CHAPTER XII
WITHIN THE CONQUEROR'S OWN COUNTRY
It was the day set for the wedding, the eighteenth since the girl had left, the sixteenth since a new mound had arisen on the bare lot adjoining that beneath which rested Landman Bud Smith, the twelfth since How Landor had arrived to haunt the tiny railway terminus. The one train from the East was due at 8:10 of the morning. It was now eight o'clock. Within the shambling, ill-kept hotel, with its weather-stained exterior and its wind-twisted sign, the best room, paid for in advance and freshly dusted for the occasion, awaited an occupant. In a stall of the single livery, a pair of half-wild bronchos, fed and harnessed according to directions, were passively waiting. An old surrey, recently oiled and tightened in all its senile joints, was drawn up conveniently to the door. In a tiny room, designated the study, of the Methodist parsonage, on the straggling outskirts of the town, the only minister the settlement boasted sat staring at the unpapered wall opposite. He was a mild-featured young man of the name of Mitchell, recently graduated from a school of theology, and for that reason selected as a sacrifice to the frontier. In front of him on the desk lay a duly prepared marriage licence, and upon it a bright gold half eagle. From time to time he glanced thereat peculiarly, and in sympathy from it to the tiny fast-ticking clock at its side. He did so now, and frowned unconsciously.
At the station the crowd of loafers that always preceded the arrival or departure of a train were congregated. In some way suggestions of the unusual had passed about, and this day their number was greatly augmented. Just what they anticipated they did not know; they did not care. Restless, athirst for excitement, they had dumbly responded to the influence in the air and come. In the foreground, where a solitary Indian stood motionless, waiting, there was being repeated the same puerile pantomime and horse-play of a former occasion. At intervals, from the rear, sounded the war whoop travesty. It was all the same as that afternoon eighteen days before, when the girl had left, similar even to the cloud of black smoke in the distance lifting lazily into the sky; only now the trail, instead of growing thinner and lighter, became denser and blacker minute by minute. In sympathy, the humorists on the platform redoubled their efforts. The instinct of anticipation, of Anglo-Saxon love of excitement that had brought them there, urged them on. Not one throat but many underwent simultaneous pantomimic bisection. A half dozen voices caught up the war whoop, passed it on from throat to throat. Almost before they realised what they were doing, the thing became a contagion, an orgy. Many who had not taken part before, who had come from mere curiosity, took part now. The crowd pressed closer and closer about the alien, the centre of attraction. When he moved farther along the platform to avoid them, they followed. Heretofore passive, the innate racial hostility became active. One youth with a dare-devil air jostled him—and disappeared precipitately. There was no response, no retaliation, and another followed his example. The confusion redoubled, drowned the roar of the approaching train. Spectators in the rear began mounting trucks and empty barrels the better to see. Within the station itself the shirt-sleeved agent surreptitiously locked the door to the ticket-room and sprung the combination of the safe. Beginning harmless ly, the incident was taking on a sinister aspect, and he had lived too long in this semi-lawless land to take any chances. Re-turning to his place of observation at the window, he was just in time to see a decayed turnip come hurtling over the heads of the crowd and, with enviable accuracy, catch the Indian behind the ear. Simultaneously, with a roar and a puff of displaced air, the light train drew into the station, on time.
Through it all the Indian had not spoken a word. Save to move twice farther away along the platform, he had not stirred. Unbelievable as it may seem, even when the missile had struck him, though it had left a great red welt, he gave no sign of feeling. For a space following the arrival of the train there was a lull, and in it, as though nothing had happened, he approached the single coach and stood waiting.
It was the last of the week and travel was very light.
A dapper commercial salesman with an imitation alligator grip descended first, looked about him apprehensively, and disappeared with speed. A big rancher with great curling moustaches and a vest open save at the bottom button followed. He likewise took stock of the surroundings, and discreetly withdrew. Following him there was a pause; then of a sudden onto the platform, fair into view of the crowd, appeared one for whom apparently they had been looking, one who on the instant caused the confusion, temporarily stilled, to break forth anew: the figure of a dainty brown girl with sensitive eyes and a soft oval chin, of Elizabeth Landor returned alone!
"Ah, there she is," shouted a voice, an united voice, the refound voice of the expectant crowd.
"Yes, there she is," repeated the intrepid youth who had introduced the jostle. "Go to, redskin. Kiss her again. Kiss her; we don't mind."
A great shout followed this sally, a shout that was heard far up the single street, and that brought curious faces to a half score of doors.
"No, we don't mind, redskin," they guffawed. "Go to! Go to!" Hesitant, hopelessly confused, the girl halted as she had appeared. Her great eyes opened wider than before, her face shaded paler momentarily, the soft oval chin trembled. Another minute, another second even.
"Come Bess," said a low voice. "Come on; don't mind them. I'll take care of you."
It was the first speech the man had made, and from pure curiosity the crowd went silent, listening—silent until he was silent; then with the lack of originality ever manifest in a mob, they caught up his words themselves.
"Yes, Bess," they baited, "he'll take care of you. Come, don't keep him waiting."
But the girl did not stir. Had empires depended upon it that moment, she could not have complied. Could she have cried, as the chin had at first presaged, she might perhaps have done so; but she was beyond the reach of tears now. The complete meaning of the scene had come to her at last, the realisation of personal menace; and a fear such as she had never before known, gripped her relentlessly. She could hear, hear every word; but her muscles refused to act. She merely stood there, the old telescope satchel she carried gripped tight in her hand, her great eyes, wide and soft as those of a wild thing, staring out into the now rapidly accumulating rabble; merely stared and waited.
"Bess," repeated the persuading voice, "come, please. Don't stand there, come."
At last the girl seemed to hear, to understand. Hesitatingly, with trembling steps, she came a pace forward, and another; then of a sudden she gave a little cry and her free hand lifted defensively. But she was not quick enough, had seen too late; and that instant came the dénouement. A second turnip, decayed like its predecessor, aimed likewise unerringly, caught her fair in the mouth, spattered, and broke into fragments that fell to the car steps. Following, swift as rain after a thunderclap, a spurt of blood came to her lips and trickled down her face.
