The pioneer

Jerry was in a bad temper. For some days he had been disturbed by rumors of Rion Gracey’s attentions to June. In the long twilights of the summer evenings Rion had been constantly seen mounting the steps of the Murchison mansion. The single state of the Gracey boys had long been a matter of comment, and, as their riches grew it was regarded with increasing wonderment. Black Dan’s heart may have been buried in the grave of his child-wife, but Rion had never paid any attention to any woman. Therefore, when it was known of men that he was a frequent visitor at the Allens’, the little world in which he was a marked man began to whisper.

Jerry did not at first hear these rumors. He was not only kept busy from morning till night but he was entirely preoccupied in his own affairs. His feminine love of intrigue for its own sake was overpowered by such respect and honest tenderness as he still possessed for June. After his interview with her he determined not to see her again. June was not like Lupé Newbury and his feeling for her was different. He said to himself with a sense of magnanimity that no unhappiness should ever come to her from him, and in order to be on the safe side he would keep away from her.

As had been the case with Jerry all his life, there was method in his morality. He had gained at least one thing by his marriage and that was his connection with the all-powerful Graceys. Though he disliked both men, who, he knew, regarded him with secret contempt, their patronage was too valuable to be jeopardized. June’s happiness and honor were precious things, but no more so than his own connection with the owners of the Cresta Plata. So he stayed away from her, feeling himself a paladin of virtue, and sentimentally thinking of her alone in the Murchison mansion, dreaming of him.

This agreeable arrangement of the situation was suddenly disrupted by the stories of Rion’s attentions. Jerry’s high thoughts of renunciation were swept away in a flood of jealous indignation. At first he refused to believe it. He was absolutely confident of June’s constant and long-suffering affection for him. That she should marry some one else he had deemed impossible. But one of the Gracey boys—it did not much matter which—the owners of one of the richest mines on the Comstock, was a very different matter. Money loomed the largest thing on Jerry’s horizon. He did not believe it could take a less prominent place on that of other people—of June especially, whose father he knew to be financially embarrassed. The thought of her—his own especial property—triumphantly marrying a millionaire, leaving him, as it were, stranded, having lost everything and been “done” on every side, infuriated him. The jealousy that had possession of him was fierce, the jealousy of the man whose love is of the destructive, demolishing kind.

On the day he had risen up in a bad temper he had heard what amounted to confirmation of the rumor. One of the office clerks in the Cresta Plata had told him that Rion’s infatuation for the young woman was leading him into lovers’ extravagances. A man who had always been indifferent to his dress, he was now getting all his clothes from San Francisco. He had books, flowers, and candies sent up for her all the time. He was with her constantly.

“Rion Gracey’s never looked at a woman before,” was the young man’s final comment, “and that’s the kind that it takes most hold on. He’s got it bad and can’t hide it. It’s out on him for any one to see, like the measles.”

Jerry’s jealousy and alarm boiled past the point of prudence. He made up his mind to get off early that afternoon and go to see June, and, as he expressed it in his own thoughts, “have it out with her.” He had no idea what he intended to say, but he was going to find out what her attitude was to Rion, and, if need be, accuse her of her perfidy.

He had perfected his plan of escape from the office when Black Dan informed him that he was considering the purchase of a new horse and would be obliged if Jerry—a notable judge of horseflesh—would take it for a spin along the grade road and report his opinion of it. Black Dan’s requests in this way were exceedingly like commands. But no one, from Barney Sullivan, the smartest superintendent in Virginia, to the youngest miner working on the ore-breasts, had ever dared to question them. With his face red with rage Jerry bowed his head in acquiescence, and that afternoon at the hour when he had hoped to be confronting June in her own parlor he was flying along the road toward Carson, cursing to himself as he held the reins over the back of Black Dan’s new horse.

The afternoon was magnificent, held in a diamond-like transparence and blazing with sun. The mountain air tempered its heat. As Jerry flew along that remarkable road which curves, like an aërial terrace, round the out-flung buttresses of Mount Davidson, the Sierra, a lingering enameling of snow on its summits, spread before him. Rising high in tumbled majesty, mosaics of snow set in between ravines of swimming shadow, it looked unsubstantially enormous and unreal like scenery in dreams. Between it and Mount Davidson vast, airy gulfs of space fell away that seemed filled, as a glass might be with water, with a crystal stillness. The whole panorama, clarified by thin air, and with clear washes of shade laid upon it, was like a picture in its still, impersonal serenity.

