CHAPTER XIV
FATE, THE SATIRIST
Four months drifted by. The will of Colonel William Landor had been read and executed. According to its provisions the home ranch with one-tenth of the herd, divided impartially as they filed past the executor, were left to Mary Landor; in event of her death to descend to "an only nephew, Clayton Craig by name." A second fraction of the great herd, a tenth of the remainder, selected in the same manner, reverted at once "unqualifiedly and with full title to hold or to sell to the aforementioned sole blood relative, Clayton Craig." All of the estate not previously mentioned, the second ranch whereon How Landor had builded, various chattels enumerated, a small sum of money in a city bank, and the balance of the herd, whose number the testator himself could not give with certainty, were willed likewise unqualifiedly to "my adopted daughter, Elizabeth Landor." That was all. A single sheet of greasy note paper, a collection of pedantic antiquated phrases, penned laboriously with the scrawling hand of one unused to writing; but incontrovertible in its laconic directness. Save these three no other names were mentioned. So far as the Indian Ma-wa-cha-sa, commonly called How Landor, was concerned he might never have existed. In a hundred words the labour was complete; and at its end, before the single sheet was covered, sprawling, characteristic, was the last signature of him who at the time was the biggest cattleman west of the river: William Landor of the Buffalo Butte.
Craig himself did not appear, either at the reading or the execution. Instead a dapper city attorney with a sarcastic tongue and an isolated manner was present to conserve his interests; and, satisfied on that score, and ere the supply of Havanas in a beautifully embossed leather case was exhausted, in fact, to quote his own words, "as quickly as a kind Providence would permit," he vanished into the unknown from whence he came. Following, on the next train, came a big-voiced, red-bearded Irishman who proclaimed himself the new foreman and immediately took possession. Simultaneously there disappeared from the scene the Buffalo Butte ranch and the brand by which it had been known; and in its place upon the flank of every live thing controlled, stared forth a C locked to a C (C-C): the heraldry of the new master, Clayton Craig.
Likewise the long-planned wedding journey had taken place and become a memory. Into the silent places they went, this new-made man and wife—and no one was present at the departure to bid them adieu. Back from the land of nothingness they came—and again no one was at hand to welcome their return. In but one respect did the accomplishment of that plan alter from the prearranged; and that one item was the consideration of time. They did not stay away until winter, as the girl had announced. Starting in November, they did not complete the month. Nor did they stay for more than a day in any one spot. Like the curse of the Wandering Jew, a newborn restlessness in the girl kept calling "On, on." Battle against it as she might, she was powerless under its dominance. She knew not from whence had come the change, nor why; but that in the last weeks she had altered fundamentally, unbelievably, she could not question. The very first night out, ere they had slept, she had begun to talk of change on the morrow. The next day it was the same—and the next. When they were moving the morbid restlessness gradually wore away; for the time being she became her old careless-happy self; and in sympathy her companion opened as a flower to the sun. Then would come a pause; and the morbid, dogging spirit of unrest would close upon her anew. Thus day by day passed until a week had gone by. Then one morning when camp was struck, instead of advancing farther, the man had faced back the way they had come. He made no comment, nor did she. Neither then nor in days that followed did he once allude to the reason that had caused the change of plan. When the girl was gay, he was gay likewise. When she lapsed listlessly into the slough of silence and despond, he went on precisely as though unconscious of a change. His acting, for acting it was, even the girl could not but realise at that time, was masterly. What he was thinking no human being ever knew, no human being could ever know; for he never gave the semblance of a hint. Probably not sinc e man and woman began under the sanction of law and of clergy to mate, had there been such a honeymoon. Probably never will there be such another. That the whole expedition was a piteous, dreary failure neither could have doubted ere the first week dragged by. That the marriage journey which it ushered in was to be a failure likewise, neither could have questioned, ere the second week, which brought them home, had passed. The Garden of Eden was there, there as certainly in its frost-brown sun-blessed perfection as though spread luxuriously within the tropics. Adam was there, Adam prepared to accept it as normally content as the first man; but Eve was not satisfied. Within the garden the serpent had shown his face and tempted her. For very, very long she would not admit the fact even to herself, deluded herself by the belief that this newborn discontent was but temporary; yet bald, unaltering as the prairie itself, the truth stood forth. Thus they went, and thus they returned. Thus again thereafter the days went monotonously by.
One bright spot, and one alone, appeared on their firmament; and that was the opening of the new house. This was to be a surprise, a climax boyishly reserved by its builder for their return. The man had intentionally so arranged that the start should be from the old ranch, and in consequence the girl had never seen either the new or its furnishings, until the November day when the overloaded surrey drew up in the dooryard, and the journey was complete. Pathetic, indescribable, in the light of the past, in the memory of the solitary hours that frontier nest represented, the moment must have been to the man when he led the way to the entrance and turned the key. Yet he smiled as he threw open the door; and, standing there, ere she entered, he kissed her.
"It isn't much, but it was mine, Bess, and now it's yours," he said, and, her hand in his, he crossed the threshold.