Simultaneously the crowd went silent; silent as the still prairie about them, awed irresistibly by the thing they had themselves wittingly or unwittingly done. Save one, not a human being stirred. That one, no need to tell whom, transformed visibly; transformed as they had never seen a human being alter before. With not a step, but a bound, he was himself on the platform of the coach; the girl, protected behind him, hid from sight. She was sobbing now; sobbing tumultuously, hysterically. In the stillness every listening ear on the platform could hear distinctly. For an instant after he had reached her the Indian stood so, his left arm about her, his back toward them. He did not say a word, he did not move. For the first time in his life he dared not. He did not see red that moment, this man; he saw black—black as prairie loam. Every savage instinct in his brain was clamouring for freedom, clamouring until his free hand was clenched tight to keep it from the bulging holster behind his right hip. Before this instant, when they were baiting him alone, it was nothing, he could forgive; but now—now—He stared away from them, stared up into the smiling, sarcastic prairie sky; but, listening, they, who almost with fascination watched, could hear beneath the catch of the girl's sobs the sound of his breathing.
Ever at climaxes time seems suspended. Whether it was a second or a minute he stood there so, they who watched could never tell. What they did know was that at last he turned, stood facing them. All their lives they had seen passion, seen it in every phase, seen it until it was commonplace. It was in the very air of the frontier, to be expected, life of the life; but as this man shifted they saw a kind of which they had never dreamed. For How Landor was master of himself again, master, as well—they knew it, every man and youth who saw,—of them. For another indefinitely long deathly silent space he merely looked at them; looked eye to eye, individual by individual, into every face within the surrounding semi-circle. Once before another man, a drunken cowman, had seen that identical look. Now not one but a score saw it, felt a terrible ice-cold menace creep from his brain into their brains. Even yet he did not speak, did not make a sound; nor did they. Explain it as you will, he did this thing. Another thing he did as well; and that was the end. Slowly, deliberately, he stepped to the platform and held out his hand. Obediently the girl followed. She was not crying now. Her eyes were red and a drop of blood came now and then to her lips; but she had grown wonderfully quiet all at once, wonderfully calm—almost as much so as the man. Deliberately as he had stepped down into the spectators' midst, the Indian took the old telescope from the girl's hand and, she following by his side, moved a step forward. He did not touch her again nor did she him. They merely moved ahead toward the sidewalk that led up the single street; moved deliberately, leisurely, as though they were alone. Not around the crowd, but straight through it they passed; through a lane that opened as by magic as they went, and as by magic closed behind them, until they were within a solid human square. But of all the assembled spectators that day, an aggregation irresponsible, unchivalrous as no other rabble on earth—a mob of the frontier,—not on e spoke to challenge their action, not one attempted to bar their way. The complete length of the platform they went so, turned the corner by the station—and, simultaneously, the crowd disappeared from view, hid by the building itself. Then in sudden reaction, the girl weakened. Irresistibly she caught at the man's arm, held it fast.
"Oh, How! How!" she trembled, "is it to be always like this with you and me? Is it to be always, everywhere, so?"
But the man said never a word.
Two hours had passed. The girl had breakfasted. A wood fire crackled cheerfully in the sheet iron heater of the tiny room where the same two people sat alone. Already the world had taken on a different aspect. Not that Elizabeth Landor had forgotten that recent incident at the depot. She would never forget it. It had merely passed into temporary abeyance, taken its proper place in the eternal scheme of things. Another consideration, paramount, all-compelling, had inevitably crowded it from the stage. It was this consideration that had held her silent far longer than was normal. It was its overshadowing influence that at last prompted speech.
"How did you know I was coming to-day?" she queried suddenly.
"How did you know I would be at the train to meet you?" echoed a voice.
The girl did not answer, did not pursue the subject.
"Tell me of Aunt Mary, please," she digressed. "I felt somehow when you wrote as if I—I—" A swiftly gathered shower called a halt. Tear drops, ever so near, stood in her eyes. "Please tell me," she completed.
The man told her. It did not take long. As of her prosaic life, so there was little to record of the death of Mary Landor. "It was best that you were away," he ended. "It was best for her that she went when she did."
"You think so, How, honestly?" No affectation in that anxious query. "You think I didn't do wrong in leaving as I did?"
"No, you did no wrong, Bess." A pause. "You could not."
A moment the girl sat looking at him; in wonder and something more.
"I believe you knew all the time Aunt Mary would—go while I was away," she said suddenly, tensely. "I believe you helped me away on purpose."
No answer.
"Tell me, How. I want to know."
"I thought so, Bess," simply.
For a long time the girl sat so; silent, marvelling. A new understanding of this solitary human stole over her, an appreciation that drowned the sadness of a moment ago. "How you must care for me," she voiced almost unconsciously. "How you must care for me!"
She did not expect an answer. She was not disappointed. Again a silence fell; a silence of which she was unconscious, for she was thinking. Minutes passed. In the barn the bronchos were passively waiting. At the parsonage the young minister still sat scowling in his study. No time had been set for the visit he expected. There was no apparent reason why he should not have gone about his work; but for some reason he could not. Angry with himself, he thrust the new half eagle into his pocket and, placing the offending licence beneath a pile of papers, he walked over to the window and stood staring out into the sunshine.
Within the tiny room at the hotel the gaze of the girl shifted, dropped to her feet. Despite an effort her face tinged slowly red.
"Did you think," she queried abruptly, "when you expected me to-day that I would come alone?"
The Indian showed no surprise.
"Yes, Bess," he answered. "I knew you would be alone."
"Why, How?" The question was just audible.
"Because I trusted you, Bess."
Silence again. Surreptitiously, swiftly, the girl's brown eyes glanced up; but he was not looking at her, and again her glance fell. A longer pause followed, a pause wherein the girl could not have spoken if she would. A great preventing lump was in her throat, an obstacle that precluded speech. Many things had happened in the short time since she had last been with this man, some things of which she was not proud; and beside such a trust as this Bess Landor was speechless. Without volition upon her part, the cup of life had been placed to her lips and, likewise without knowledge of what it contained, she had tasted. The memory of that draught was with her now. Under its influence she spoke.
