evidently they have served their purpose. But tell me,” he concluded, “what is becoming of them? Where are they going?”
She laughed. “I can’t tell you that. Perhaps they just vanish into the fourth–or maybe the fifth–dimension!”
And this was the other side of her, a side he had come to learn while with her at the dance, and which made her lovable as well as admirable. But she was speaking again, and again was serious.
“I have yet another theory,” she said–“one as to why these creatures are here, you know.” She smiled across at him. “It is all my very own, too! It is that in their presence among us–among mankind–they unwittingly develop us through thought. Thinking exercises the brain, we are told, and exercising the brain makes for world-advancement–we are told.” Then, suddenly, “I hope you don’t think me silly–Mr. Native?”
But he remained sober. “Tell me,” he asked, after a time, “what it is about this country–I mean other than friendships, of course–that gets under a fellow’s soul and lifts it–to the end that he wants to remain here? I know there is something, though I can’t for the life of me place it. What is it, anyway?”
She turned upon him sharply. “Do you really feel that way?” she asked, evidently pleased.
“I feel that way. But why do I feel that way? What is it? You know what I mean. There is something–there must be!”
“I know what you mean–yes,” she replied, thoughtfully. “Yet I doubt if I myself, even after all these years, can define it. What you ‘feel’ must be our atmosphere–its rarity, its power to exhilarate. Though that really doesn’t explain it. I reckon it’s the same thing–only much more healthful, more soulful–that one feels in large cities after nightfall. I mean, the glare of your incandescent lights. I honestly believe that that glare, more than any other single thing, holds throngs of people to an existence not only unnatural, but laden with a something that crushes as well.” She was silent.
Again Stephen felt the strange pull on his interest, but he said nothing. After a time she went on.
“City-dwellers,” she explained, “don’t begin their day till the approach of dark. It’s true of both levels of society, too–lower as well as upper. And I believe the reason for this lies, as I have said, in the atmosphere–their man-made atmosphere–just as the secret of your feeling the way you do lies in our atmosphere–God-made. Were this atmosphere suddenly to disappear, both out of your cities and out of my deserts, both your world and my own would lose all of their charm.”
Stephen bestirred himself. “What psychology do you find in that?” he asked, dwelling upon the fact that she knew his East so well.
“Merely the effect of softening things–for the soul as well as the eye–through the eye, indeed, to the soul. Our atmosphere here does that–softens the houses, and the trees, and the cattle, and the mountains, and the distant reaches. It softens our nights, too. Perhaps you have noticed it? How everything appears shrouded in a kind of hazy, mellow, translucent something that somehow reacts upon you? I have. And I believe that is the secret of one’s wanting to remain in the country, once he has exposed himself to it. It is a kind of spell–a hypnosis. When out of it one wants to get back into it.
“I know I felt it when I was East, attending school,” she went on, quietly. “Living always in this atmosphere, I somehow had forgotten its charm–as one will forget all subtle beauty unless frequently and forcibly reminded of it. But in the East I missed it, and found myself restless and anxious to get back into it. Indeed, I felt that I must get back or die! So one day, when your Eastern spirit of sudden change was upon me, I packed and came home. It was a year short of my degree, too. But I could not remain away another day–simply had to get back–and back I came. My degree–my sheepskin”–she was smiling–“couldn’t hold me!”
“Then you’ve spent some time in the East?” he asked, tentatively.
“Yes,” she replied, “that much–three years. And I didn’t like it.”
“Why?” he asked, a little surprised.
She regarded him curiously. He saw a look of mild annoyance in her eyes, one that seemed to tell of her inability to understand so needless a question.
“I just didn’t,” she rejoined, after a moment. “I discovered that you Easterners value things which are diametrically opposite to the things we value, and that you value not at all those things which we value most of all.”
He had to laugh. “What are they?” he wanted to know.
For an instant she showed shyness. “Oh, I can’t say,” she declared, finally. “Some day I may tell you.”
Stephen realized that it must be serious. He was hesitating whether to press her further, when he saw her tighten her reins, put spurs to her horse, and go flashing off in the direction of the mountain trail. As she dashed off he heard her call out:
“Pat!” she cried. “Pat! It’s Pat!” Then she glanced to the rear. “Adele! Sam! It’s Pat! Come, quick!”