A moment the girl stood staring around her. Crude as everything was, and cheap in aggregate, it spoke a testimony that was overwhelming. Never before, not even that first night they had been alone, had the girl realised as at this moment what she meant to this solitary, impassive human. Never before until these mute things he had fashioned with his own hands stood before her eyes did she realise fully his love. With the knowledge now came a flood of repentance and of appreciation. Her arms flew about his neck. Her wet face was hid.
"How you love me, man," she voiced. "How you love me!"
"Yes, Bess," said the other simply; and that was all.
For that day, and the next, and the next, the mood lasted, an awakening the girl began to fancy permanent; then inevitably came the reaction. The man took up his duties where he had laid them down: the supervision of a herd scattered of necessity to the winds, the personal inspection of a range that stretched away for miles. Soon after daylight, his lunch for the day packed in the pouch he slung over his shoulder, he left astride the mouse-coloured, saddleless broncho; not to return until dark or later, tired and hungry, but ever smiling at the home-coming, ever considerate. Thus the third night he returned to find the house dark and the fire in the soft coal stove dead; to find this and the girl stretched listless on the bed against the wall, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.
"I was tired and resting, How," she had explained penitently, and gone about the task of preparing supper; but the man was not deceived, and that moment, if not before, he recognised the inevitable.
Yet even then he made no comment, nor altered in the minutest detail his manner. If ever a human being played the game, it was How Landor. With a blindness that was masterly, that was all but fatuous, he ignored the obvious. His equanimity and patience were invulnerable. Silent by nature, he grew fairly loquacious in an effort to be companionable. Probably no white man alive would have done as he did, would have borne what he did; perhaps it would have been better had he done differently;
but he was as he was. Day after day he endured the galling starched linen and unaccustomed clothing, making long journeys to the distant town to keep his wardrobe clean and replenished. Day after day he polished his boots and struggled with his cravat. Puerile unqualifiedly an observer would have characterised this repeated farce; but to one who knew the tale in its entirety, it would have seemed very far from humorous. All but sacrilege, it is to tell of this starved human's doing at this time. The sublime and the ridiculous ever elbow so closely in this life and jostled so continuously in those stormy hours of How Landor's chastening. Suffice it to repeat that every second through it all he played the game; played it with a smiling face, and the ghost of a jest ever trembling on his lips. Played it from the moment he entered his house until the moment he daily disappeared, astride the vixenish undersized cayuse. Then when he was alone, when there were no human eyes to observe, to pity perchance, then—But let it pass what he did then. It is another tale and extraneous.
Thus drifted by the late fall and early winter. Bit by bit the days grew shorter; and then as a pendulum vibrates, lengthened shade by shade. No human being came their way, nor wild thing, save roving murderers on pillage bent. Even the cowmen he employed, the old hands he and Bess had both known for years, avoided him obviously, stubbornly. After the execution of the will he had built them another ranch house at a distance on the range, and there they congregated and clung. They accepted his money and obeyed his orders unquestioningly; but further than that—they were white and he was red. Howard, the one man with whom he had been friendly, had grown restless and drifted on—whither no one knew. Save for the Irish overseer and one other cowboy, the old Buffalo Butte ranch was deserted. Locally, there neither was nor had been any outward manifestation of hostility, nor even gossip. But the olden times when the hospitable ranch house of Colonel William Landor was the meeting point of ranchers within a radius of fifty miles were gone. They did not persecute the new master or his white wife; they did a subtler, crueller thing: they ignored them. To the Indian's face, when by infrequent chance they met, they were affable, obliging. His reputation had spread too far for them to appear otherwise; but, again, they were white and he was red—and between them the chasm yawned.
Thus passed the months. Winter, dead and relentless, held its sway. It was a normal winter; but ever in this unprotected land the period was one of inevitable decimation, of a weeding out of the unfit. Here and there upon the range, dark against the now background of universal white, stared forth the carcass of a weakling. Over it for a few nights the coyotes and grey wolves howled and fought; then would come a fresh layer of white, and the spot where it had been would merge once more into the universal colour scheme. Even the prairie chickens vanished, migrated to southern lands where corn was king. No more at daylight or at dusk could one hear the whistle of their passing wings, or the booming of their rallying call. Magnificent in any season, this impression of the wild was even more pronounced now. The thought of God is synonymous with immensity; and so being, Deity was here eternally manifest, ubiquitous. The human mind could not conceive a more infinite bigness than this gleaming frost-bound waste stretched to the horizon beneath the blazing winter sun. Magnificent it was beyond the power of words to describe; but lonely, lonely. Within the tiny cottage, the girl, Bess, drew the curtains tight over the single window and for days at a time did not glance without.