"You are better than I am, How," she said.
If the man understood he gave no evidence of the knowledge. He did not even look at her. Time was passing, time which should have found them upon their way, but he showed no impatience. It was his day, his moment, his by right; but no one looking at him would have doubted that he himself would never first suggest the fact. Conditions had changed very rapidly in the recent past, altered until, from his view-point, it was impossible for him to make the move toward the old relation, to even intimate its desirability. With the patience of his race he waited. In the fulness of time he was rewarded.
"How," of a sudden initiated a voice, withal an embarrassed voice, "will you do me a favour?"
"What is it, Bess?"
The girl coloured. Instinctively the man knew that at last the recall had come, and for the first time he was looking at her steadily.
"Promise me, please," temporised the girl.
"I promise."
Even yet Elizabeth Landor found it difficult to say what she wished to say.
"You won't be—offended or angry, How?"
"No, Bess. You could hurt me, but you couldn't make me angry."
"Thank you, How. It's a little thing, but I'd like to have you humour me." She met his look directly. "It's when we are married to-day you'll be dressed—well, not the way you usually dress." Her colour came and went, her throat was a-throb. "Dressed like—You understand, How."
Of a sudden the Indian was upon his feet; then as suddenly he checked himself. Characteristically, he now ignored the immaterial, went, as ever, straight to fundamentals without preface or delay. Scarce one human in a generation would have held aloof at that moment. It was his, his by every right; but even yet he would not take it, not until—.
"Bess," he said slowly. "I want to ask you a question and I want you to answer me—as you would answer your mother were she alive." Once again, unconsciously, he fell into pose, his arms across his breast, his great shoulders squared. "I have seen Mr. Landor's will. He has left you nearly everything. You are rich, Bess; I won't tell you how rich because you wouldn't understand. You are young and can live any life you wish. You know what marrying me means. I am as I am and cannot change. You know what others, people of your own race, think when you are with me. They have shown you to-day. Answer me, Bess, have you thought of all this? Was it duty that brought you back, or did you really wish to come? Don't take me into consideration at all when you answer. Don't do it, or we shall both live to regret. Tell me, Bess, as you know I love you, whether you have thought of all this and still wish to marry me. Tell me." He was silent. Once again it was a climax, and once again came oblivion of passing time. For minutes passed, minutes wherein, with wide open eyes, the girl made her choice. Not in hot blood was the decision made, not as before in ignorance of what that decision meant. Deliberately, with the puerile confidence we humans feel in our insight of future, she chose; as she believed, honestly.
"Yes, How," she said slowly. "I have thought of it all and I wish to marry you. I've no place else in the world to go. There's no one in the world that I trust as I trust you. I wish to marry you to-day, How."
Then, indeed, it was the man's moment. Then, and not until then, he accepted his reward.
"Bess!" She was in his arms. "Bess!" He tasted Paradise. "Bess!" That was all.
For the second time that day the air of the tiny town tingled with portent of the unusual. For the second time a crowd was gathered; only now it was not at the station, but at a place of far more sinister import, within and in front of the "Lost Hope" saloon. Again in personnel it was different, notably different from that of the first occasion. The same irresponsibles were there, as ever they are present at times of storm; but added to the aggregation now, outnumbering them, were others ordinarily responsible, men typical in every way of the time and place. A second difference of even greater portent was the motif of gathering. For it was not a mere rumour, an idle curiosity, that had brought them together now. On the contrary they had at last, these dominant Anglo-Saxons, begun to take themselves seriously. Rumour, inevitable in a place where days were as much alike as the one-story buildings on the main street, had begun when How Landor had commenced to haunt the station at the time of the incoming train. The incident of the morning had familiarised the rumour into gossip. Hard upon this had followed a report from the hotel landlord, and gossip had become certainty. Then it was that horse-play had ceased, and, save at the point of congregation, a silence, unwonted and sinister, had taken its place. So marked was the change that when at last the Indian and the girl left the hotel together on their way to the parsonage the street through which they passed was as still as though it were the street of a prairie dog town. So quiet it was that the girl was deceived; but the ears of the Indian were keener, and faint as an echo beneath it, as yet well in the distance, he detected the warning of an alien note. Not as on that other day out on the prairie when he caught the first trumpet call of the Canada goose, did he recognise the sound from previous familiarity. Never in his life had he heard its like; yet now an instinct told him its meaning, told him as well its menace. Not once did he look back, not one word of prophecy did he speak to the girl at his side; yet as surely as a grey timber wolf realises what is to come when he catches the first faint bay of the hounds on his trail, How Landor realised that at last for him the hour of destiny had struck, that as surely as the wild thing must battle for life he must do likewise—and that soon, very, very soon.
Up the street they went: a small dark girl garbed as no woman was ever garbed in a fashion-plate, a tall copper-brown man all but humorously grotesque in a ready-made suit of clothes that were far from a fit and the first starched shirt and collar he had ever worn. Laughable unqualifiedly, this red man tricked out in the individuality-destroying dress of the white brother would have been to an observer who had not the key to the situation; but to one who knew the motive of the alteration it was far as the ends of the earth from humorous. On they went, silent now, each in widely separated anticipation; and after them, at first silent likewise, then as it advanced growing noisier and noisier, followed the crowd which had congregated at the Lost Hope saloon. As on the day of the little landman's funeral when Captain William Landor had passed up the street of Cayote Centre, ahead where the Indian and the girl advanced not the figure of a human being was in sight, unless one were suspicious and looked closely, not a face; but to the Indian eyes were everywhere. Every house they passed—for they were in the residence section now—had its pair or multiple pairs peering out through the slats of a blind, or, as in a theatre preceding a performance, at the side of a drawn curtain. Like wildfire the news had spread; like turtles timid women folk had drawn close within their shells; yet everywhere curiosity they could not repress prompted them to take a last look before the storm. Once, and once only, the pedestrians were interrupted. Then a house dog came bounding across the lawn to pause at a safe distance and growl a menace; and again the all-noting Indian had observed the cause of the unwonted bravery, had heard the low voice from the kitchen that had urged the beast on.