Jerry, in his rage, let the horse have its head and they sped forward, past the outlying cabins that made a scattering along the approach to the town, past the timbered openings of the lone prospector’s tunnels, to where the ledge of road rimmed the barren mountain flank. They were flying forward at an exhilarating pace when he noticed a woman’s figure some distance in front walking on the narrow edge of path and moving forward at a brisk rate of speed. As he overhauled it his glance began to fasten on it with growing eagerness. The woman heard the thud of the flying hoofs behind her, and drew aside, as close to the outer edge as she dared, looking with eyes that blinked in the sunlight at the approaching buggy. Jerry’s face flushed with a sudden realizing of the completely unexpected. It was June.

She did not recognize him at first, and drew back, as the horse, in a swirl of dust and spume flakes, came to a stop beside her. Then she saw who it was and with a low-toned “Jerry!” stood staring at him.

“Yes, it’s I,” he said hurriedly, leaning forward. “Get in and I’ll take you for a spin.”

She drew away, shaking her head. The spirited horse, excited by its run, began to bite at the bit, arch its neck and back prancingly. Jerry had to withdraw his attention from the girl, and, swearing in a soft undertone, bestow it on the animal.

“Come, June,” he said, trying to speak coaxingly, “there’s no harm in driving for half an hour with me. This is a new horse I’m trying for Black Dan and it’s a perfect stunner.”

She murmured a refusal, backing away from the wheels. The horse paused for a moment in its curvetings and Jerry had an opportunity to look at her and say in his most compelling tone:

“I only want you to drive up a mile or two with me. It’s a glorious afternoon, and it’s worth something to ride behind a horse like this. I’m not going to say anything to you you won’t like to hear. You needn’t be afraid. You and I are too old friends not to trust each other.”

She wavered.

“Come, get in,” he said, his voice soft and making an urgent upward movement with his chin, that seemed to draw her into the buggy as his hand might. She put her foot on the step and the next moment was beside him. The horse leaped forward and the road began to flash by like a yellow ribbon.

For some moments they were silent, Jerry with his eyes on the road ahead. They whirled round one of the projecting spurs of the mountain and, seeing the long curve before them clear of vehicles, he turned and looked at her. His eyes as they met hers were hard and angry.

“I’ve been hearing things about you!” he said.

“Things! What things?”

“I fancy you know.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she answered uneasily. “What sort of things?”

“The last sort of things in the world I want to hear.”

She looked away making no answer and he said:

“I’ve heard that Rion Gracey is in love with you.”

“Oh, is that it?” she commented in a low voice.

Her manner irritated him. She did not seem to realize the seriousness of the charge.

“Yes—that’s it,” he replied, continuing to regard her with a look of pugnacious ill-humor.

She again made no reply and he persisted angrily:

“Is he?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. It’s not fair. You’ve no right to ask.”

“No right to ask!” he exclaimed in enraged amazement. “No right to ask! My God, that’s a remark for you to make to me!”

He turned his face to the horse, his mouth set, his lips compressing words that he dared not utter. It was evidently all true. The thought that she might be already engaged to Rion entered his mind, carrying with it a sensation of appalling blankness. With a flash of revealing truth he saw that his life, with June completely gone from it, would be for ever savorless and without meaning. He had not realized before how much he cared for her.

For a space there was silence. They sped round another buttress and saw an unobstructed semicircle of road before them. Without looking at her he said abruptly:

“Are you going to marry him?”

“No,” she answered.

“No?” he almost shouted, this time turning to stare at her.

She turned her face away repeating the negative.

“Why not?”

“I—I—don’t—oh, Jerry, don’t question me this way. It’s not fair.”

“But he has asked you?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve refused him?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I haven’t got that sort of feeling for him. I admire him. I respect him above all men. I can’t tell you how much he was to me, how I leaned on him, depended on him, but—”

She stopped, looking down. Jerry, holding the reins in his loosely gloved hand, leaning toward her, and into her ear whispered:

“But you don’t love him.”

He turned back to the horse with his face alight with triumph. The relief that she was still his, that love of him had made her refuse such an offer, intoxicated him. He could have sung and shouted. He was silent, however, his eyes on the horse, conscious in every fiber of the proximity of the woman who, he now knew, had not the power to break from his influence.

Neither spoke again, till the buggy, cresting the last rise, came out on the shoulder of the mountain, whence the road loops downward through the sage to Washoe Lake. Below them, at the base of the Sierra, the lake lay, a sheet of pure blue, its banks shading from the gray of the surroundings to a vivid green where the water moistened them. There was something human in this evidence of the land’s readiness to bloom and beautify itself when the means were given it. It was a touch of coquetry in this austere, unsmiling landscape that seemed so indifferent.