Then at last, for to all things there is an end, came spring. Long before it arrived the Indian knew it was coming, read incontestably its advance signs. No longer, as the mouse-coloured cayuse bore him over the range, was there the mellow crunch of snow underfoot. Instead the sound was crisp and sharp: the crackling of ice where the snow had melted and frozen again. Distinct upon the record of the bleak prairie page appeared another sign infallible. Here and there, singly and en masse, wherever the herds had grazed, appeared oblong brown blots the size of an animal's body. The cattle were becoming weak under the influence of prolonged winter, and lay down frequently to rest, their warm bodies branding the evidence with melted snow. The jack rabbits, ubiquitous on the ranges, that sprang daily almost from beneath the pony's feet, were changing their winter's dress, were becoming darker; almost as though soiled by a muddy hand. Here and there on the high places the sparkling white was giving way to a dull, lustreless brown. Gradually, day by day, as though they were a pestilence, they expanded, augmented until they, and not the white, became the dominant tone. The sun was high in the sky now. At noontime the man's shadow was short, scarcely extended back of his pony's feet. Mid-afternoons, in the low places when he passed through, there was a spattering of snow water collected in tiny puddles. After that there was no need of signs. Realities were everywhere. Dips in the rolling land, mere dry runs save at this season, became creeks; flushed to their capacity and beyond, sang softly all the day long. Not only the high spots, but even the north slopes lost their white blankets, surrendered to the conquering brown. Migratory life, long absent, returned to its own. Prairie kites soared far overhead on motionless wings. Meadow larks, cheeriest of heralds, practised their five-toned lay. Here and there, to the north of prairie boulders, appeared tufts of green; tufts that, like the preceding brown, grew and gr ew and grew until they dominated the whole landscape. Then at last, the climax, the finale of the play, came life, animal and vegetable, with a rush. Again at daylight and at dusk swarms of black dots on whistling wings floated here and there, descended to earth; and, following, indefinite as to location, weird, lonely, boomed forth in their mating songs. Transient, shallow, miniature lakes swarmed with their new-come denizens. Last of all, final assurance of a new season's advent, by day and by night, swelling, diminishing, unfailingly musical as distant chiming bells, came the sound of all most typical of prairie and of spring. From high overhead in the blue it came, often so high that the eye could not distinguish its makers; yet alway distinctive, alway hauntingly mysterious. "Honk! honk! honk!" sounded and echoed and re-echoed that heraldry over the awakened land. "Honk! honk! honk!" it repeated; and listening humans smiled and commented unnecessarily each to the other: "Spring is not coming. It is here."
CHAPTER XV
THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
A shaggy grey wolf, a baby no longer but practically full grown, swung slowly along the beaten trail connecting the house and the barn as the stranger appeared. He did not run, he did not glance behind, he made no sound. With almost human dignity he vacated the premises to the newcomer. Not until he reached his destination, the ill-lighted stable, did curiosity get the better of prudence; then, safe within the doorway, he wheeled about, and with forelegs wide apart stood staring out, his long, sensitive nose taking minutest testimony.
The newcomer, a well-proportioned, smooth-faced man in approved riding togs, halted likewise and returned the look; equally minutely, equally suspiciously. The horse he rode was one of a kind seldom seen on the ranges: a thoroughbred with slender legs and sensitive ears. The rider sat his saddle well; remarkably well for one obviously from another life. Both the horse and man were immaculately groomed. At a distance they made a pleasant picture, one fulfilling adequately the adjective "smart." Not until an observer was near, very near, could the looseness of the skin beneath the man's eyelids, incongruous with his general youth, and the abnormal nervous twitching of a muscle here and there, have been noted. For perhaps a minute he sat so, taking in every detail of the commonplace surroundings. Then, apparently satisfied, he dismounted and, tying the animal to the wheel of an old surrey drawn up in the yard, he approached the single entrance of the house and rapped.
To the doorway came Elizabeth Landor; her sleeves rolled to the elbow, a frilled apron that reached to the chin protecting a plain gingham gown. A moment they looked at each other; then the man's riding cap came off with a sweep and he held out his hand.
"Bess!" he said intimately; and for another moment that was all. Then he looked her fair between the eyes. "I came to see your husband," he exclaimed. "Is he at home?"
The girl showed no surprise, ignored the out-stretched hand.
"I was expecting you," she said. "How told me last night that you had returned."
A shade of colour stole into the man's blonde cheeks and his hand dropped; but his eyes held their place. "Yes. I only came yesterday," he returned. "I've a little business to talk over with How. That's why I'm here this morning. Is he about?"
Just perceptibly the girl smiled; but she made no answer.
"Don't you wish to be friends, Bess?" persisted the man. "Aren't we to be even neighbourly?"
"Neighbourly, certainly. I have no desire to be otherwise."
"Why don't you answer me, then?" The red shading was becoming positive now, telltale. "Tell me why, please."
"Answer?" The girl rolled down one sleeve deliberately. "Answer?" She undid its mate. "Do you really fancy, cousin by courtesy, that after I've lived the last four months I'm still such a child as that? Do you really wish me to answer, Neighbour Craig,"
For the first time the man's eyes dropped. Some silver coins in his trousers pocket jingled as he fingered them nervously. Then again he looked up.
"I beg your pardon, Bess," he said. "I saw your husband leave an hour ago. I knew he wasn't here." He looked her straight. "It was you I came to see. May I stay?"
Again the girl ignored the question.
"You admit then," she smiled, "that if How were here you wouldn't have come, that nothing you know of could have made you come? Let's understand each other in the beginning. You admit this?"
"Yes," steadily, "I admit it. May I stay?"