Thus nearer and nearer that sunny fall morning the storm approached. Long before this, unobservant though she was, had the girl not been living in the future instead of the present, she would have recognised its coming. For the pursuers were gaining rapidly now. They had crossed onto the same street, the principal residence thoroughfare, and were coming as a crowd ever moves: swiftly, those in the rear exerting themselves to get to the fore, and so again. Far from silent by this time, the man ahead, the man who never deigned a backward glance, could hear their voices in a perpetual rumble; could distinguish at intervals, interrupting it, above it, a voice commanding, inflaming. Without seeing, he knew that at last his persecutors had found a commander, a directing spirit—and as well as he knew his own name he knew who that leader was. Unsophisticated absolutely in the ways of the world was this man; but in the reading of his fellows he was a master.
Apparently oblivious when a part of this same crowd had congregated at the train, he had nevertheless observed them individual by individual; and in his own consciousness had known that the moment, his moment, had not come: for a leader, the leader, was not there. Again when the train had pulled in he had watched—and still the leader did not appear. But he was not deceived. As he had trusted in the girl's coming he had trusted in another's following surreptitiously; and as now he heard that one voice sounding above the other voices he knew he had been right. For the man at the head of that pursuing mob which gained on them so rapidly block by block, the man whose influence in those brief hours the Indian and the girl had been alone in the tiny room at the hotel had vitalised the lukewarm racial hostility into a thing of menace, was the same man whose life he had once saved, the same man about whose throat ere the identical night had passed his fingers had closed: Clayton Craig by name, one time of Boston, Mass., but now, by his uncle's will, master of the Buffalo Butte ranch house!
Meanwhile in the study of the parsonage Clifford Mitchell was again looking out the single window. Time and time again he had tried to work—and as often failed. At last he had conformed to the inevitable and was merely waiting. The house was on the outskirts of the town and the window faced the open prairie; bare and rolling as far as the eye could reach. He was city bred, this mild-faced servant of God, and as yet the prairie country was a thing at which to marvel. He was looking out upon it now, absently, thoughtfully, wondering at its immensity and its silence—when of a sudden he became conscious that it was no longer silent. Instead to his ears, growing louder moment by moment, penetrating the illy constructed walls, came an indistinct roar; rising, lowering, yet ever constant: a sound unlike any other on earth, distinctive as the silence preceding had been typical—the clamour of angry, menacing human voices en masse. Once, not long before, in a city street the listener had heard that identical sound; and recognition was instantaneous. Swift as memory he recalled the strike that had been its cause, the horde of sympathisers who had of a sudden appeared as from the very earth, the white face and desperate figure of the solitary "scab" fighting a moment, and a moment only, for life, in their midst. Swift as memory came that picture; and swift upon its heels, blotting it out, the present returned. Clifford Mitchell had not been among this people long; yet already he had caught the spirit of the place, and as he listened he knew full well what a similar gathering among them would mean. He was not a brave man, this blue-eyed pastor; not a drop of fighting blood was in his veins; and as moment after moment passed and the sound grew nearer and nearer, the first real terror of his life came creeping over him. Not in his mind was there a doubt as to the destination of that oncoming multitude. Premonition had been too electric in the air that day for him to question its meaning. They were coming to him, to him, Clifford Mitchell, these irresponsible menacing humans. It might be another for whom they had gathered; but he as well would share in their displeasure, in their punishment: for he was a party to the thing of which they disapproved. All the day, from the time the Indian had called and almost simultaneously, vague rumours of trouble had come floating in the visitor's wake; he had been in anticipation; and now the thing anticipated had become a certainty. Answering he felt the cold perspiration come pouring out on his forehead; and absently, he wiped it away with the palm of his hand. Following came a purely physical weakness; and stumbling across the room he took the seat beside the desk. Unconsciously nervous, restless, his fingers fumbled with the pile of papers before him until they came to a certain one he had buried. Almost as though impelled against his will to do so he spread this one flat before him and sat staring at it, dumbly waiting.
Nearer and nearer came the roar as he sat there, irresistible, cumulatively menacing as a force of nature; and instinctively, by it alone, the listener marked the approach of its makers. He could hear them down the street at the other end of the block before the residence of Banker Briggs. He knew this to a certainty because part of those who came were on the sidewalk, and that was the only piece of cement in town. Again, by the same token, he knew when they passed the only other house in the block besides his own. There was a gap in the boardwalk there, and when the leaders reached it the patter of their footsteps went suddenly muffled on the bare earth. It was his turn next, his in a moment; yes, the feet were already on the confines of his own yard, the roar of their owners' voices was all about. He could even distinguish what they were saying now, could catch names, his own name.
Of a sudden, expected and yet unexpected, a dark shadow passed before his window, and another; then a swarm. Simultaneously faces, not a few but as many as could crowd into the space, appeared outside the panes, staring curiously in. Involuntarily he arose to draw the shade; and at that moment, interrupting, startlingly loud, there came a knock at his front door.
Clifford Mitchell paused on his way to the window, stood irresolute; and, seemingly impossible as it was, the number of curious faces multiplied.
The knock was repeated; not fearfully or frantically, but deliberately and with an insistence there was no misunderstanding.
This time the minister responded. He did not pause to blot out the faces of the curious. The licence he had been absently holding was still in his hand; but he did not delay to put it down. There was something compelling in that knock; something that demanded instant obedience, and he obeyed. The living-room through which he passed on his way had two windows and, identical with that of his study, each was black with humanity; but he did not even glance at them. His legs trembled involuntarily and his throat was dry as though he had been speaking for hours; yet, nevertheless, he obeyed. With a hand that shook perceptibly he turned the button of the spring lock, and, opening the door onto the street, looked out.