Stephen spurred on with the others. He galloped after this hard-riding girl–so intensely alive–a girl past his understanding. Over dunes and across flats he charged, followed closely by the others, urging his horse to his utmost. But, try as he might, he could not overtake her or even lessen the distance between them, so furious was her race for her lost horse. Finally he burst out upon the trail and drew rein beside her, standing with the others in the path of an oncoming wood-wagon, anxiously awaiting its slow approach.
It was a curious outfit. One of the team, an aged and decrepit horse, was laboring along with head drooping and hoofs scuffling the trail, while beside it, with head erect and nostrils aquiver and hoofs lifting eagerly, stepped the glorious Pat! Both horses were draped in a disreputable harness, crudely patched with makeshift string and wire, and both were covered with a fine coating of dust. Atop all this, high and mighty upon an enormous load of wood, sat a Mexican, complacently smoking a cigarette and contentedly swinging his heels, evidently elated with this prospect of parading his horse before a group of Americans. But as he drew close a look of uneasiness crept over him, and he pulled up his team and shrugged his shoulders, as a preliminary, no doubt, to disappearance behind the Mexican shield of “No sabe!”
Helen swung close to him. There was a choice between a contest and diplomatic concession. She decided to offer to purchase the horse at once, believing this to be the easiest way out of the trouble.
“Señor,” she began in Spanish, “deseo comprar aquel caballo negro. Puedo pagar cualquire cantidad razonable por el. Se perdio y nosotros lo cuidamos, y he aprendido a quererlo mucho. Si usted quiere venderlo me haria un gran favor. Siento mucho que me lo hayan quitado.”
The Mexican looked relieved. He slowly removed his hat with true Castilian courtesy.
“Señorita,” he replied, “lo venderia con gusto pero pienso que me paga lo que quiero por el.”
Which delighted Helen. “Pagare lo que sea.”
The Mexican hesitated a moment. “¿Pagara cuarenta pesos?” he asked, finally. “Yo tambien quiero al caballo mucho,” he added. “Pero por cuarenta pesos pienso–pienso que lo olvido.” And he grinned.
Helen turned to the others. For Stephen’s benefit she explained what had been said, and the men promptly offered to make up the required forty dollars. Helen turned to the Mexican, accepted his price, and requested him to release Pat from the harness. Whereat the Mexican smiled broadly; shrugged his shoulders suddenly; forgot his rôle of “No sabe.”
“How,” he burst out–“how I’m gettin’ thees wagon to town? I’m pullin’ eet myself?”
The others laughed. Then Helen, deciding upon another arrangement, instructed him to drive forward. She could see her father in town, she explained to the others, and there also, after the exchange of money, the Mexican could purchase another horse. Which closed the matter. The Mexican started the team forward, while the others fell in alongside, ranging themselves on either side. Thus they journeyed into town–a strange cavalcade–Pat prancing, the mare drooping, the Mexican visibly pleased, the others gratified by their unexpected success. In town they turned into a side street, and there Helen left them, going off in the direction of her father’s office. When she returned, the Judge was with her. He read the Mexican a brief but stern lecture on the law pertaining to the recovery of lost property, and closed the deal. Whereupon the wood-hauler unharnessed Pat, bestowed him smilingly upon Helen, and took himself off, evidently in quest of another horse, for he headed straight as a plumb-line for the city pound.
Pat was home again. He knew it from many things–the white fence, the clean stable, the Mexican hostler with broom in hand. And though he was at home where he wanted to be, yet he found himself filled with vague uneasiness. After a time he sought to relieve it. He made his way into the stable, but he found no relief there. He returned to the corral, and began slowly to circle inside the fence, but neither did this relieve him. Finally he took up his old stand in the sunlit corner, where he fell to listening with ears and eyes attentive to least sounds. But even this did not relieve him.
Nor would anything ever relieve him. Never would he find absolute solace from his inner disquiet. For what he sought and could not find, what he listened for and could not hear, was another of those sounds which had relieved the tedium of his brief stay in the mountains, the friendly nicker of the aged mare, gone to toil out her life in the racking treadmill between town and mountain.