The smile left the girl's lips. She looked him fair in the eyes; silently, deliberately, with an intensity the other could not fathom, could not even vaguely comprehend. Then as deliberately she released him, looked away.
"Yes, you may stay," she consented, "if you wish."
"If I wish!" Craig looked at her meaningly; then with an obvious effort he checked himself "Thank you," he completed repressedly.
This time the girl did not smile. "Don't you realise yet that sort of thing is useless?" she queried unemotionally.
It was the man this time who was silent.
"If you wish to stay," went on the girl monotonously, "do so; but for once and all do away with acting. We're neither of us good, we're both living a lie; but at least we understand each other. Let's not waste energy in pretending—when there's no one to be deceived."
Just for a second the man stiffened. The histrionic was too much a part of his life to shake off instantly. Then he laughed.
"All right, Bess. I owe you another apology, I suppose. Anyway be it so. And now, that I'm to stay—" A meaning glance through the open door. "You were working, weren't you?"
"Yes."
"Go ahead, then, and I'll find something to sit on and watch. You remember another morning once before, don't you—a morning before you grew up—"
"Perfectly."
"We'll fancy we're back there again, then. Come."
"I am quite deficient in imagination."
"At least, though, dishes must be washed."
"Not necessarily—this moment at least. They have waited before."
"But, Bess, on the square, I don't wish to intrude or interfere."
"You're not interfering. I've merely chosen to rest a bit and enjoy the sun." She indicated the step. "Won't you be seated? They're clean, I know. I scrubbed them this very morning myself."
The man hesitated. Then he sat down.
"Bess," he said, "you've been pretty frank with me and I'm going to return the privilege. I don't understand you a bit—the way you are now. You've changed terribly."
"Changed? On the contrary I'm very normal. I've been precisely as I am this moment for—a lifetime."
"For—how long, Bess?"
"A lifetime, I think."
"For four months, you mean."
"Perhaps—it's all the same."
"Since you did a foolish thing?"
"I have done many such."
"Since the last, I mean."
"No." Just perceptibly the lids over the brown eyes tightened. "The last was when I asked you to sit down. I have not changed in the smallest possible manner since then."
The man inspected his boots.
"Aren't you, too, going to be seated?" he suggested at length.
"Yes, certainly. To tell the truth I thought I was." She took a place beside him. "I had forgotten."
They sat so, the man observing her narrowly, in real perplexity.
"Bess," he initiated baldly at last, "you're unhappy."
"I have not denied it," evenly.
The visitor caught his breath. He thought he was prepared for anything; but he was finding his mistake.
"This life you've—selected, is wearing on you," he added. "Frankly, I hardly recognise you, you used to be so careless and happy."
"Frankly," echoed the girl, "you, too, have altered, cousin mine. You're dissipating. Even here one grows to recognise the signs."
The man flushed. It is far easier in this world to give frank criticism than to receive it.
"I won't endeavour to justify myself, Bess," he said intimately, "nor attempt to deny it. There is a reason, however."
"I've noticed," commented his companion, "that there usually is an explanation for everything we do in this life."
"Yes. And in this instance you are the reason, Bess."
"Thank you." A pause. "I suppose I should take that as a compliment."
"You may if you wish. Leastways it's the truth."
The girl locked her fingers over her knees and leaned back against the lintel of the door. She looked very young that moment—and very old.
"And your reason?" persisted the man. "You know now my explanation for being—as I am. What is yours?"
"Do you wish a compliment, also, Clayton Craig?"
"I wish to know the reason."
"Unfortunately you know it already. Otherwise you would not be here."
"You mean it is this lonely life, this man of another race you have married?"
"No. I mean the thing that led me away from this life, and—the man you have named."
"I don't believe I understand, Bess."
"You ought to. You drank me dry once, every drop of confidence I possessed, for two weeks."
"You mean I myself am the cause," said the man low.
"I repeat you have the compliment—if you consider it such."
Again there was silence. Within the stable door, during all the time, the grey wolf had not stirred. He was observing them now, steadily, immovably. Though it was bright sunlight without, against the background of the dark interior his eyes shone as though they were afire.
"Honestly, Bess," said the man, low as before, "I'm sorry if I have made you unhappy."
"I thought we had decided to be truthful for once," answered a voice.
"You're unjust, horribly unjust!"
"No. I merely understand you—now. You're not sorry, because otherwise you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't dare to be here—even though my husband were away."
Again instinctively the man's face reddened. It was decidedly a novelty in his life to be treated as he was being treated this day. Ordinarily glib of speech, for some reason in the face of this newfound emotionless characterisation, he had nothing to say. It is difficult to appear what one is not in the blaze of one's own fireside. It was impossible under the scrutiny of this wide-eyed girl, with the recollection of events gone by.
"All right, Bess," he admitted at last, with an effort, "we've got other things more interesting than myself to discuss anyway." He looked at her openly, significantly. "Your own self, for instance."
"Yes?"
"I'm listening. Tell me everything."
"You really fancy I will after—the past?"
"Yes."
"And why, please?"
"You've already told me why."
"That's right," meditatively. "I'd forgotten. We were going to be ourselves, our natural worst selves, to-day."
"I'm still listening."
"You're patient. What do you most wish to know?"
