XXXVII
THE END OF THE WEAVING
For over a week a private car had stood on a siding at Little Rivers.Every morning a porter polished the brasswork of the platform in heraldryof the luxury within. Occasionally a young man with a plaster over awound on his cheek would walk up and down the road-bed on the far side ofthe car. Indeed, he had worn a path there. He never went into town, andany glances that he may have cast in that direction spoke his desire tobe forever free of its sight. Not a train passed that he did not wishhimself aboard and away. But as heir-apparent he had no thought ofendangering his new kingdom by going before his father went. He meant tokeep very close to the throne. He had become clingingly, determinedlyfilial. At times the gleam of the brasswork would exercise the samehypnosis over his senses as the scintillation of the jewelry counters ofthe store, and he would rub his hands crisply together.
John Wingfield, Sr. spent little time in the car. Morning and afternoonand evening he would go over to Dr. Patterson's with the question: "Howis he?" which all Little Rivers was asking. The rules of longevity werein oblivion and the routine channels of a mind, so used to teemingdetail, had become abysses as dark and void as the canyons of the range.
On the day of his arrival in Little Rivers he found a town peopledmostly by women and children. All of the men who could bear arms and geta horse had departed, and with them Mary. Thereby hangs a story all tothe honor of little Ignacio. After Jack had ridden away with hisinsistent refusal of assistance, apprehension among the group thatwatched him disappear in the gathering darkness was allayed by reports ofmen who had been at the store, where they found the Leddyites hangingabout as usual. True, no one had seen either Pete or Ropey Smith, butLang said that they were upstairs playing poker, a favorite relaxationfrom the strain of their intellectual life.
But Ignacio learned from another Indian in Lang's service that Pete andseven of his best shots had started for Agua Fria about the same time asJack, while the rest of the gang that had been left behind were making ittheir business to cover the leader's absence. Distrusting Ignacio, theylocked him in a closet off the bar. In the early hours of the morning hesucceeded in escaping with his news, which he carried first to Mary. Shewas not asleep when he rapped at her door. It had been a night ofwakefulness for her, recalling the night after her meeting with Jack onthe pass before the duel in the _arroyo_.
"I for Senor Don't Care, now! I for every devil in him! And they go tokill him!" was the incoherent way in which he began his announcement.
In an hour the alarm had travelled from house to house. While the gangslept at Lang's or in their tents, a solemn cavalcade set forth quietlyinto the night, with rifles slung over their shoulders or lying acrossthe pommels of their saddles, bound to rescue Jack Wingfield. They hadprotested against Mary's going with all the old, familiar arguments thatoccur to the male at thought of a woman in physical danger.
"It is the least that any of us can do," she declared.
"But of what service will you be?" Dr. Patterson asked.
"No one can say yet," she replied. "And no one shall stop me!" She wasdriven by the same impulse that had sent her across the _arroyo_ in faceof the ruffians on the bank to Jack's side after he was wounded. "My ponycan keep up with the best of yours," she added.
Leddy had eight hours' start on a two-days' journey. It was not inhorse-flesh to gain much on his fast and hardened ponies. There waslittle chance that Jack could hold out against such odds as he must face,even if he had escaped an ambush. So they rode in desperation and insilence, each too certain of what was in the minds of the others to makepretence of a hope that was not in the heart.
Their only stop for rest was at Las Cascadas in the hot hours of midday.Darkness had fallen when they overtook a solitary horseman coming fromAgua Fria. John Prather drew rein well to one side of the trail. He hada moment, as they approached, in which to think out his explanation ofhis position.
"It's Prather, and riding P.D.!" Galway announced.
"Where is Jack Wingfield?" came the merciless question as in onevoice from all.
"You are his friends! You have come to rescue him!" Prather cried.
He seemed overcome by his relief. At all events, the wildness of hisexclamation in face of the force barring the trail was withoutaffectation.
"There is time? There is hope?"
"Yes! yes!" gasped Prather, as the men began to surround him.
"Why are you here? Why on his horse?"
"Leddy turned on me, too! I was fighting at Wingfield's side! We got twoof them before dark! Then I was wounded and couldn't see to shoot. And Icame for help. And you will be in time! He's in a good position!"
"I think you are lying!" said Galway.