CHAPTER XI
LOVE REJECTED
Pat had just been clipped. And never was there a horse nearer perfection! Shorn of all hair, his splendid physique, now in fullest maturity, stood out clean-cut and fascinating.
In weight he might have tipped the scales at ten hundred pounds. In color his skin, which now showed clearly, was a shade darker than that of the elephant, but it showed the richness of velvet. His body through the trunk was round and symmetrical; his haunches were wide without projection of the hip-bones; and his limbs, the stifle and lower thigh, were long and strong and fully developed. Added to these, he was high in the withers, the line of back and neck curving perfectly; his shoulders were deep and oblique; and his long, thick fore arm, knotty with bulging sinews, told of powerful muscles. And finally, his knees across the pan were wide, the cannon-bone below thin and short, the pasterns long and sloping, and the hoofs round and dark and neatly set on. While over all–over the small, bony head, beautiful neck and shoulders–over the entire body, clear down to the hoofs–ran a network of veins like those on the back of a leaf, only more irregular–veins which stood out as though the skin were but thin parchment through which the blood might burst. A rare horse, rare in any country, doubly rare in this land of the small Spanish product, was the rating given to Pat by men trained to judge value at sight. And so widespread did this appraisal become, along trail, beside camp-fire, in bunk-house, that it was known throughout the length and breadth of the Territory, and beyond the Territory, that Judge Richards was the owner of a horse the like of which never had been seen south of the Pecos.
For several days after the clipping, Helen did not choose to ride. So Pat was permitted the doubtful pleasure of loafing about in the inclosure. Then one morning, when the winter day was unusually warm, he awoke to a great clatter of hoofs outside the corral. Directly he saw a party of young people, men and girls under the chaperonage of a comely matron, dismounting in high spirits. As the party swung down he saw his mistress appear from the house, attired in her riding-habit, and, understanding the object of all this, since these parties had become frequent in the past two months, he pressed close to the fence, anxious to be off. The Mexican bridled and saddled him; his mistress and the others mounted; soon all clattered out upon the river-trail.
The day was beautiful, and Helen, riding, as usual, beside Stephen, both in the rear, enjoyed the morning keenly. Overhead, out of a shimmering azure sky, the sun beamed mildly down, penetrating the chill of the morning, yet leaving enough tang to bring a bloom to their cheeks. On their left the river, high with melted snows from the north, moved in slow eddies near the shore, quicker eddies away from the shore, steady and swift flow in the middle–a changing, fascinating panorama. There fell a long silence before she turned to the young man beside her.
“Well, Mr. Native,” she began, smiling, “I hope you don’t mean to bury yourself this morning! For more than a month you have had very little to say to me. I don’t like it, because I can’t understand it, and so I won’t have it!” Then she became serious. “Whatever is the matter, Stephen?”
Pat, walking slowly beside the unfriendly horse, was attentive. He heard his mistress’s voice, and somehow knew she was troubled. Then directly he had positive proof of this, for she suddenly began to stroke his neck and shoulders. Always she did this when thoughtful, but though he strained his ears for further sounds of her voice, he did not hear her. What he did hear presently was the voice of the young man, and having learned long before to discriminate between different shades of the human voice, he knew from its low and tense quality that the topic was a vital one. He listened sharply, heedful of any least change of intonation that might be interpreted as a climax. But instead he was relieved presently to hear the voice of his mistress again, breaking in upon the low, constrained tones of the young man.
Pat held his ears steadily back. He noted that her voice was well under control, and she appeared to be answering the young man. Also, it was quite evident that she was not accepting his argument, whatever it was. Yet her voice took on many delicate changes. Sometimes he heard a note of pleading; again, mild exasperation; and once a falling inflection which hinted at sadness. So it continued, his mistress talking as he had never heard her talk before, until the group ahead drew rein and wheeled, indicating their intention of returning. Then once more the voice of his mistress changed suddenly and became light, even gay, leaving Pat, as he himself was turned around, a very much mystified horse.