"Most? The thing most essential, of course. Do you love your husband? You're unhappy, I know. Is that the reason?"
The girl looked out, out over the prairies, meditatively, impassively. Far in the distance, indistinguishable to an untrained eye, a black dot stood out above the horizon line. Her eyes paused upon it.
"You'll never tell anyone if I answer?" she asked suddenly.
"Never, Bess."
"You swear it?"
"I swear."
Just perceptibly the girl's lips twitched.
"Thanks. I merely wished to find out if you would still perjure yourself. To answer your question, I really don't know."
"Bess!" The man was upon his feet, his face twitching. "I'll stand a lot from you, but there's a limit—"
"Sit down, please," evenly. "It's wasted absolutely. There's not a soul but myself to see; and I'm not looking. Please be seated."
From his height the man looked down at her; at first angrily, resentfully—then with an expression wherein surprise and unbelief were mingled. He sat down.
The girl's eyes left the dot on the horizon, moved on and on.
"As I was saying," she continued, "I don't know. I'd give my soul, if I have one, to know; but I have no one with whom to make the exchange, no one who can give me light. Does that answer your question?"
Her companion stared at her, and forgot himself.
"Yes, it answers the now. But why did you marry him?"
"You really wish to know?" Again the lips were twitching.
"Yes."
"You're very hungry for compliments. You yourself are why."
No answer, only silence.
"You've seen a coursing, haven't you?" wandered on the girl. "A little tired rabbit with a great mongrel pack in pursuit? You're not plural, but nevertheless you personified that pack. You and the unknown things you represented were pressing me close. I was confused and afraid. I was a babe four months ago. I was not afraid of How, I had loved him—at least I thought I had, I'm sure of nothing now—and, as I say, I was afraid of you—then."
"And now—"
Just for a second the girl glanced at the questioner, then she looked away.
"I'm not in the least afraid of you now—or of anything."
"Not even of your husband?"
"No," unemotionally. "I leave that to you."
Again the man's face twitched, but he was silent.
"I said afraid of nothing," retracted the girl swiftly. "I made a mistake." Of a sudden her face grew old and tense. "I am afraid of something; horribly afraid. I'm as afraid, as you are of death, of this infinite eventless monotony." She bit her lip deep, unconsciously. "I sometimes think the old fear of everything were preferable, were the lesser of the two evils."
Just perceptibly the figure of the man grew alert. The loose skin under his eyes drew tight as the lids partially closed.
"You've been a bit slow about it, Bess," he said, "but I think you've gotten down to realities at last." He likewise looked away; but unseeingly. The mind of Clayton Craig was not on the landscape that spring morning. "I even fancy that at last you realise what a mess you've made of your life."
The girl showed no resentment, no surprise.
"Yes, I think I do," she said.
"You are perhaps even prepared to admit that I wasn't such a brute after all in attempting to prevent your doing as you did."
"No," monotonously. "You could have prevented it if you hadn't been a brute."
Again the man looked at her, unconscious of self.
"You mean that you did really and truly care for me, then, Bess? Cared for me myself?"
"Yes."
"And that I frightened you back here?"
"Yes."
Unconsciously the man swallowed. His throat was very dry.
"And now that you're no longer afraid of me, how about it now?"
The girl looked away in silence.
"Tell me, Bess," pleaded the man, "tell me!"
"I can't tell you. I don't know."
"Don't know?"
"No. I don't seem to be sure of anything now-a-days—anything except that I'm afraid."
"Of the future?"
"Yes—and of myself."
For once at least in his life Clayton Craig was wise. He said nothing. A long silence fell between them. It was the girl herself who broke it.
"I sometimes think a part of me is dead," she said slowly, and the voice was very weary. "I think it was buried in Boston with Uncle Landor."
"Was I to blame, Bess?"
"Yes. You were the grave digger. You covered it up."
"Then I'm the one to bring it to life again."
The girl said nothing.
"You admit," pressed Craig, "that I'm the only person who can restore the thing you have lost, the thing whose lack is making you unhappy?"
"Yes. I admit it."
The man took a deep breath, as one arousing from reverie.
"Won't you let me give it you again, Bess?" he asked low.
"You won't do it," listlessly. "You could, but you won't. You're too selfish."
"Bess!" The man's hand was upon her arm.
"Don't do that, please," said the girl quietly.
The man's face twitched; but he obeyed.
"You're maddening, Bess," he flamed. "Positively maddening!"
"Perhaps," evenly. "I warned you that if you stayed we'd be ourselves to-day. I merely told you things as they are."
Craig opened his lips to speak; but closed them again in silence. One of his hands, long fingered, white as a woman's, lay in his lap. Against his will now and then a muscle contracted nervously; and of a sudden he thrust the telltale member deep into his trousers pocket.
"But the future, Bess," he challenged, "your future. You can't go on this way indefinitely. What are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
"Haven't you ever thought of it?"
"It seems to me I've thought of nothing else—for an age."
"And you've decided nothing?"
"Absolutely nothing."
Again the man drew a long breath; but even thereafter his voice trembled.
"Let me decide for you then, Bess," he said.