"He couldn't help it!" said Bob Worther.
"How--how would I have his horse if he weren't willing?" protestedPrather, frantically.
"By stealing it, in keeping with your character!"
"Yes! On general principles we ought to--"
"I have a piece of rope!" called a voice from the rear.
"There isn't any tree. But we can drop him over the wall of a chasm!"
Spectral figures with set faces appallingly grim in the thin moonlightpressed close to Prather.
"My God! No!" he pleaded, throatily. "We fought together, I tell you! Wedrew lots to see which one should take the risk of riding through dangerto save the other!"
"Lying again!"
"Here's the rope! All we've got to do is to slip a noose over his head!"
"It's a clean piece of rope, isn't it?" said the Doge, in his mellowvoice. "I don't think it's worth while soiling a clean piece ofrope. Come! Taking his life is no way to save Jack's. Come, we arelosing time!"
"Right, Doge!" said the man with the rope. "But it is some satisfactionto give him a scare."
"And take care of P.D.!" called another.
"Yes, if you founder Jack's pony you'll hear from us a-plenty!"
This was their adieu to John Prather, who was left to pursue his way insafety to his kingdom, while they rode on, following a hard path at thebase of the range. Those with the best horses took the lead, while theheavier men, including the Doge, whose weight was telling on theirmounts, fell to the rear. Mary was at the head, between Dr. Patterson andJim Galway.
The stars flickered out; the moon grew pale, and for a while the horsemenrode into a wall of blackness, conscious of progress only by the sound ofhoof-beats which they were relentlessly urging forward. Then dawn flashedup over the chaos of rocks, pursuing night with the sweep of itsbroadening, translucent wings across the valley to the other range. Thetops of the cotton-woods rose out of the sparkling sea, floating free ofany visible support of trunks, and the rescuers saw that they were nearthe end of their journey.
There was a faint sound of a shot; then of another shot and another.After that, the radiant, baffling silence of daybreak on uninhabitedwastes, when the very active glory of the spreading, intensifying lightought, one feels, to bring paeans of orchestral splendor. It setdesperation in the hearts of the riders, which was communicated to wearyponies driven to a last effort of speed. And still no more shots. Thesilence spoke the end of some tragedy with the first streaks from therising sun clearing a target to a waiting marksman's eye.
Around the cotton-woods was no sign of human movement; nothing butinanimate, dark spots which developed into prostrate human forms, inpantomimic expression of the story of that night's work done in themoonlight and finished with the first flush of morning. Two of theoutstretched figures were lying head to head a few yards apart on eitherside of the water-hole. The one on the side toward the ridge wasrecognized as Jack, still as death. Another a short distance behind him,at the sound of hoof-beats looked up with face blanched despite its darkskin, the parched lips stretched over the teeth; but in Firio's eyesthere was still fire, as he whispered, "All right!" before he sank backunconscious. A wound in his shoulder had been bandaged, but the wrist ofhis gun hand lay beside a fresh red spot on the earth.
/> Jack had a bullet hole in the upper left arm plugged with a bit ofcotton; and a deep furrow across the temple, which was bleeding. Hisrigid fingers were still gripping his six-shooter. He lay partly on hisside, facing Leddy, who had rolled over on his back dead.
Mary and Dr. Patterson dropped from their horses simultaneously. Thedoctor pressed his hand over Jack's heart, to find it still beating.
"Jack!" they whispered. "Jack!" they called aloud.
He roused slightly, lifting his weary eyelids and gazing at them as ifthey were uncertain shadows who wanted some kind of an explanation fromhim which he had not the strength to give.
"We must drink--blaze away, Leddy," he murmured. "I'm coming down afterthe stars go out--close--close as you like--we must drink!"
"No vital hit!" said the doctor; while Mary bringing water assisted himto bathe the wounds before he dressed them. "No, not from a bullet!" headded, after the dressing was finished and he had one hand on Jack's hotbrow and the other on his pulse.
Then he attended to Firio, who was talking incoherently:
"Take water-hole--boil coffee in the morning--quail for dinner, SenorJack--_si, si_!"
