Over the Pass

by Frederick Palmer

  XIII

  A JOURNEY ON CRUTCHES

  The sun became benign in its afternoon slant. Little Rivers was beginningto move after its siesta, with the stretching of muscles that would growmore vigorous as evening approached and freshened life came into the airwith the sprinkle of sunset brilliance.

  To Jack the hour palpably brought a reminder of the misery of the momentwhen a thing long postponed must at last be performed. The softness ofspeculative fancy faded from his face. His lips tightened in a way thatseemed to bring his chin into prominence in mastery of his being. As hecalled Firio, his voice unusually high-pitched, he did not look out atP.D. and Wrath of God and Jag Ear.

  Firio came with the eagerness of one who is restless for action. Heleaned on the windowsill, his elbows spread, his chin cupped in hishands, his Indian blankness of countenance enlivened by the glow of hiseyes, as jewels enliven dull brown velvet.

  "Firio, I have something to tell you."

  "_Si_!"

  There was a laboring of Jack's throat muscles, and then he forced out thetruth in a few words.

  "Firio," he said, "this is my trail end. I am going back to New Yorkto-morrow."

  "_Si_!" answered Firio, without a tremor of emotion; but his eyes glowedconfidently, fixedly, into Jack's.

  "There will be money for you, and--"

  "_Si_!" said Firio mechanically, as if repeating the lines of a lesson.

  Was this Indian boy prepared for the news? Or did he not care? Was hesimply clay that served without feeling? The thought made Jack wince. Hepaused, and the dark eyes, as in a spell, kept staring into his.

  "And you get P.D. and Wrath of God and Jag Ear and, yes, the big spursand the chaps, too, to keep to remember me by."

  Firio did not answer.

  "You are not pleased? You--"

  "_Si_! I will keep them for you. You will want them; you will come backto all this;" and suddenly Firio was galvanized into the life of a singlegesture. He swept his arm toward the sky, indicating infinite distance.

  "No, I shall never come back! I can't!" Jack said; and his face had sethard, as if it were a wall about to be driven at a wall. "I must go and Imust stay."

  "_Si_!" said Firio, resuming his impassiveness, and slipped around thecorner of the house.

  "He does care!" Jack cried with a smile, which, however, was not thesmile of gardens, of running brooks, and of song. "I am glad--glad!"

  He picked up his crutches and went out to the three steeds oftrail memory:

  "And _you_ care--_you_ care!" he repeated to them.

  He drew a lugubrious grimace in mockery at Wrath of God. He tickled thesliver of the donkey's ear, whereat Jag Ear wiggled the sliver inblissful unconsciousness that he had lost any of the ornamental equipmentof his tribe.

  "You are like most of us; we don't see our deformities, Jag Ear," Jacktold him. "And if others were also blind to them, why, we should all begood-looking!"

  His arm slipped around P.D.'s neck and he ran a finger up and down P.D.'snose with a tickling caress.

  "You old plodder!" he said. "You know a lot. It's good to have the loveof any living thing that has been near me as long as you have."

  This preposterous being was preposterously sentimental over a pair ofponies and an earless donkey. When Mrs. Galway, who had watched him fromthe window, came out on the porch she saw that he was on his way throughthe gate in the hedge to the street.

  "Look here! Did the doctor say you might?" she called.

  "No, my leg says it!" Jack answered, gaily. "Just a little walk!Back soon."

  It was his first enterprise in locomotion outside the limits of JimGalway's yard since he had been wounded. He turned blissful travelleragain. Having come to know the faces of the citizens, now he was to lookinto the faces of their habitations. The broad main street, with its rowsof trees, narrowed with perspective until it became a gray spot of desertsand. Under the trees leisurely flowed those arteries of ranch andgarden-life, the irrigation ditches. Continuity of line in thehedge-fences was evidently a municipal requirement; but over the hedgesindividualism expressed itself freely, yet with a harmony which had beenset by public fashion.

  The houses were of cement in simple design. They had no architecturalmessage except that of a background for ornamentation by the genius ofthe soil's productivity. They waited on vines to cover their sides andtrees to cast shade across their doorways. One need not remain long toknow the old families in this community, where the criterion of localaristocracy was the size of your plums or the number of crops of alfalfayou could grow in a year.

  Already Jack felt at home. It was as if he were friends with a wholeworld, lacking the social distinctions which only begin when someoneacquires sufficient worldly possessions to give exclusive, formaldinners. He knew every passer-by well enough to address him or her by theChristian name. Women called to him from porches with a dozen invitationsto visit gardens.