Yet this gaiety did not last. When they were well on their way back toward the ranch, with the sun higher and brighter in the heavens, and the trail correspondingly whiter and more dazzling to the eye, he found himself listening to grave tones again–the voice of the young man. He talked steadily now, his flow of words always tense, though occasionally interrupted by the other with a quiet rejoinder. Then suddenly he ceased altogether, and Pat, acutely conscious of the silence which descended upon them, was relieved when it was broken by sounds of laughter ahead. Still the pair above him did not speak. Each appeared to be adrift on a sea of thought the like of which he had never known. And it continued, this ominous silence, and became heavier, until he saw the ranch loom up ahead. Then he felt his mistress urge him into a canter that she might join the others for the parting. But when the party broke up, as it did with much good feeling, and he found himself turned loose to one side, with his mistress and the young man walking into the shade of a cottonwood, he found himself forced, since he now was out of range of their voices, to forego any further listening, keenly against his desires. So he gave it all up as a bad job.
“Stephen,” began Helen, seating herself upon a hummock of earth, “I am sorry–sorry beyond words–that it has turned out this way! I must admit that I like you–like you very much! But–but I am afraid it is not the sort of liking you ask.”
He was seated beside her, reclining upon one elbow, absently thrusting the tip of his riding-whip into a tuft of grass. And now again, as before that morning, he told her of his very great love for her, his deep voice vibrant with emotion, grimly acknowledging himself as unworthy of her, yet asking with rare simplicity that she take him anyway, take him in spite of his unworthiness, declaring it as his belief she would find him in time worthy–that he would try to make himself worthy–would make himself worthy–would overcome those faults which evidently–though she had not as yet told him what they were–made him impossible in her eyes. Then suddenly he asked her to tell him precisely what these faults were. He knew that he had many and could only blame himself for them. But which of them did she find chiefly objectionable? He was pitiable in his pleading.
But Helen shook her head. “I–I can’t tell you, Stephen,” she declared, her voice breaking. “It–it is too much to ask of–of any girl.”
He rose, turning toward the distant mountains, bright and smiling in their noonday splendor. As his eyes dwelt upon them in brooding silence, Helen gained her feet. And, aware of her great part in this wretchedness, she took his hand very gently in her own. Subtly conscious of the touch, realizing the tumult in his soul, she found herself suddenly alive to a feeling within her deeper than mere pity and sympathy. It was the anguish preceding tears. Quickly withdrawing her hand, she turned and fled to the house. Inside, she slowly approached a window. He was leading Pat into the corral; and, watching him unsaddle and unbridle her horse, her treasure, she awoke to something else within her, a strange swelling of her heart, different from anything she had ever known. It was like ownership; it was a something as of maternal pride, a something new to her which she could not fathom. She turned away. When she looked out again, her eyes dry and burning, he was riding slowly along the trail toward town.
It was the beginning of the end. Winter passed, with horses abandoned for the delights, swift-following, of dinner and dance and house party. These affairs made deep inroads upon Helen’s time, and so Pat was left pretty much to his own reflections.
Yet he managed to fill the days to his satisfaction. Standing in the stable, he loved to watch the snow-capped mountains, and the tiny white clouds scudding around them, and the mellow radiance of golden sunlight streaming over them. Also, gazing out of the little square window, he spent long periods in viewing the hard brown of the nearer mesaland–the dips and dunes and thread-like arroyos, with an occasional horseman crawling between. Or else, when he found himself yearning for his mistress, he would turn eyes upon the house, and with lazy speculation regard its sun-flecked windows, tightly shut doors, and smoking chimneys, in the hope that she might step forth. Then came more mild weather when he would spend long hours outside the stable, in his corner in the corral, there to renew his silent vigil over nature and the house from this vantage. Thus he filled his days, and found them not so long as formerly in his babyhood, when each hour was fraught with so many little things that demanded his closest interest and attention.
Nights found him early at rest. But not all nights. Nights there were when the house would be lighted from cellar to garret, when spectral forms would move in and out of doors, and when shadows would flicker across drawn shades. Such nights were always his nights, for he would hear sounds of merriment, and voices lifted in song, and above the voices, tinkling toward him on the crisp air, the music of a piano. Such nights were his nights, for he knew that his mistress was happy, and he would force open the stable door, step out under the cold stars, and take up his stand in his corner, there to rest his head upon the topmost board and turn steady eyes upon the scene of merriment until the last guest had departed.