When they had moved Jack and Firio into the shadow of the cotton-woodsand forced water down their throats, Firio revived enough to recognizethose around him and to cry out an inquiry about Jack; but Jack himselfcontinued in a stupor, apparently unconscious of his surroundings andscarcely alive except for breathing. Yet, when litters of blankets andrifles tied together had been fashioned and attached to the pack-saddlesof tandem burros, as he was lifted into place for the return he seemed tounderstand that he was starting on a journey; for he said, disjointedly:
"Don't forget Wrath of God--and Jag Ear is thirsty--and bury Wrath of Godfittingly--give him an epitaph! He was gloomy, but it was a good gloom, akind of kingly gloom, and he liked the prospect when at last he stuck hishead through the blue blanket of the horizon."
Those of the party who remained behind for the last duty to the deadcounted its most solemn moment, perhaps, the one that gave Wrath of Godthe honorable due of a soldier who had fallen face to the enemy. BobWorther wrote the epitaph with a pencil on a bit of wood: "Here lies thegloomiest pony that ever was. The gloomier he was the better he went andthe better Jack Wingfield liked him;" which was Bob's way of interpretingJack's instructions.
Then Worther and his detail rode as fast as they might to overtake theslow-marching group in trail of the litters with the question that allLittle Rivers had been asking ever since, "How is he?" A ghastly,painfully tedious journey this homeward one, made mostly in the night,with the men going thirsty in the final stretches in order that wetbandages might be kept on Jack's feverish head; while Dr. Patterson wasfrequently thrusting his little thermometer between Jack's hot,cracking lips.
"If he were free of this jouncing! It is a terrible strain on him, butthe only thing is to go on!" the doctor kept repeating.
But when Jack lay white and still in his bedroom and Firio was rapidlyconvalescing, the fever refused to abate. It seemed bound to burn out thelife that remained after the hemorrhage from his wounds had ceased. Menfound it hard to work in the fields while they waited on the crisis. JohnWingfield, Sr. sat for hours under Dr. Patterson's umbrella-tree inmoody absorption. He talked to all who would talk to him. Always he wasasking about the duel in the _arroyo_ which was fought in Jack's way. Hecould not hear enough of it; and later he almost attached himself to theone eye-witness of the final duel, which had been fought in Leddy's way.
When Firio was well enough to walk out he was to be found in a longchair on Jack's porch, ever raising a warning finger for silence toanyone who approached and looking out across the yard to Jag Ear, who waswinning back the fat he had lost in a constitutional crisis, and P.D.,who, after bearing himself first and last in a manner characteristic of apony who was P.D. but never Q., seemed already none the worse for thehardships he had endured. The master of twenty millions would sit on thesteps, while Firio occupied the chair and regarded him much as if he werea blank wall. But at times Firio would humor the persistent inquirer witha few abbreviated sentences. It was out of such fragments as this thatJohn Wingfield, Sr. had to piece the story of the fight for thewater-hole.
"Senor Jack and Mister Prather, they no look alike," said Firio one day,evidently bound to make an end of the father's company. "Anybody saythat got bad eyes. Mister Prather"--and Firio smiled peculiarly--"I callhim the mole! He burrow in the sand, so! His hand tremble, so! He actlike a man believe himself the only god in the world when he in nodanger, but when he get in danger he act like he afraid he got to meetsome other god!"
"But Jack? Now, after Prather had gone?" persisted the father greedily.
"We glad the mole go. It sort of hurt inside to think a man like him. Hemake you wonder what for he born."
John Wingfield, Sr. half rose in a sudden movement, as if he were aboutto go, but remained in response to another emotion that was stronger thanthe impulse.
"And Jack? He kept his head! He figured out his chances coolly! Now,that trick he played by going up on the ridge under cover of darkness?"
"No trick!" said Firio resentfully, in instinctive defence. "That theplace to fight! Senor Jack he see it."
"And all through the night you kept firing?"
"_Si,_ after moon very bright and over our shoulders in their faces!_Si_, at the little lumps that lie so still. When they move quick likethey stung, we know we hit!"
"Ah, that was it! You hit! You hit! And the other fellows couldn't. Youhad the light with you--everything! Jack had seen to that! He used hishead! He--he was strong, strong!"
Quite unconsciously, John Wingfield, Sr. rubbed his palms together.
"When you pleased you always rub your hands same as Mister Prather,"observed Firio.