While Clifford Mitchell lived, while lived every man of the uncounted throng gathered there beneath the noon-time sun that October day, they remembered that moment, the moments that followed. As real life is ever stranger than fiction, so off the stage occur incidents more stirring than at the play. Standing there in the narrow doorway, white-faced, hesitant, awaiting a command, the minister himself exemplified the fact beyond question; yet of his own grotesque part he was oblivious. He had thought for but one thing that moment, had room in his consciousness for but one impression; and that was for the drama ready there before him. And small wonder, for, looking out, this was what he saw:
An uneven straggling village street, mottled with patches of dead grass and weeds. Along it, here and there, like kernels of seed scattered on fallow ground, a sprinkling of one-story houses. This the background. In the midst of it all, covering his lawn, overflowing into the yards of his neighbours, dense, crowding the better to see, all-surrounding, was a solid zone of motley humanity. Old men with weather-beaten faces and untrimmed beards were there, young men with the marks that dissipation and passion indelibly stamp, awkward, gawky youths unconsciously aping their elders, smooth-faced youngsters in outgrown garments; all ages and conditions of the human frontier male were there—but in that zone not a single woman. Ranchers there were in corduroys and denims, cowboys in buckskin and flannel, gamblers in the glaring colours distinctive of their kind, business men with closely cropped moustaches, idlers in anything and everything; but amid them all not a friendly face. This the surrounding zone, the mongrel pack that had brought the quarry to bay.
In the centre of the half circle they formed, within a couple of paces of the now open doorway, were three people. Two of them, a rather small brown girl and a tall wiry Indian in a new suit of ready-made clothes and a derby hat of the model of the year before, were nearest; so near that the door, which swung outward, all but touched them. The other, a well-built, smooth-faced Easterner with a white skin and delicate hands, was opposite. His dress was the dress of a man of fashion, his cravat and patent leather buttoned shoes were of the latest style; but his linen was soiled now, and a two-days' growth of beard covered his chin. Moreover, his eyes were bloodshot and, despite an effort to prevent, as he stood there now he wavered a bit to right and left. One look told his story. He had been drinking, drinking for days; and, worst of all, he had been drinking this day, drinking in anticipation of this very moment, swallowing courage against the necessity of the now. All this the stage and its setting, upon which the white-faced minister raised the curtain. Simultaneously, as ever an audience grows silent when the real play begins, it grew silent now. The hinges of the little-used front door were rusty and had squeaked startlingly. Otherwise not a sound marked the opening of the drama.
A moment following the silence was intense, a thing one could feel; then of a sudden it was broken—not by words, but by action. One step the white-skinned man took forward; a step toward the girl. A second step he advanced, and halted; for, preventing, the hand of the other man was upon his own.
"Stand back, please," said an even voice. "It's not time for congratulations yet. Stand back, please."
Answering there was a sound; but not articulate. It was a curse, a challenge, a menace all in one; and with a hysterical terrified little cry the girl shrank back into the doorway itself. But none other, not even the minister, stirred.
"Mr. Craig," the words were low, almost intimately low, but in the stillness they seemed fairly loud. "I ask you once more to stand back. I don't warn you, I merely request—but I shall not ask it again." Of a sudden the speaker's hand left the other's arm, dropped by his own side. "Stand back, please."
Face to face the two men stood there; the one face working, passionate, menacing; the other emotionless as the blue sky overhead. A moment they remained so while the breathless onlookers expected anything, while from the doorstep the minister's white lips moved in a voiceless prayer; then slowly, lingeringly, the man who had advanced drew back. A step he took silently, another, and his breathing became audible, still another, and was himself amid the spectators. Then for the first time he found voice.
"You spoke your own sentence then, redskin," he blazed. "We'd have let you go if you'd given up the girl; but now—now—May God have mercy on your soul now, How Landor!"
Again there was silence; silence absolute. As at that first meeting on the car platform, the girl had turned facing them. It was the crisis, and as before an instinct which she did not understand, which she merely obeyed, brought her to the Indian's side; held her there motionless, passive, mysteriously unafraid. Her usually brown face was very pale and her eyes were unnaturally bright; but withal she was unbelievably calm—calm as a child with its hand in its father's hand. Not even that solid zone of menacing, staring eyes had terror for her now. Whether or no she loved him, as she believed in God she trusted in that motionless, dominant human by her side.
A moment they stood so in a silence wherein they could hear each other breathe, wherein the prayer that had never left the minister's lips became audible; then came the end. Incredible after it was over was that dénouement, inexplicable to a legion of old men, then among the boys, who witnessed it, to this day. Yet as the incredible continues to take place in this world it took place then. As one man can ever dominate other men it was done that silent noon hour. For that moment the first challenge that had ever passed the lips of How Landor was spoken. The only challenge that he ever made to man or woman in his life found voice; and was not accepted. One step he took toward that listening, expectant throng and halted. With the old, old motion his arms folded across his chest.
"Men," he said, "I don't want trouble here to-day. I've done my best to avoid it; but the end has come. I've stood everything at your hands, every insult which you could conceive, things which no white man would have permitted for a second; and so far without resentment. But I shall stand it no more. I'm one to a hundred; but that makes no difference. Bess Landor and I are to be married now and here; here before you all. I shall not talk to you again. I shall not ask you to leave us in peace; but as surely as one of you speaks another word of insult to her or to me, as surely as one of you attempts to interfere or prevent, I shall kill that man. No matter which of you it is, I shall do this thing." A moment longer he stood so, observing them steadily, with folded arms; then, still facing, he moved back a step. "Mr. Mitchell," he said, "we are ready."
And there that October noonday, fair in the open with two hundred curious eyes watching, in a silence unbroken as that of prairie night itself, Bess Landor and Ma-wa-cha-sa the Sioux were married. The minister stumbled in the ritual, and though he held the book close before his face, it was memory alone that prompted the form; for the pages shook until the letters were blurred. Yet it was done, and, save one alone, every spectator who had come with a far different intent stayed and listened to the end. That one, a tall, modish alien with a red, flushed face covered with a two-days' growth of bread, was likewise watching when it began. But when it was over he was not there; and not one of those who had followed his lead had noticed his going.
