Over the Pass

by Frederick Palmer

  X

  MARY EXPLAINS

  Dr. Patterson was still asleep when Mary rapped at his door. Havingaroused him to action by calling out that a stranger had been wounded inthe _arroyo_, she did not pause to offer any further details. With hereyes level and dull, she walked rapidly along the main street wherenobody was yet abroad, her one thought to reach her room uninterrupted.As she approached the house she saw her father standing on the porch, hisface beaming with the joy of a serenely-lived moment as he had hismorning look at the Eternal Painter's first display for the day. She hadcrossed the bridge before he became conscious of her presence.

  "Mary! You are up first! Out so early when you went to bed so late!" hegreeted her.

  "I did not sleep well," she explained.

  "What, Mary, you not sleep well!" All the preoccupation with theheavens went from his eyes, which swept her from head to foot. "Mary!Your hand is covered with blood! There is blood on your dress' Whatdoes this mean?"

  She looked down and for the first time saw dark red spots on her skirt.The sight sent a shiver through her, which she mastered before she spoke.

  "Oh, nothing--or a good deal, if you put it in another way. A realsensation for Little Rivers!" she said.

  "But you are not telling!"

  "It is such a remarkable story, father, it ought not to be spoiled bygiving away its plot," she said, with assumed lightness. "I don't feelequal to doing full justice to it until after I've had my bath. I willtell you at breakfast. That's a reason for your waiting for me."

  And she hastened past him into the house.

  "Was it--was it something to do with this Wingfield?" he called excitedlyafter her.

  "Yes, about the fellow of the enormous spurs--Senor Don't Care, asIgnacio calls him," she answered from the stair.

  Some note underneath her nonchalance seemed to disturb, even to distresshim. He entered the house and started through the living-room on his wayto the library. But he paused as if in answer to a call from one of thefour photographs on the wall, Michael Angelo's young David, in thesupple ease of grace. The David which Michael made from an imperfectpiece of marble! The David which sculptors say is ill-proportioned! TheDavid into which, however, the master breathed the thing we call genius,in the bloom of his own youth finding its power, even as David found hisagainst Goliath.

  This David has come out of the unknown, over the hills, with the dew ofmorning freshness on his brow. He is unconscious of self; of everythingexcept that he is unafraid. If all other aspirants have failed in downingthe old champion, why, he will try.

  Now, Jasper Ewold frowned at David as if he were getting no answer to aseries of questions.

  "I must make a change. You have been up a long time, David," hethought; for he had many of these photographs which he kept in aspecial store-room subject to his pleasure in hanging. "Yes, I willhave a Madonna--two Madonnas, perhaps, and a Velasquez and a Rembrandtnext time."

  In the library he set to reading Professor Giuccamini; but he foundhimself disagreeing with the professor.

  "I want your facts which you have dug out of the archives," he said,speaking to the book as if it were alive. "I don't want your opinions.Confound it!" he threw Giuccamini on the table. "I'll make my ownopinions! Nothing else to do out here on the desert. Time enough tochange them as often as I want, too."

  He went into the garden--the garden which, next to Mary, was the mostintimate thing in his affections. Usually, every new leaf that had burstforth over night set itself in the gelatine of his mind like so manyletterpress changes on a printed page to a proof-reader. This time,however, a new palm leaf, a new spray of bougainvillea blossoms, a budon the latest rose setting which he had from Los Angeles, said "Goodmorning," without any response from him.

  He paced back and forth, his hands clasped behind him, his head bowedmoodily, and his shoulders drawn together in a way that made him seemolder and more portly. With each turn he looked sharply, impatiently,toward the door of the house.

  Never had Mary so felt the charm of her room as on this morning; neverhad it seemed so set apart from the world and so personal. It was thebreadth of the ell and the size of her father's library and bedroomcombined. The windows could hardly be called windows in a Northern sense,for there was no glass. It was unnecessary to seal up the source oflight and air in a dry climate, where a blanket at night supplied all theextra warmth one's body ever required. The blinds swung inward and theshades softened the light and added to the privacy which the screen ofthe growing young trees and creeping vines were fast supplying. Here shecould be more utterly alone than on the summit of the pass itself. Shepaused in the doorway, surveying familiar objects in the enjoyed triumphof complete seclusion.