Silent, the man and woman looked down, neither thinking of what they saw. The spirited horse was now willing to rest for a space, and stood, an equine statue against the sky, eagerly sniffing the keen air, his head motionless in a trance of alert attention, his ears pricking back and forth. A gulf of silence encircled them, pin-points of life in an elemental world.

June sat with relaxed muscles, her hands in her lap, her eyes on the lake. The stormy, troubled joy, so far from happiness, that was hers when with Jerry, held her. She had no desire to speak or move. The consciousness of his presence was like a drug to her energies, her reason, and her conscience. Sitting beside him, in this sun-steeped, serene solitude, the sense of wrong in his companionship became less and less acute, the wall of reserve between them seemed to evaporate. Sin and virtue, honor and dishonor, seemed the feeble inventions of timid man, oppressed and overwhelmed by this primordial nature which only sympathized with a pagan return to itself.

From an absent contemplation of the landscape Jerry turned and looked at his companion. He surveyed her with tender scrutiny, noting points in her appearance he had loved—the slight point with which her upper lip, just in the middle, drooped on her under one, the depression of her dimple, the fineness of her skin.

“No one else in the world has got the same sort of face as you,” he said at length.

“That’s not to be regretted,” she murmured foolishly.

“You’ve the dearest little mouth, the way your upper lip comes down in a point on your lower one! I don’t believe there’s another woman in the world with such a queer little fascinating mouth.”

He continued to gaze at her, half-smiling, but with intent eyes. Both felt the desire to talk leaving them. The silence of the landscape seemed to take possession of them, to make speech seem trivial and unnecessary.

“Why did you refuse Rion Gracey?” he said suddenly in a lowered voice.

She did not reply and he repeated the question.

“I didn’t care for him,” she said so low he could hardly hear the words.

He laid his hand on hers, gathering up her small fingers in his large grasp.

“Why?” he repeated, pressing them.

She turned away in evident distress and he whispered:

“Was it because you loved me?”

Her head drooped and he put his lips almost against her cheek as he whispered again:

“It was. I know it.”

They were silent once more, neither looking at the other now. Both trembled, guilt and fear strong in their hearts.

At this moment a rabbit sprang from a sage bush across the path, and the horse, curling backward in a spasm of fear, rose to its hind legs and then leaped forward along the road. It took Jerry a full five minutes to control him and turn his head toward home.

“I’ll take you back now,” he said, throwing the words sidewise at her as they flew onward. “I’ll stop at the mouth of Crazy Saunders’ Tunnel. You can walk in from there. If I drove you into town some idiot would see us and make talk. I never saw anything like this place. If Saint Cecilia and Jephthah’s daughter settled here for a week they’d cook up some gossip about them.”

There was no more speech between them till they saw the timbered opening of Crazy Saunders’ Tunnel loom in sight. Beyond, the first cottages of the town edged the road.

At the tunnel’s mouth Jerry drew up. June put her foot forward for the step, and as she did so he leaned toward her and said:

“I’m coming to see you soon.”

She looked quickly at him, protest and alarm in her face.

“No, don’t do that,” she said almost sharply. “I don’t want you to. You mustn’t.”

“Why not?” he answered in a tone of cool defiance. “Why shouldn’t I? We’re old friends. I see no reason why I shouldn’t come up to see you now and then.”

The fretting horse, capering and prancing with impatience, cut off further conversation. June scrambled out, reiterating:

“No, don’t come. I don’t want you to.”

As the horse sprang forward Jerry called over his shoulder:

“Hasta mañana, Señorita. I’m not going to say good-by.”

June walked home with her eyes down-drooped, her head hanging. She took no heed of the brilliant colors that were lending beauty to the crumpled skyline of the mountains. She did not see the people who passed her, some of whom knew her and wondered at her absorption. Her thoughts went back to the days at Foleys when she and Rosamund had made money with the garden and had been so full of work and healthy, innocent happiness. Then she thought of the life in San Francisco, with its growth of lower ambitions, its passion and its suffering. And now this—so dark, so menacing, so full of sudden, unfamiliar dread!

A phrase she had heard in church the Sunday before rose to her recollection: “Her feet go down to death.” As her thoughts roamed somberly back over the three epochs of her life the phrase kept recurring to her, welling continually to the surface of her mind, with sinister persistence—

“Her feet go down to death.”