"You?" The girl inspected him slowly through level eyes. "By what right should you be permitted to decide?"
The man returned her look. Of a sudden he had become calm. His eyes were steady. Deep down in his consciousness he realised that he would win, that the moment was his moment.
"The right is mine because I love you, Bess Landor," he said simply.
"Love me, after what you have done?"
"Yes. I have been mad—and done mad things. But I've discovered my fault. That's why I've come back; to tell you so—and to make amends."
Intensely, desperately intensely, the girl continued her look; but the man was master of himself now, sure of himself, so sure that he voiced a challenge.
"And you, Bess Landor, love me. In spite of the fact that you ran away, in spite of the fact that you are married, you love me!"
Into the girl's brown face there crept a trace of colour; her lips parted, but she said no word.
"You can't deny it," exulted the man. "You can't—because it is true."
A moment longer they sat so, motionless; then for a second time that day Clayton Craig did a wise thing, inspiration wise. While yet he was master of the situation, while yet the time was his, he arose.
"I'm going now, Bess," he said, "but I'll come again." He looked at her deeply, meaningly. "I've said all there is to say, for I've told you that I love you. Good-bye for now, and remember this: If I've stolen your happiness, I'll give it all back. As God is my witness, I'll give it all back with interest." Swiftly, before she could answer, he turned away and strode toward the impatient thoroughbred. Equally swiftly he undid the tie strap and mounted. Without another word, or a backward glance, he rode away; the galloping hoofs of his mount muffled in the damp spring earth.
Equally silent, the girl sat looking after him. She did not move. She did not make a sound. Not until the horse turned in at the C-C ranch house, until the buildings hid the owner from view, did her eyes leave him. Then, as if compelled by an instinct, she looked away over the prairie, away where the last time she had glanced a tiny black dot stood out against the intense blue sky. But look as she might she could not find it. It was there no more. It had been for long; but now was not. Clean as though drawn by a crayon on a freshly washed blackboard, the unbroken horizon line stretched out in a great circle before her eyes. With no watcher save the grey wolf staring forth from the stable doorway, she was alone with her thoughts.
CHAPTER XVI
THE RECKONING
It was later than usual when How Landor returned that evening, and as he came up the path that led from the stable, he shuffled his feet as one unconsciously will when very weary. He was wearing his ready-made clothes and starched collar; but the trousers were deplorably baggy at the knees from much riding, and his linen and polished shoes were soiled with the dust of the prairie.
Supper was waiting for him, a supper hot and carefully prepared. Serving it was a young woman he had not seen for long, a young woman minus the
slightest trace of listlessness, with a dash of red ribbon at belt and throat, and a reflection of the same colour burning on either cheek. A young woman, moreover, who anticipated his slightest wish, who took his hat and fetched his moccasins, and when the meal was over brought the buffalo robes and stretched them carefully on the gently sloping terrace just outside the ranch house door. Meanwhile she chatted bubblingly, continuously; with a suggestion of the light-hearted gaiety of a year before. To one less intimately acquainted with her than the man, her companion, she would have seemed again her old girlish self, returned, unchanged; but to him who knew her as himself there was now and then a note that rang false, a hint of suppressed excitement in the unwonted colour, an abnormal energy bordering on the feverish in her every motion. Not in the least deceived was this impassive, all-observing human, not in the least in doubt as to the cause of the transformation: yet through it all he gave no intimation of consciousness of the unusual, through it all he smiled, and smiled and smiled again. Never was there a more appreciative diner than he, never a more attentive, sympathetic listener. He said but little; but that was not remarkable. He had never done so except when she had not. When he looked at her there was an intensity that was almost uncanny in his gaze; but that also was not unusual. There was ever a mystery in the depths of his steady black eyes. Never more himself, never outwardly more unsuspicious was the man than on this occasion; even when, the meal complete, the girl had led him hand in hand out of doors, out into the soft spring night, out under the stars where she had stretched the two robes intimately close.
Thus, side by side, but not touching, they lay there, the soft south breeze fanning their faces, whispering wordless secrets in their ears; about them the friendly enveloping darkness, in their nostrils the subtle, indescribable fragrance of awakening earth and of growing things. But not even then could the girl be still. Far too full of this day's revelation and of anticipation of things to come was she to be silent. The mood of her merely changed. The chatter, heretofore aimless, ceased. In its place came a definite intent, a motive that prompted a definite question. She was lying stretched out like a child, her crossed arms pillowing her head, her eyes looking up into the great unknown, when she gave it voice. Even when she had done so, she did not alter her position. "I wonder," she said, "whether if one has made a mistake, it were better to go on without acknowledging it, living a lie and dying so, or to admit it and make another, who is innocent, instead of one's self, pay the penalty?" She paused for breath after the long sentence. "What do you think, How?"
In the semi-darkness the man looked at her. Against the lighter sky her face stood out distinct, clear-cut as a silhouette.
"I do not think it ever right to live a lie, Bess," he answered.
"Not even to keep another, who is innocent, from suffering?"
"No," quickly, "not even to keep another from suffering."
The girl shifted restlessly, repressedly.
"But supposing one's acknowledging the lie and living the truth makes one, according to the world, bad. Would that make any difference, How?"