  While she waited for the water to run into the bowl, she looked fixedlyat the stains of a fluid which had been so warm in its touch. It was onlyblood, she told herself. It would wash off, and she held her hands in thewater and saw the spread of the dye through the bowl in a moment ofpreoccupation. Then she scrubbed as vigorously as if she were bent onremoving the skin itself. After she had held up her dripping fingers insatisfied inspection, the spots on her gown caught her eye. For a momentthey, too, held her staring attention; then she slipped out of the gownprecipitately.

  With this, her determined haste was at an end. She was about to enjoy thefeminine luxury of time. The combing of her hair became a delightful andleisurely function in the silky feel of the strands in her fingers andthe refreshing pull at the roots. The flow of the bath water made themusic of pleasurable anticipation, and immersion set the very spirit ofphysical life leaping and tingling in her veins. And all the while shewas thinking of how to fashion a narrative.

  When she started down-stairs she was not only refreshed but remade. Shewas going to breakfast at the usual hour, after the usual processes ofushering herself from the night's rest into the day's activities. Therehad been no stealthy trip out to the _arroyo_; no duel; no wound; noSenor Don't Care. She had only a story which involved all these elements,a most preposterous story, to tell.

  "Now you shall hear all about it!" she called to her father as soon asshe saw him; "the strangest, most absurd, most amusing affair"--she piledup the adjectives--"that has ever occurred in Little Rivers!"

  She began at once, even before she poured his coffee, her voice a triflehigh-pitched with her simulation of humor. And she was exactly veracious,avoiding details, yet missing nothing that gave the facts a pleasanttrail. She told of the meeting with Leddy on the pass and of the arrivalof the gorgeous traveller; of Jack's whistle; of Pete's challenge.

  Jasper Ewold listened with stoical attentiveness. He did not laugh, evenwhen Jack's vagaries were mentioned.

  "Why didn't you tell me last night?" was his first question.

  "To be honest, I was afraid that it would worry you. I was afraid thatyou would not permit me to go to the pass alone again. But you will?" Sheslipped her hand across the table and laid her fingers appealingly on thebroad back of his heavily tanned hand, from which the veins rose inbronze welts. "And he was nice about it in his ridiculous, big-spursfashion. He said that it was all due to the whistle."

  "Go on! Go on! There must be more!" her father insisted impatiently.

  She gave him the pantomime of the store, not as a bit of tragedy--she wascareful about that--but as something witnessed by an impersonalspectator and narrator of stories.

  "He walked right toward a muzzle, this Wingfield?" Jasper asked, hisbrows contracting.

  "Why, yes. I told you at the start it was all most preposterous,"she answered.

  "And he was not afraid of death--this Wingfield!" Jasper repeated.

  He was looking away from her. The contraction of his brows had become ascowl of mystification.

  "Why do you always speak of him as 'this Wingfield,'" she demanded, "asif the town were full of Wingfields and he was a particular one?"

  He looked around quickly, his features working in a kind of confusion.Then he smiled.

  "I was thinking of the
whistle," he explained. "Well, we'll call him thisSir Chaps, this Senor Don't Care, or whatever you please. As for hiswalking into the gun, there is nothing remarkable in that. You draw on aman. You expect him to throw up his hands or reach for his gun. He doesnothing but smile right along the level of the sight into your eyes. Itwas disturbing to Pete's sense of etiquette on such occasions. It threwhim off. There are similar instances in history. A soldier once put amusket at Bonaparte's head. Some of Caesar's legionaries once pressedtheir swords at his breast. Such old hands in human psychology had thepresence of mind to smile. And the history of the West is full ofexamples which have not been recorded. Go on, Mary!"

  "Ignacio says he has a devil in him," she added.

  "That little Indian has a lot of primitive race wisdom. Probably he isright," her father said soberly.