Always on these nights, with wintry chills coursing down his legs or rollicking along his spine, he found himself wanting to be a part of this gaiety, wanting to enter the house, where he instinctively knew it was warm and comfortable, where he might nuzzle the whole gathering for sugar and apples. But this he could not do. He could only turn longing eyes upon the cottage and stand there until, all too soon, sounds of doors opening and closing, together with voices in cheery farewell, told him that the party was at an end. Then he would see mysterious forms flitting across to the trail, and lights in the house whisking out one by one, until the cottage gradually became engulfed in darkness. Then, but not till then, would he turn away from his corner, walk back slowly into the stable, and, because of the open door, which he could open but never close, suffer intensely from the cold throughout the long night.
One such occasion, when the round moon hung poised in the blue-black dome of heaven, and he was standing as usual in his corner, with eyes upon the brilliantly lighted house, he became suddenly aware of two people descending the rear porch and making slowly toward him. At first he did not recognize his own mistress and the young man who had been her almost constant companion since that memorable fright on the mesa eight months before. But as they drew closer, and he came to know the slender form in white, he sounded a soft whinny of greeting and pressed eagerly close to the fence. The pair came near, very near; but neither of them paid the least attention to him–a fact which troubled him deeply. And directly his mistress spoke, but, as she was addressing herself to the young man, this troubled him even more. But he could listen, and listen he did.
“Stephen,” she was saying, “you must accept my answer as final. For you must know, Stephen,” she went on, quietly, “that I have not changed toward you. My answer to-night, and my answer to-morrow night, and my answer for ever, in so far as I can see, will be what it was last autumn. I am more than sorry that this is so. But it is so, nevertheless.” She was firm, though Pat, knowing her well, knew that it required all the force of her trembling soul to give firmness to her words.
Stephen felt something of this as he stood beside her in grim meekness. With his hungry eyes upon her, he felt the despair of one sunk to utter depths, of a man mentally and physically broken. For he loved this girl. And it was this love, God-given, that made him persist. In the spell of this love he realized that he was but a weak agent, uttering demands given him to utter, and unable, through a force as mighty as Nature herself, to do otherwise. Yet though he was utterly torn apart, he was able, despite this mighty demand within him, to understand her viewpoint. He had understood it from the first. But the craving within would not let him accept it.
“I suppose,” he rejoined, “that the one decent course for me would be to drop all this. But somehow I can’t. I love you that way, Helen! Don’t you understand? I cannot let go! I seem to be forced repeatedly to make–make a boor of myself!” There was a moment’s silence. “Yet I have resisted it,” he went on. “I have fought it–fought it with all the power I have! But I–I somehow–cannot let go!”
Helen said nothing. She herself was coming to realize fully the depths of this man’s passion. She knew–knew as few women have known–that here was a man who wanted her; but she knew also, and she was sorry to know it, that she could not conscientiously give herself to him. She regretted it not alone for his sake, but for her own as well. She liked him, liked him better than any other man she had ever known. But she knew that she could not marry him, and believed in her heart that her reasons for refusing him were just reasons. But she remained silent, true to her decision.
When Stephen spoke again it was not to plead with her; he seemed at last to have accepted her refusal for all time. But he asked her reason for absolutely refusing him–not that it mattered much now, since he faced the inevitable, but thought the knowledge might in future guide and strengthen him. He talked rapidly, hinting at beliefs and idolatries, comparing West with East, and East with West, while he stood motionless, one hand upon the fence–earnest, sincere, strong in his request. When he had uttered his last sad word, Helen found herself, as she searched his drawn profile pityingly, no more able to deny him an answer than at the time of their first chance meeting she could have controlled the fate which had brought it about.
“Stephen,” she burst out, “I will tell you–though I don’t want to tell you–remember! And if in the telling,” she hurried on, “I prove rather too candid–please stop me! You will, won’t you?”
He nodded listlessly.