CHAPTER XIII
THE MYSTERY OF SOLITUDE
Westward across the unbroken prairie country, into the smiling, sun-kissed silence and emptiness, two people were driving: a white girl of two-and-twenty summers and an Indian man a few years older. Back of them, in the direction from which they had come, was the outline of a straggling, desolate village. Ahead, to either side, was the rolling brown earth; and at the end of it, abrupt apparently as a material wall, the blue of a cloudless October sky. The team they were driving, a mouse-coloured broncho and a mate a shade darker, were restless after three days of enforced inactivity and tugged at the bit mightily. Though the day was perfectly still, the canvas curtains of the old surrey flapped lazily in a breeze born of the pace alone. The harness on the ponies shuffled and creaked with every move. Though the bolts of the ancient vehicle had been carefully tightened, it nevertheless groaned at intervals with the motion; mysteriously, like the unconscious sigh of the aged, apparently without reason. Beneath the wheels the frost-dried grass rattled continuously, monotonously; but save this last there was no other sound. Since the two humans had left the limits of the tiny town there had been no other sound. Now and then the girl had glanced behind, instinctively, almost fearfully; but not once had the man followed her example, had he stirred in his place. Swiftly, silently, he was leaving civilisation behind him; by the scarce visible landmarks he alone distinguished was returning to his own, to the wild that lay in the distance beyond.
Thus westward, direct as a tight cord, on and on they went; and back of them gradually, all but unconsciously, the low-built terminus grew dimmer and dimmer, vanished detail by detail as completely as though it had never been. Last of all to disappear, already a mere black dot against the blue, was the water tank beside the station. For three miles, four, it held its place; then, as, with the old unconscious motion the girl turned to look back, she searched for it in vain. Behind them as before, unbroken, limiting, only the brown plain and the blue surrounding wall met her gaze. At last, there in the solitude, there with no observer save nature and nature's God, she and the other were alone.
As the first man and the first woman were alone they were alone. From horizon to horizon was not a sign of human handiwork, not a suggestion of human presence. They might live or die, or laugh or weep, or love or hate—and none of their kind would be the wiser. All her life that she could remember the girl had lived so, all her life she had but to lift her eyes above her feet to gaze into the infinite; yet in the irony of fate never until this moment, the moment when of all she should have been the happiest, did the immensity of this solitude appeal to her so, did appreciation of the terrible, haunting loneliness it concealed touch her with its grip. Care free, thoughtless, never until the whirl of the last fortnight had the future, her future, appealed to her as something which she herself must shape or alter. Heretofore it had been a thing taken for granted, preordained as the alternate coming of light and of darkness. But in that intervening time, short as it was, she had awakened. Rude as had been the circumstances that had aroused her, they had nevertheless been effective. Without volition upon her part the panorama of another life had been unrolled before her eyes. Sensations, thoughts, impulses of which she had never previously dreamed had been hers. Passions unconceived had stalked before her gaze. More a nightmare on the whole than an awakening it had all been; yet nevertheless the experience had been hers. Much of its meaning had passed her by. Events had crowded too thickly for her to grasp the whole; but en masse the effect had been definite—startlingly definite. Unbelievable as it may seem, for the first time in her existence she had aroused to the consciousness of being an individual entity. The inevitable metamorphosis of age, the thing which differentiates a child from an adult, belated long in her passive life, had at last taken place. Bewilderingly sudden, so sudden that as yet she had not adjusted herself to the change, had barely become conscious thereof, yet certain as existence it self, the transformation had come to pass. Looking back there that afternoon, looking where the town had been and now was not, mingling with the impressions of a day full to overflowing, there came to the girl for the first time a definite appreciation of this thing that she had done. And that moment from the scene, never to appear again, passed Bess Landor the child; and invisibly into her place, taking up the play where the other had left, came Elizabeth Landor the woman.
Very, very long the girl sat there so; unconsciously long. With the swift reaction of youth, the scene of the excitement vanished, the personal menace gone, the impression it had made passed promptly into abeyance. As when she and the man had sat alone in the tiny room of the hotel, another consideration was too insistent, too vital, to prevent dominating the moment. Any other diversion, save absolute physical pain itself, would have been inadequate, was inadequate. Gradually, minute by minute, as the outline of the town itself had vanished, the depressing impression of that jeering frontier mob faded; and in its stead, looming bigger and bigger, advancing, enfolding like a storm cloud until it blotted out every other thought, came realisation of the thing she had done: came appreciation of its finality, its immensity. Then it was that the infinite bigness of this uninhabited wild, the sense of its infinite loneliness, pressed her close. Despite herself, against all reason, as a child is afraid of the dark there grew upon her a terror of this intangible thing called solitude that stretched out into the future endlessly. Smiling as it was this day, unchangeably smiling, she fancied a time when it would not smile, when its passive eventless monotony would be maddening. Swiftly, cumulatively as with every intense nature impressions reproduce, this one augmented. Again into the consideration intruded the absolute finality, the irrevocability of her choice. More distinctly than when she had listened to the original, memory recalled the vow of the marriage ceremony she had taken: "For better or for worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us part." No, there was no escape, no possible avenue that remained unguarded. The knowledge overwhelmed her, suffocated her. Vague possibilities, recently born, became realities. Closer and closer gripped the solitude. For the first time in her existence the dead surrounding silence became unbearable. Almost desperately she shifted back in her seat. Instinctively she sought the hand of her companion, pressed it tight. A mist came into her eyes, until the very team itself was blotted out.
"Oh, How," she confessed tensely, "I'm afraid!"
The man roused, as one recalled from reverie, as one awakened but not yet completely returned.
"Afraid, Bess? Afraid of what?"
"Of the silence, of the future; of you, a bit."
"Afraid of me, Bess?" Perplexed, wondering, the man held the team to a walk and simultaneously the side curtains ceased flapping, hung close. "I don't think I understand. Tell me why, Bess."
"I can't. A child doesn't know why it's afraid of the dark. The dark has never hurt it. It merely is."
