Over the Pass

by Frederick Palmer

  VI

  OBLIVION IS NOT EASY

  "A smile and a square chin!" Mary repeated, as they went back into theliving-room.

  "Yes, hasn't he both, this Wingfield?" asked her father.

  "This Wingfield"--on the finish of the sentence there was a halting,appreciable accent. He moved toward the table with the listlessness ofsome enormous automaton of a man to whom every step of existence was astep in a treadmill. There was a heavy sadness about his features whichrarely came, and always startled her when it did come with a fear thatthey had so set in gloom that they would never change. He raised his handto the wick screw of the lamp, waiting for her to pass through the roombefore turning off the flame which bathed him in its rays, giving him theeffect of a Rodinesque incarnation of memory.

  Any melancholy that beset him was her own enemy, to be fought andcajoled. Mary slipped to his side, dropping her head on his shoulder andpatting his cheek. But this magic which had so frequently rallied himbrought only a transient, hazy smile and in its company what seemed arandom thought.

  "And you and he came down the pass together? Yes, yes!" he said. His tonehad the vagueness of one drawing in from the sea a net that seemed tohave no end.

  Had Jack Wingfield been more than a symbol? Had he brought somethingmore than an expression of culture, manner, and ease of a past whichnothing could dim? Had he suggested some personal relation to that pastwhich her father preferred to keep unexplained? These questions crowdedinto her mind speculatively. They were seeking a form of conveyance whenshe realized that she had been adrift with imaginings. He was gettingolder. She must expect his preoccupation and his absent-mindedness tobecome more exacting.

  "Yes, yes!" His voice had risen to its customary sonority; his eyes weretwinkling; all the hard lines had become benignant wrinkles of Olympiancharm. "Yes, yes! You and this funny tourist! What a desert it is! Iwonder--now, I wonder if he will go aboard the Pullman in that stagecostume. But come, come, Mary! It's bedtime for all pastoral workers andsubjects of the Eternal Painter. Off you go, or we shall be playingblind-man's-buff in the dark!" He was chuckling as he turned down thewick. "His enormous spurs, and Jag Ear and Wrath of God!" he said.

  Her fancy ran dancing rejoicingly with his mood.

  "Don't forget the name of his pony!" she called merrily from the stairs."It's P.D."

  "P.D.!" said her father, with the disappointment of one tempted by a goodmorsel which he finds tasteless. "There he seems to have descended toalphabetic commonplace. No imagery in that!"

  "He is a slow, reliable pony," put in Mary, "without the Q."

  "Pretty Damn, without the Quick! Oh, I know slang!"

  Jasper Ewold burst into laughter. It was still echoing through the housewhen she entered her room. As it died away it seemed to sound hollow andveiled, when the texture of sunny, transparent solidity in his laugh wasits most pronounced characteristic.

  Probably this, too, was imagination, Mary thought. It had been anoverwrought day, whose events had made inconsiderable things supreme overlogic. She always slept well; she would sleep easily to-night, because itwas so late. But she found herself staring blankly into the darkness andher thoughts ranging in a shuttle play of incoherency from the momentthat Leddy had approached her on the pass till a stranger, whom she neverexpected to see again, walked away into the night. What folly! What follyto keep awake over an incident of desert life! But was it folly? Whatsublime egoism of isolated provincialism to imagine that it had beenanything but a great event! Naturally, quiet, desert nerves must still bequivering after the strain. Inevitably, they would not calm instantly,particularly as she had taken coffee for supper. She was wroth about thecoffee, though she had taken less than usual that evening.

  She heard the clock strike one; she heard it strike two, and three. Andhe, on his part--this Sir Chaps who had come so abruptly into her lifeand evidently set old passions afire in her father's mind--of course hewas sleeping! That was the exasperating phlegm of him. He would sleep onhorseback, riding toward the edge of a precipice!

  "A smile and a square chin--and dreamy vagueness," she kept repeating.

  The details of the scene in the store recurred with a vividness whichcounting a flock of sheep as they went over a stile or any other trickfor outwitting insomnia could not drive from her mind. Then Pete Leddy'sfinal look of defiance and Jack Wingfield's attitude in answer rose outof the pantomime in merciless clearness.

  All the indecisiveness of the interchange of guesses and rehearsedimpressions was gone. She got a message, abruptly and convincingly. Thisincident of the pass was not closed. An ultimatum had been exchanged.Death lay between these two men. Jack had accepted the issue.

  The clock struck four and five. Before it struck again daylight wouldhave come; and before night came again, what? To lie still in the tormentof this new experience of wakefulness with its peculiar, half-recognizedforebodings, had become unbearable. She rose and dressed and went downstairs softly, candle in hand, aware only that every agitated fibre ofher being was whipping her to action which should give some muscularrelief from the strain of her overwrought faculties. She would go intothe garden and walk there, waiting for sunrise. But at the edge of thepath she was arrested by a shadow coming from the servants'sleeping-quarters. It was Ignacio, the little Indian who cared for herhorse, ran errands, and fought garden bugs for her--Ignacio, thenote-bearer.

  "Senorita! senorita!" he exclaimed, and his voice, vibrant with somethingstronger than surprise, had a certain knowing quality, as if heunderstood more than he dared to utter. "Senorita, you rise early!"

  "Sometimes one likes to look at the morning stars," she remarked.

  But there were no stars; only a pale moon, as Ignacio could seefor himself.

  "Senorita, that young man who was here and Pete Leddy--do you know,senorita?"

  "The young man who came down from the pass with me, you mean?" she asked,inwardly shamed at her simulation of casual curiosity.

  "Yes, he and Leddy--bad blood between them'" said Ignacio. "You no know,senorita? They fight at daybreak."

  The pantomime in the store, Jack's form disappearing with its easy stepinto the night, analyzed in the light of this news became the naturalclimax of a series of events all under the spell of fatality.

  "Come, Ignacio!" she said. "We must hurry!" And she started around thehouse toward the street.