"Oh! Do I? I--" John Wingfield, Sr. clasped his fingers togethertightly. "Yes, and the finish of the fight--how was that?"
"Sometimes, when there no firing, Senor Jack and Leddy call out to eachother. Leddy he swear hard, like he fight. Senor Jack he sing back hisanswers cheerful, like he fight. Toward morning we both wounded andonly Leddy and one other man alive on his side. When a cloud slip overthe moon and the big darkness before morning come, we creep down fromthe ridge and with first light we bang-bang quick--and I no rememberany more."
"Forced the fighting--forced it right at the end!" cried John Wingfield,Sr. in the flush of a great pride.
"The aggressive, that is it--that is the way to win, always!"
"But Senor Jack no fight just to win!" said Firio. "He no want to fight.In the big darkness, before we crawl down to the water-hole, he call outto Leddy to make quits. He almost beg Leddy. But Leddy, he say: 'I neverquit and I get you!' 'Sorry,' says Senor Jack, with the devil out again,'sorry--and we'll see!' No, Senor Jack no like to fight till you make himfight and the devil is out. He fight for water; he fight for peace. He nowant just to win and kill, but--but--" bringing his story to an end,Firio looked hard at the father, his velvety eyes shot with acomprehending gleam as he shrugged his shoulders--"but you no understand,you and the mole!"
John Wingfield, Sr. shifted his gaze hurriedly from the little Indian.His face went ashen and it was working convulsively as he assistedhimself to rise by gripping the veranda post.
"Why do you think that?" he asked.
"I know!" said Firio.
His lips closed firmly. That was all he had to say. John Wingfield, Sr.turned away with the unsteady step of a man who is afraid of slipping orstumbling, though the path was hard and even.
Out in the street he met the cold nods of the people of a town where hisson had a dominion founded on something that was lacking in his own. Andone of those who nodded to him ever so politely was a new citizen, whohad once been a unit of his own city within a city.
Peter Mortimer had arrived in Little Rivers only two days after his lateemployer. Peter had been like some old tree that everybody thinks hasseen its last winter. But now he waited only on the good word fro
m thesick-room for the sap of renewed youth to rise in his veins and hisshriveled branches to break into leaf at the call of spring.
And the good word did come thrilling through the community. The physicalcrisis had passed. The fever was burning itself out. But a mental crisisdeveloped, and with it a new cause for apprehension. Even after Jack'stemperature was normal and he should have been well on the road toconvalescence, there was a veil over his eyes which would not allow himto recognize anybody. When he spoke it was in delirium, living over someincident of the past or of sheer imagination.
Now he was the ancestor, fitting out his ship:
"No, you can't come! A man who is a malingerer on the London docks wouldbe a malingerer on the Spanish Main. I don't want bullies and boasters.Let them stay at home to pick quarrels in the alleys and cheer the LordMayor's procession!"
Now his frigate was under full sail, sighting the enemy:
"Suppose they have two guns to our one! That makes it about even! We'llget the windward side, as we have before! Who cares about their guns oncewe start to board!"
Another time he was on the trail:
"I'll grow so strong, so strong that he can never call me a weaklingagain! He will be proud of me. That is my only way to make good."
Then he was apprenticed to the millions:
"All this detail makes me feel as if my brains were a tangled spool ofthread. But I will master it--I will!"
Again, he was happily telling stories to the children; or tragicallypleading with Leddy that there had been slaughter enough around thewater-hole; or serenely planning the future which he foresaw for himselfwhen the phantoms were laid:
"I may not know how to run the store, but I do seem to fit in here. Wecan find the capital! We will build the dam ourselves!"
His body grew stronger, with little appreciable change otherwise. For aninstant he would seem to know the person who was speaking to him; then hewas away on the winds of delirium.
"His mind is too strong for him not to come out of this all right. It isonly a question of time, isn't it?" insisted the father.