At her side the man sat looking at her. He did not touch her, he did not move. In the time since they had come into his own a wonderful change had come into the face of this Indian man; and never was it so wonderful as at this moment. He still wore the grotesque ready-made clothes. The high collar, galling to him as a bridle to an unbroken cayuse, had made a red circle about his throat; yet of it and of them he was oblivious. Very, very young he looked at this time; fairly boyish. There was a colour in his beardless cheeks higher than the bronze of his race. The black eyes were soft as a child's, trusting as a child's. In the career of every human being there comes a time supreme, a climax, a period of exaltation to which memory will ever after recur, which serves as a standard of happiness absolute; and in the career of How Landor the hour had struck. This he knew; and yet, knowing, he could scarcely credit the truth. His cup of happiness was full, full to overflowing; yet he was almost afraid to put it to his lips for fear it would vanish, lest it should prove a myth.
Thus he sat there, this Indian man with whom fate was jesting, worshipping with a faith and love more intense than a Christian for his God; yet, with instinctive reticence, worshipping with closed lips. Thus the minutes passed; minutes of silence wherein he should have been eloquent, minutes that held an opportunity that would never be his again. Smiling, ironic, fate the satirist looked on at her handiwork, watched to the end; and then, observing that finale, laughed—and with the voice of Elizabeth Landor.
"Don't work at it any more, How," derided destiny. "You don't understand, and I can't tell you."
She straightened in her seat and shrugged her shoulders with a gesture she had never used before, that had come very lately: come concomitantly with the arrival of the woman Elizabeth. "Anyway, I think it will be all right. I at least am not afraid of your eloping with someone else." She laughed again at the thought and folded her hands carefully in her lap. "It's quite impossible to think of you interfering with the property of someone else; even though that property were a girl."
Mechanically the Indian chirruped to the team and shook the reins. On his face the look of perplexity deepened. Instinctively he realised that something was wrong; but how to set it right he did not know, and, true to his instincts, waited. "You wouldn't be afraid in the least to do so," wandered on the girl, "even though the woman were another man's wife. You aren't afraid of anything. You'd take her from before his very eyes if you'd decided to do so, if you saw fit. It's not that. It merely would never occur to you; not even as possibility."
Still groping, the man looked at her, looked at her full; but no light came.
"Yes, you're right, Bess," he corroborated haltingly. "It would never occur to me to do so."
More ironically than before laughed fate; and again with the voice of Elizabeth Landor.
"You're humorous, How, deliciously humorous; and still you haven't the vestige of a sense of humour." She laughed again involuntarily. "I hadn't myself a few weeks ago. I think I was even more deficient than you; but now—now—" Once again the tense-strung laugh, while in her lap the crossed hands locked and grew white from mutual pressure. "Now of a sudden I seem to see humour in everything!"
More than perplexed, concerned, distressed from his very inability to fathom the new mood, the man again brought the team to a walk, fumbled with the reins impotently.
"Something's wrong, Bess," he hesitated. "Something's worrying you. Tell me what it is, won't you?"
"Wrong?" The girl returned the look fair, almost defiantly. "Wrong?" Still again the laugh; unmusical, hysterical. "Certainly nothing is wrong. What could be wrong when two people who have so much in common as you and I, who touch at so many places, are just married and alone? Wrong: the preposterous idea!"
She was silent, and of a sudden the all-surrounding stillness seemed to be intensified. For at last, at last the man understood and was looking at her; looking at her wordlessly, with an expression that was terrible in its haunting suggestion of unutterable sadness, of infinite pain. He did not say a word; he merely looked at her; but shade by shade as the seconds passed there vanished from his face to the last bit every trace of the glory that had been its predecessor. Not until it was gone did the girl realise to the full what she had done, realise the mortal stab she had inflicted; then of a sudden came realisation in a gust and contrition unspeakable. Swiftly as rain follows a thunderclap her mood changed, her own face, hysterically tense, relaxed in a flood of tears. In an abandon of remorse her arms were about him, her face was pressed close to his face.
"Forgive me, How," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm nervous and irresponsible, that's all. Please forgive me; please!"
At a dawdling little prairie stream, superciliously ignored by the map-maker, yet then and now travelling its aimless journey from nowhere to nowhere under the name of Mink Creek, they halted for the night.
Though they had been driving steadily all the afternoon, save once when, far to the south, they had detected the blot of a grazing herd, they had seen no sign of human presence. They saw no indication now. The short fall day was drawing to a close. The sun, red as maple leaf in autumn, was level with the earth when How Landor pulled up beside the low sloping bank, and, the girl watching from her observation seat in the old surrey, unharnessed and watered the team and hobbled them amid the tall frost-cured grass to feed.
"Now for the tent," he said on returning. "Will your highness have it face north, south, east, or west?"
"East, please, How. I want to see the sun when it first comes up in the morning."
With the methodical swiftness of one accustomed to his work the man set about his task. The tent, his own, was in the rear of the waggon box. The furnishings, likewise his own, were close packed beside. More quickly than the watcher fancied it possible the whole began to take shape. Long before the glory had left the western sky the tent itself was in place. Before the chill, which followed so inevitably and swiftly, was in the air the diminutive soft coal heater was installed and in service. Following, produced from the same receptacle as by legerdemain, vanishing mysteriously within the mushroom house, followed the blanket bed, the buffalo robes, the folding chairs and table, the frontier "grub" chest. Last of all, signal to the world that the task was complete, the battered lantern with the tin reflector was trimmed and lit and, adding the final touch of comfort and of intimacy that light alone can give, was hung from its old hook on the ridge pole. Then at last, the first shadows of night stealing over the soundless earth, the man approached the lone spectator and held out his arms for her to descend.
"Come, Bess," he said. He smiled up at her as only such a man at such a time can smile. "This is my night. I'm going to do everything; cook supper and all. Come, girlie."
The meal was over, and again, as on that other occasion when Colonel William Landor had called, the two people within the tent occupied the same positions. In the folding rocking chair sat the girl, the light from the single lantern playing upon her brown head and soft oval face. In the partial darkness of the corner, stretched among the buffalo robes, lay the man. His arms were locked behind his head. His face was toward her. His eyes—eyes unbelievably soft and innocent for a mature man—were upon her. As he had said, this was his night, and he was living in it to the full. Ever taciturn with her as with others, he was at this time even more silent than usual, silent in a happiness which made words seem sacrilege. He merely looked at her, wonderingly, worshipfully, with the mute devotion of a dog for its master, as a devout Catholic gazes upon the image of the Virgin Mother. Since they had entered the tent he had scarcely spoken more than a single sentence at a time. Only once had he given a glimpse of himself. Then he had apologised for the meagreness of the meal. "To-morrow," he had said, "we will have game, the country is full of it; but to-day—" he had looked down as he had spoken—"to-day I felt somehow as though I could not kill anything. Life is too good to destroy, to-day."