“To begin with,” she began, quietly, dreading her task, “we as a people are selfish. We are isolated here–are far from the center of things–but only certain things. We are quite our own center in certain other ways. But we are selfish as regards advancement, and being selfish in this way–being what we are and where we are–we live solely for that advancement–for the privilege of doing what we will, and of knowing! It is the first law of the country down here–of my people! We have aims and aspirations and courage all peculiar to ourselves. And when we meet your type, as I met you, we come–(Now, stop me when I get too severe!)–we come to know our own values a little better–to respect ourselves, perhaps–though perhaps, too, I shouldn’t say it–a little more. Not that you lack virtues, you Easterners, but they differ from ours–and probably only in kind. And exactly what your type is you yourself have made plain to me during our many little trips together in the saddle. And–and now I fear I must become even more personal,” she broke off. “And I am very sorry that I must. Though I know you will forgive me. You will, won’t you?” And she looked up at him wistfully. “You thought it might benefit you to know. This is only my opinion. Others may not see it this way. But I am giving it for what it is, and I am giving it only because you asked it and have asked it repeatedly.”
He roused himself. “Go on,” he said, with evident forced lightness. “I see your viewpoint perfectly.”
“Well,” she resumed, hurriedly, “you lack ambition–a real ambition. You have ridden horses, played tennis, idled about clubs. You were a coddled and petted child, a pampered and spoiled youth. You attended a dozen schools, and, to use your own language, were ‘canned’ out of all of them. Which about sums up your activities. You have idled your time away, and you give every promise of continuing. I regret that I must say that, but I regret more deeply that it is true. You have many admirable qualities. You have the greatest of all qualities–power for sincere love. But in the qualities which make one acceptable down here–Wait! I’ll change that. In the qualities which would make one acceptable to me you are lacking to a very considerable degree. And it is just there that you fill me with the greatest doubt–doubt so grave, indeed, that I cannot–and I use the verb advisedly–cannot permit myself to like you in the way you want me to like you.”
Again he bestirred himself. “What is that, please? What is that quality?”
“I have tried to tell you,” she rejoined, patiently. “It is a really worth-while ambition. You lack the desire to do something, the desire to be something–a desire that ought to have been yours, should have been yours, years ago–the thing part and parcel of our blood down here. It may take shape in any one of a hundred different things–business ventures; personal prospectings; pursuit of art, science; raising cattle–anything, Stephen! But something, something which will develop a real value, both to yourself and to your fellow-man. We have it. We have inherited it. We got it from our grandfathers–our great-grandfathers, in a few cases–men who wanted to know–to learn–to learn by doing. It is a powerful force. It must be a powerful force, it must have been strong within them, for it dragged them out of the comforts of civilization and led them into the desert. But they found what they sought; and in finding what they sought they found themselves also. And what they found–”
“Was something which, having drawn them forward to the frontier, filled them with dislike for those who remained behind?”
“If you wish to put it that way–yes.” Her answer was straight and clean-cut.
“But what of those who remained behind?” asked Stephen, alert now. “Surely the quality was there! It must be there yet! Those of the old-timers who remained behind must have stayed simply because of circumstances. Good men often curb the adventurous spirit out of sheer conscientious regard for others who–”
“It is you, Stephen!” interrupted Helen, quietly. “It is you, yourself. All Easterners are not like you, I well know. Yet you and your type are found in all parts of the East.”
Stephen stood for a long moment, his eyes fixed on the mystic skyline. Then he turned to her as if about to speak. But there was only the silent message of his longing eyes. Finally he turned away and, as if unconsciously, fell to stroking the horse.
He had nothing to say, and he knew it. The girl was right, and he knew that. She had pointed out to him only what others at different times had mildly tried to make him see. He was a rich young man, or would be after a death or two in his family. But that in itself was no excuse for his inertia. Many had told him that. But he had never taken it seriously. It had remained for the little woman beside him to make him fully realize it. She alone had driven it home so that it hurt. Yet between this girl and the others who had taken him mildly to task there was the difference between day and darkness. For he loved this girl, and if she would not marry him for reasons which he knew he could remedy, then it was up to him to accept her criticism, which was perhaps a challenge, and go forth and do something and be something, and reveal his love to her through that effort. What it would be he did not know. He did know he must get out of the town–get out of the Territory, if needs be–but he must go somewhere in this country of worthy aspiration and live as he knew she would have him live, do something, be something, something that for its very worth to her as well as to all mankind would awaken her ready response. Such a move he realized, as he stood beside her, would be as decent in him as she in her criticism had been eloquently truthful. The vigor, the relentless certainty, with which she had pointed out his weakness–no one before had had the courage to deal with him like this. And reviewing it all, and then casting grimly forward into his future, he suddenly awoke, as he gently stroked this mettled horse, to a strange likeness between the spirit of horse and mistress. He turned to Helen.