The Indian did not stir, merely lay there looking at her with his steady eyes.
"There are some things one has to decide for one's self," he said. "I think this is one of them."
Again the arms beneath the girl's head shifted unconsciously.
"Others judge us after we do decide, though," she objected.
"What they think doesn't count. We're good or bad, as we're honest with ourselves or not."
"You think that, really?"
"I know it, Bess. There's no room for doubt."
Silence fell, and in it the girl's mind wandered on and on. At last, abrupt as before, abstractedly as before, came a new thought, a new query.
"Is happiness, after all, the chief end of life, How?" she questioned.
"Happiness, Bess?" He halted. "Happiness?" repeated; but there was no irony in the voice, only, had the girl noticed, a terrible mute pain. "How should I know what is best in life, I, who have never known life at all?"
Blind in her own abstraction, the girl had not read beneath the words themselves, did not notice the thinly veiled inference.
"But you must have an idea," she pressed. "Tell me."
This time the answer was not concealed. It stood forth glaring, where the running might read.
"Yes, I have an idea—and more," he said. "Happiness, your happiness, has always been the first thing in my life."
Again silence walled them in, a longer silence than before. Step by step, gropingly, the girl was advancing on her journey. Step by step she was drawing away from her companion; yet though, wide-eyed, he watched her every motion, felt the distance separating grow wider and wider, he made no move to prevent, threw no obstacle in her path. Deliberately from his grip, from beneath his very eyes, fate, the relentless, was filching his one ewe lamb; yet he gave no sign of the knowledge, spoke no word of unkindness or of hate. Nature, the all-observing, could not but have admired her child that night.
One more advance the girl made; and that was the last. Before she had walked gropingly, as though uncertain of her pathway. Now there was no hesitation. The move was deliberate; even certain.
"I know you'll think I'm foolish, How," she began swiftly, "but I haven't much to think about, and so little things appeal to me." She paused and again her folded arms reversed beneath her head. "I've been watching 'Shaggy,' the wolf here, since he grew up; watched him become restless week by week. Last night,—you didn't notice, but I did,—I heard another wolf call away out on the prairie, and I got up to see what Shaggy would do. Somehow I seemed to understand how he'd feel, and I came out here, out where we are now, and looked down toward the barn. It was moonlight last night, and I could see everything clearly, almost as clearly as day. There hadn't been a sound while I was getting up; but all at once as I stood watching the call was repeated from somewhere away off in the distance. Before, Shaggy hadn't stirred. He was standing there, where you had chained him, just outside the door; but when that second call came, it was too much. He started to go, did go as far as he could; then the collar choked him and he realised where he was. He didn't make a sound, he didn't fight or rebel against something he couldn't help; but the way he looked, there in the moonlight, with the chain stretched across his back—" She halted abruptly, of a sudden sat up. "I know it's childish, but promise me, How, you'll let him go," she pleaded. "He's wild, and the wild was calling to him. Please promise me you'll let him go!"
Not even then did the man stir or his eyes leave her face.
"Did I ever tell you, Bess," he asked, "that it was to save Shaggy's life I brought him here? Sam Howard dug his mother out of her den and shot her, and was going to kill the cub, too, when I found him."
"No." A hesitating pause. "But anyway," swiftly, "that doesn't make any difference. He's wild, and it's a prison to him here."
Deliberately, ignoring the refutation, the man went on with the argument.
"Again, if Shaggy returns," he said, "the chances are he won't live through a year. The first cowboy who gets near enough will shoot him on sight."
"He'll have to take his chance of that, How," countered the girl. "We all have to take our chances in this life."
For the second time the Indian ignored the interruption.
"Last of all, he's a murderer, Bess. If he were free he'd kill the first animal weaker than himself he met. Have you thought of that?"
The girl looked away into the infinite abstractedly.
"Yes. But again that makes no difference. Neither you nor I made him as he is, nor Shaggy himself. He's as God meant him to be; and if he's bad, God alone is to blame." Her glance returned, met the other fair. "I wish you'd let him go, How."
The man made no answer.
"Won't you promise me you'll let him go?"
"You really wish it, Bess?"
"Yes, very much."
Still for another moment the man made no move; then of a sudden he arose.
"Come, Bess," he said.
Wondering, the girl got to her feet; wondering still more, followed his lead down the path to the stable. At the door the Indian whistled. But there was no response, no shaggy grey answering shadow. A lantern hung from a nail near at hand. In silence the man lit it and again led the way within. The mouse-coloured broncho and its darker mate were asleep, but at the interruption they awoke and looked about curiously. Otherwise there was no move. Look where one would within the building, there was no sign of another live thing. Still in silence the Indian led the way outside, made the circuit of the stable, paused at the south end where a chain hung loose from a peg driven into the wall. A moment he stood there, holding the light so the girl could see; then, impassive as before, he extinguished the blaze and returned the lantern to its place.
They were half way back to the house before the girl spoke; then, detainingly, she laid her hand upon his arm.
"You mean you've let him go already, How?" she asked.
"Yes. I didn't fasten him this evening."
They walked on so.
"You wanted him to go?"