Thus he lay there now, motionless, wordless, oblivious of passing time; and now and then in her place the girl's eyes lifted, found him gazing at her—and each time looked away. For some reason she could not return that look. For some reason as each time she caught it, read its meaning, her brown face grew darker. As truly as out there on the prairie she was afraid of the infinite solitude, she was afraid now of the worship that gaze implied. She had awakened, had Elizabeth Landor; and in the depths of her own soul she knew she was not worthy of such love, such confidence absolute. She expected it, she wanted it—and still she did not want it. She longed for oblivion such as his, oblivion of all save the passing minute; and it was not hers. Prescience, without a reason therefor which she would admit, prevented forgetfulness. She tried to shake the impression off; but it clung tenaciously. Instinctively, almost under compulsion, she even went ahead to meet it, to prepare the way.
"You mustn't look at me that way, How," she laughed at last forcedly. "It makes me afraid of myself—afraid of dropping. Supposing I should fall, from up in the sky where you fancy I am! No one, not even you, could ever put the pieces together."
"Fall," smiled the man, "you fall? You wouldn't; but if you did, I'd be there to catch you."
"Then you, too, would be in fragments. I'm very, very far above earth, you know."
"I'd want to be so, if you fell," said the man. "You're all there is in the world, all there is in life, for me. I'd want to be annihilated, too, then."
The girl's hands folded in her lap; as they had done that afternoon, very carefully.
"You don't know me even yet, How," she guided on. "You think I'm perfect, but I'm not. I know I'm very, very human, very—bad at times."
The other smiled; that was all.
"I'm liable to do anything, be anything. I'm liable to even fancy I don't like you and run away."
"If you did you'd return very soon."
"Return?" She looked at him fully. "You think so?"
"I know so."
"Why, How?"
"Because you care for me."
"But it would be because I didn't care for you that I'd go, you know."
"You'd find your mistake and come back."
The clasped hand locked, as once before they had done.
"And when I did—come back—you'd forgive me, How?"
"There'd be nothing to forgive."
"It wouldn't be wrong—to leave you that way?"
"To me you could do no wrong, Bess."
"Not if I did anything, if I—ran away with another man?"
The listener smiled, until the beardless face was very, very boyish.
"I can't imagine the impossible, Bess."
"But just supposing I should?" insistently. "You'd take me back, no matter what I'd done, and forgive me?"
For a half minute wherein the smile slowly vanished from his face the man did not answer, merely looked at her; then for the first time since they had been speaking his eyes dropped.
"I could forgive you anything, Bess; but to take you back, to have everything go on as before—I am human. I could not."
A moment longer the two remained so, each staring at their feet; then of a sudden, interrupting, the girl laughed, unmusically, hysterically.
"I'm glad you said that, How," she exulted; "glad I compelled you to say it. As you confess, it makes you seem more human. A god shouldn't marry a mortal, you know."
The man looked up gravely, but he said nothing.
"I'm going to make you answer me just one more thing," rushed on the girl, "and then I'm satisfied. You'd forgive me, you say, forgive me anything; but how about the other man, the one who had induced me to run away? Would you forgive him, too?"
Silence, dead silence; but this time the Indian's eyes did not drop.
"You may as well tell me, How. I'm irresponsible to-night and I won't give you any peace until you do. Would you forgive the other man, too?"
Once more for seconds there was a lapse; then slowly the Indian lifted in his place, lifted until he was sitting, lifted until his face stood out clear in the light like the carving of a master.
"Forgive him, Bess?" A pause. "Do you think I am a god?"
That was all, neither an avowal nor a denial; yet no human being looking at the speaker that moment would have pressed the query farther, no human being could have misread the answer. With the same little hysterical, unnatural laugh the girl sank back in her seat. The tense hands went lax.
"I'll be good now, How," she said dully. "One isn't married every day, you know, and it's got on my nerves. I'm finding out a lot of things lately, and that's one of them: that I have nerves. I never supposed before that I possessed them."
Deliberately, without a shade of hesitation or of uncertainty, the man arose. As deliberately he walked over and very, very gently lifted the girl to her feet.
"Bess," he said low, "there's something that's troubling you, something you'd feel better to tell me. Don't you trust me enough to tell me now, girlie?"
Very long they stood so, face to face. For a time the girl did not look up, merely stood there, her fingers locked behind her back, her long lashes all but meeting; then of a sudden, swiftly as the passing shadow of an April cloud, the mood changed, she glanced up.
"I thought I could scare you, How," she joyed softly, "and I have." She smiled straight into his eyes. "I wanted to see how much you cared for me, was all. I've found out. There's absolutely nothing to tell, How, man; absolutely nothing."
For another half minute the man looked at her deeply, silently; but, still smiling, she answered him back, and with a last lingering grip that was a caress his hands dropped.
"I trust you, Bess, completely," he said. "It makes me unhappy to feel that you are unhappy, is all."
"I know, How." Tears were on the long lashes now, tears that came so easily. "I'll try not to be bad again." She touched his sleeve. "I'm very tired now and sleepy. You'll forgive me this once again, won't you?"
"Forgive you!—Bess!" She was in his arms, pressed close to his breast, the presence of her, intense, feminine, intoxicating him, bearing him as the fruit of the poppy to oblivion. "God, girl, if you could only realise how I love you. I can't tell you; I can't say things; but if you could only realise!"
Passionate, throbbing, the girl's face lifted. Her great brown eyes, sparkling wet, glorious, looked into his eyes. Her lips parted.
"Say that again, How," she whispered, "only say that again. Tell me that you love me. Tell me! tell me!"