“You are very much alike,” he declared–“you and your horse.” Then he paused as if in thought. “The spirit of the desert,” he went on, absently, “shows itself through all the phases of its life.”
Helen brightened “I am glad you think that of us, Stephen,” she answered, as if relieved by this unexpected turn. “Pat is truly of the desert. He was born and bred in this land of amole and cactus.”
“And you?” he asked.
“I also,” she replied, gravely. “I too was born and bred in this land of amole and cactus.” Suddenly she turned her head. “I am afraid they are looking for us.”
They returned to the house. Helen’s guests were preparing to depart. There was much high humor, and when the last but one was gone, and this one, Stephen, standing on the porch with hat in hand, Helen found that for the moment she had forgotten her distress. At sight of him, however, it all returned to her, and she faced him with earnest solicitude.
“Tell me, Stephen,” she burst out, “that you forgive me my unkind words, and that you will try to forget them. But whether you succeed in that or not, Stephen,” she hastily added, her voice breaking, “tell me that you will continue to be friendly. We want you, all of us–I want you! I have enjoyed our rides together so much! They have meant much to me, and I hope they have been enjoyable to you. So let us go on, on this accepted basis, and be friends. Tell me you will, Stephen!”
He was silent a long time. Then he told her of his hastily made plans. He was going away from town, of course. He could not remain, under the circumstances. Yet where he was going he didn’t know. He would go farther West, probably–go somewhere and try to make good–try to do something worth while, to be something worth while. Saying which, he then thanked her fervently for everything–for her society, for her frank criticism, for having awakened him to an understanding of himself.
Helen stood speechless. She had not anticipated this, that he would go away, that he would leave her. A deep-surging bitterness gripped her, and for a moment she almost relented. But only for a moment. The spell passed, and she looked at him with frank, level eyes.
“I am sorry to hear that, Stephen,” she declared, quietly. “We want you with us–all of us. But–but tell me,” she concluded, finding the words coming with difficulty–“tell me that you feel no–no antagonism toward me, Stephen, because I can’t–can’t love you as you want me to love you, and that you understand that–that in deciding as I have I–I only wanted to be true–true to both of us!”
For answer he seized both her hands in his. He gazed straight down into her eyes. “I love you, Helen,” he murmured, and then slowly released her fingers.
He left her so quietly that she hardly knew that he was gone. A step on the trail aroused her, and, lifting her eyes, she saw him striding away with shoulders back and head erect, as if awakened to a new manhood. And watching him go, as she felt, for the last time, she could no more control a sob than he at the moment could turn back. For a while she followed him with wistful eyes, then, finding sudden need for consolation, she hurried off the porch and across to the corral. Pat was there to receive her, and she flung her arms around his neck and gave way to sudden tears.
“Pat,” she sobbed, “I–perhaps I do love him! Perhaps I have done wrong! I–I–” She interrupted herself. “What shall I do, Pat?” she burst out, bitterly. “Oh, what shall I do?”
Pat could not advise her. But he remained very still, supporting her weight with dumb patience, until she turned away, going slowly back into the house. Then he pressed close into his corner and sounded a shrill, protracted nicker.
That was all.
He saw the door close. He waited, pursuing his old habit, for all the lights to go out. And directly they began to disappear, one by one, first in the lower half of the house, then in the upper half, until all save one were extinguished. This one, as he knew from long experience, was in the room of his mistress. But though he waited and watched till the moon slanted behind the western hills, and the stars to the east dimmed and faded, and the gray of dawn stole across the sky above the mountains–though he waited and watched till his legs ached from long standing, and his eyes smarted from their steady vigil, and the Mexican appeared yawning from the depths of the stable, and from over toward town rose sounds of worldly activity–yet the light in her room burned on. Then the Mexican drove him into the stable. But not even now did he abandon his vigil. He entered his box-stall, with its tiny square window, and fixed his troubled gaze again upon the house. The sky was bright with coming day. From somewhere arose the crow of a rooster. Out on the river trail a team plodded slowly to market.
But the light in the room was still burning.