No answer.
"Tell me, How, did you want him to leave?"
"No, Bess."
Again they advanced, until they reached the house door.
"Why did you let him go, then?" asked the girl tensely.
For the second time there was no answer.
"Tell me, How," she repeated insistently.
"I heard you get up last night, Bess," said a voice. "I thought I—understood."
For long they stood there, the girl's hand on the man's arm, but neither stirring; then with a sound perilously near a sob, the hand dropped.
"I think I'll go to bed now, How," she said.
Deliberately, instinctively, the man's arms folded across his chest. That was all.
The girl mounted the single step, paused in the doorway.
"Aren't you coming, too, How?" she queried.
"No, Bess."
A sudden suspicion came to the girl, a sudden terror.
"You aren't angry with me, are you?" she trembled.
"No, Bess," repeated.
"But still you're not coming?"
"No."
Swift as a lightning flash suspicion became certainty.
"You mean you're not going to come with me to-night?" She scarcely recognised her own voice. "You're never going to be with me again?"
"Never?" A long, long pause. "God alone knows about that, Bess." A second halt. "Not until things between us are different, at least."
"How!" Blindly, weakly, the girl threw out her hand, grasped the casing of the door. "Oh, How! How!"
No answer, not the twitching of a muscle, nor the whisper of a breath; just that dread, motionless silence. A moment the girl stood it, hoping against hope, praying for a miracle; then she could stand it no longer. Gropingly clutching at every object within reach, she made her way into the dark interior; flung herself full dressed onto the bed, her face buried desperately among the covers.
All the night which followed a sentinel paced back and forth in front of the ranch house door; back and forth like an automaton, back and forth in a motion that seemed perpetual. Within the tiny low-ceiled room, in the fulness of time, the girl sobbed herself into a fitful sleep; but not once did the sentinel pause to rest, not once in those dragging hours before day did he relax. With the coming of the first trace of light he halted, and on silent moccasined feet stole within. But again he only remained for moments, and when he returned it was merely to stride away to the stable. Within the space of minutes, before the east had fairly begun to grow red, silently as he did everything, he rode away astride the mouse-coloured cayuse into the darkness to the west.
It was broad day when the girl awoke, and then with a vague sense of depression and of impending evil. The door was open and the bright morning light flooded the room. Beyond the entrance stretched the open prairie: an endless sea of green with a tiny brown island, her own dooryard, in the foreground. With dull listlessness, the girl propped herself up in bed and sat looking about her. Absently, aimlessly, her eyes passed from one familiar object to another. Without any definite conception of why or of where, she was conscious of an impression of change in the material world about her, a change that corresponded to the mental crisis that had so recently taken place. Glad as was the sunshine without this morning, in her it aroused no answering joy. Ubiquitous as was the vivid surrounding life, its message passed her by. Like a haze enveloping, dulling all things, was a haunting memory of the past night and of what it had meant. As a traveller lost in this fog, she lay staring about, indecisive which way to move, idly waiting for light. Ordinarily action itself would have offered a solution of the problem, would have served at least as a diversion; but this morning she was strangely listless, strangely indifferent. There seemed to her no adequate reason for rising, no definite object in doing anything more than she was doing. In conformity she pulled the pillow higher and, lifting herself wearily, dropped her chin into her palm and lay with wide-open eyes staring aimlessly away.
Just how long she remained there so, she did not know. The doorway faced south, and bit by bit the bar of sunlight that had entered therein began moving to the left across the floor. Unconsciously, for the lack of anything better to do, she watched its advance. It fell upon a tiny shelf against the wall, littered with a collection of papers and magazines; and the reflected light from the white sheets glared in her eyes. It came to the supper table of the night before, the table she had not cleared, and like an accusing hand, lay directed at the evidence of her own slothfulness. On it went with the passing time, on and on; crossed a bare spot on the uncarpeted floor, and like a live thing, began climbing the wall beyond.
Deliberately, with a sort of fascination now, the girl watched its advance. Her nerves were on edge this morning, and in its relentless stealth it began to assume an element of the uncanny. Like a hostile alien thing, it seemed searching here and there in the tiny room for something definite, something it did not find. Fatuous as it may seem, the impression grew upon her, augmented until in its own turn it became a dominant influence. Her glance, heretofore absent, perfunctory, became intense. The glare was well above the floor by this time and climbing higher and higher. Answering the mythical challenge, of a sudden she sat up free in bed and, as though at a spoken injunction, looked about her fairly.
The place where she glanced, the point toward which the light was mounting, was beside her own bed and where, from rough-fashioned wooden pegs, hung the Indian's pathetically scant wardrobe. At first glance there seemed to the girl nothing unusual revealed thereon, nothing significant; and, restlessly observant, the inspection advanced. Then, ere the mental picture could vanish, ere a new impression could take its place, in a flash of tardy recollection and of understanding came realisation complete, and her eyes returned. For perhaps a minute thereafter she sat so, her great eyes unconsciously opening wider and wider, her brown skin shading paler second by second. A minute so, a minute of nerve-tense inaction; then with a little gesture of weariness and of abandon absolute, she dropped back in her place, and covered her face from sight.