  "It explains what followed," she proceeded.

  She was emphatic about the reason for her part. She went out to the_arroyo_ on behalf of her responsibility for a human life.

  "But why did you not rouse me? Why did you go alone?" he asked.

  "I didn't think--there wasn't time--I was upset and hurried."

  She proceeded in a forced monotone which seemed to allow her hardly asingle full breath.

  "And I am going to kill you!" she repeated, shuddering, at the close ofthe narrative.

  "When he said that did his face change completely? Did it seem like theface of another man? Yes, did it seem as if there were one face thatcould charm and another that could kill?" Jasper's words came slowly andwith a drawn exactness. They formed the inquiry of one who expectedcorroboration of an impression.

  "Yes."

  "You felt it--you felt it very definitely, Mary?"

  "Yes."

  She was living over the moment of Jack's transformation from silk tosteel. The scene in the _arroyo_ became burning clear. Under the strainof the suppression of her own excitement, concentrated in her purpose tomake all the realism of the duel an absurdity, she did not watch keenlyfor the signs of expression by which she usually knew what was passingin her father's mind. But she was not too preoccupied to see that he wasrelieved over her assent that there was a devil in Jack Wingfield, whichstruck her as a puzzle in keeping with all that morning's experience.It added to the inward demoralization which had suddenly dammed herpower of speech.

  "Ignacio saw it, too, so I was interested," Jasper added quickly,in a more natural tone, settling back into his chair. His agitationhad passed.

  So that was it. Her father's dominant, fine old egoism was rejoicing inanother proof of his excellence as a judge of character.

  "Finis! The story is told!" he continued softly.

  All told! And it had been a success. Mary caught her breath in a gay,high-pitched exclamation of realization that she had not to go on withexplanations.

  "Our singular cavalier is safe!" she said. "My debt is paid. I need notworry any further lest someone who did me a favor should suffer for it!"

  "True! true!"

  Jasper's outburst of laughter when he had paused in turning down the wickof the lamp the previous evening had been as a forced blast from thebrasses. Anyone with strong lungs may laugh majestically; but it takesdepth of feeling and years rich with experience to express thegratification that now possessed him. He stretched his hands across thetable to her and the laugh that came then came as a cataract ofspontaneity.

  "Exactly, Mary! The duel provided the way to pay a debt," he said. "Why,it is you who have done our Big Spurs a favor! He has a wound to show tohis friends in the East! I am proud that you could take it all so coollyand reasonably."

  She improved her opportunity while he held her hands.

  "I will go armed next time, and I do know how to shoot, so you won'tworry"--she put it that way, rather than openly ask his consent--"if Iride out to the pass?"

  "Mary, I have every reason to believe that you know how to take care ofyourself," he answered.

  And that very afternoon she rode out to Galeria, starting a littleearlier than usual, returning a little later than usual, injubilant mood.

  "Everything is the same!" she had repeated a dozen times on the road."Everything is the same!" she told herself before she fell asleep;and her sleep was long and sweet, in nature's gratitude for restafter a storm.

  The sunlight breaking through the interstices of the foliage of a poplar,sensitive to a slight breeze, came between the lattices in tremblingpatchwork on the bed, flickering over her face and losing itself in thestrands of her hair.

  "Everything is the same!" she said, when her faculties were cleared ofdrowsiness.

  For the second time she gave intimate, precious thanks for a simple thingthat had never occurred to her as a blessing before: for the seclusionand silence of her room, free from all invasion except of her ownthoughts. The quicker flow of blood that came with awaking, the expandingthrill of physical strength and buoyancy of life renewed, brought with itthe moral courage which morning often brings to flout the compromises ofthe confusion of the evening's weariness. The inspiriting, cool air ofnight electrified by the sun cleared her vision. She saw all the pictureson the slate of yesterday and their message plainly, as something thatcould not be erased by any Buddhistic ritual of reiterated phrase.

  "No, everything is not the same, not even the ride--not yet!" sheadmitted. "But time will make it so--time and a sense of humor, which Ihope I have."