  "Just a saunter, just a try-out before I take the train. Not going far,"he always answered; yet there was something in his bearing that suggesteda definite mission.

  "We hate to lose you!" called Mrs. Smith.

  "I hate to be lost!" Jack called back; "but that is just mynatural luck."

  "I suppose you've got your work cut out for you back East, same'severybody else, somewhere or other, 'less they're millionaires, who allstay in the city and try to run from microbes in their automobiles."

  "Yes, I have work--lots of it," said Jack, ruefully. He shifted hisweight on the crutches, paused and looked at the sky. The Eternal Painterwas dipping his brush lightly and sweeping soft, silvery films, as a kindof glorified finger-exercise, over an intangible blue.

  "Why care? Why care?" His Majesty was asking. "Why not leave all theproblems of earthly existence to your lungs? Why not lie back and look onat things and breathe my air? That is enough to keep your whole being intune with the Infinite."

  It was his afternoon mood. At sunset he would have another. Then he wouldbe crying out against the folly of wasting one precious moment in theeons, because that moment could never return to be lived over.

  Jack kept on until he recognized the cement bridge where he had stoppedwhen he came from the post-office with Mary. Left bare of itssurroundings, the first habitation in Little Rivers, with the ell whichhad been added later, would have appeared a barracks. But Jasper Ewoldhad the oldest trees and the most luxuriant hedge and vines as the rewardof his pioneerdom.

  When Jack crossed the bridge and stood in the opening of the hedge therewas no one on the porch in the inviting shade of the prodigalbougainvillea vines. So he hitched his way up the steps. Feeling that itwas a formal occasion, he searched for the door-bell. There was none. Herapped on the casing and waited, while he looked at the cool, quietinterior, with the portrait of David facing him from the wall.

  "David, you seem to be the only one at home," he remarked, for there hadbeen no answer to his raps; "and you are too busy getting a bead onGoliath to answer the immaterial questions of a wayfarer."

  Accepting the freedom of the Little Rivers custom on such occasions, hefollowed the path to the rear. His head knocked off the dead petals of arambler rose blossom, scattering them at his feet. Rounding the corner ofthe house, he saw the arbor where he had dined the night of his arrival,and beyond this an old-fashioned flower garden separated by a path froma garden of roses. There was a sound of activity from the kitchen behinda trellis screen, but he did not call out for guidance. He would trust tofinding his own way.

  When he came to the broad path, its stretch lay under a crochet-work ofshadows from the ragged leaves of two rows of palms which ran to the edgeof an orange grove, and the centre of this path was in a straight linewith the bottom of the V of Galeria.

  Jasper Ewold had laid out his little domain according to a set planbefore the water was first let go in laughing triumph over the parchedearth, and this plan, as one might see on every hand, was expressive ofthe training of older civilizations in landscape gardening, which ages ofmen
striving for harmonious forms of beauty in green and growing thingshad tested, and which the Doge, in all his unconventionalism ofpersonality, was as little inclined to amend as he was to amend theclassic authors. An avenue of palms is the epic of the desert; abougainvillea vine its sonnet.

  Between the palms to the right and left Jack had glimpses of a vegetablegarden; of rows of berry bushes; of a grove of young fig-trees; of rowsof the sword-bundles of pineapple tops. Everything except theold-fashioned flower-bed, with its border of mignonette, and the generousbeds of roses and other flowers of the bountiful sisterhood of petals ofartificial cultivation, spoke of utility which must make the ground payas well as please.

  Jack took each step as if he were apprehensive of disturbing the quietMidway of the avenue of palms ran a cross avenue, and at themeeting-point was a circle, which evidently waited till the oranges andthe olives should pay for a statue and surrounding benches. Over thebreadth of the cross avenue lay the glossy canopy of the outstretchedbranches of umbrella-trees. A table of roughly planed boards paintedgreen and green rattan chairs were in keeping with the restful effect,while the world without was aglare with light.

  Here Mary had brought her sewing for the afternoon. She was working sointently that she had not heard his approach. He had paused just as hisline of vision came flush with the trunks of the umbrella-trees. For thefirst time he saw his companion in adventure in repose, her head bent,leaving clear the line of her neck from the roots of her hair to thecollar, and the soft light bringing out the delicate brown of her skin.

  There seemed no movement anywhere in the world at the moment, except theflash of her needle in and out.