"There was a far greater capacity in him for suffering in that hellishfight than there was in Pete Leddy," said Dr. Patterson. "He hadsensitiveness to impressions which was born in him, at the same time thata will of steel was born in him--the sensitiveness of the mother,perhaps, and the will of the ancestor. His life hung by a thread when wefound him and his nerves had been twisted and tortured by the ordeal ofthat night. And that isn't all. There was more than fighting. Somethingthat preceded the fight was even harder on him. I knew from his look whenhe set out for Agua Fria that he was under a terrible strain; a strainworse than that of a few hours' battle--the kind that had been weighingday after day on the will that grimly sustained its weight. And thatwound in the head was very close, very, and it came at the moment whenhe collapsed in reaction after that last telling shot. Something snappedthen. There was a fracture of the kind that only nature can set. Will hecome out of this delirium, you ask? I don't know. Much depends uponwhether that strain is over for good or if it is still pressing on hismind. When he rises from his bed he may be himself or he may ride awaymadly into the face of the sun. I don't know. Nobody on earth can know."
"Yes, yes!" said John Wingfield, Sr. slowly.
In Jack's wildest moments it was Mary's voice that had the most tellingeffect. However low she spoke he seemed always to recognize the tone andwould greet it with a smile and frequently break into verses and scrapsof remembered conversations of his boyhood exile in villa gardens. Onemorning, when she and Dr. Patterson had entered the room together, Jackcalled out miserably:
"Just killing, killing, killing! What will Mary say to me, now?"
He raised his hands, fingers spread, and stared at them with a ghastlylook. She sprang to the bedside and seized them fast in hers, and bendingvery close to him, as if she would impart conviction with every quiveringparticle of her being, she said:
"She thinks you splendid! She is glad, glad! It is just what she wantedyou to do. She wished every bullet that you fired luck--luck for yoursake, to speed it straight to the mark!"
He seemed to understand what she was saying, as one understands thatshade is cool after the broiling torment of the sun.
"Luck will always come at your command, Mary!" he whispered, repeatinghis last words when he left the Ewold garden to go to the wars.
"And she wants you to rest--just rest--and not worry!"
This had the effect of a soothing draught. Smilingly he fell back on thepillow and slept.
"You put some spirit into that!" said the doctor, after he and Mary hadtiptoed out of the room; "a little of the spirit in keeping with adark-eyed girl who lives in the land of the Eternal Painter."
"All I had!" answered Mary, with simple earnestness.
At noon Jack was still sleeping. He slept on through the last hoursof the day.
"The first long stretch he has had," ran the bulletin, from tongue totongue, "and real sleep, too--the kind that counts!"
In the late afternoon, when the coolness and the shadows of evening werecreeping in at the doors and windows, the doctor, Peter Mortimer, thefather, and Firio were on the veranda, while Mrs. Galway was on watch bythe bedside.
"He's waking!" she came out to whisper.
The doctor hastened past her into the sick-room. As he entered, Jacklooked up with a bright, puzzled light in his eyes.
"Just what does this mean?" he asked. "Just how does it happen that I amhere? I thought that I--"
"We brought you in some days ago," the doctor explained. "And since youtook the water-hole your mind has been enjoying a little vacation, whilewe moved your body about as we pleased."
"I took the water-hole, then! And Firio? Firio? He--"
"He is just waiting outside to congratulate you on the re-establishmentof the old cordial relations between mind and body," the doctor returned;and slipped out to call Firio and to announce: "He is right as rain,right as rain!" news that Mrs. Galway set forth immediately to heraldthrough the community.
As for Firio, he strode into Jack's presence with the air of conqueror,sage, and prophet in one.
"Is it really you, Firio? Come here, so that I can feel of you and makesure, you son of the sun!"
Jack put out his thin, white hand to Firio, and the velvet of Firio'seyes was very soft, indeed.
"Did you know when they brought you in?" Jack asked.
"When burro stumble I feel ouch and see desert and then I drift awayup to sky again," answered Firio. "All right now, eh? Pretty soonyou so strong I have to broil five--six--seven quail a day and stillyou hungry!"
The doctor who had been looking on from the doorway felt a vigorous touchon the arm and turned to hear John Wingfield, Sr. asking him to makeway. With a grimace approaching a scowl he drew back free of Jack's sightand held up his hand in protest. "You had better not excite him!" hewhispered.
"But I am his father!" said John Wingfield, Sr. with something of hisold, masterful manner in a moment of irritation, as he pushed by thedoctor. He paused rather abruptly when his eyes met Jack's. A faintflush, appearing in Jack's cheeks, only emphasized his wanness and thewhiteness of his neck and chin and forehead.
"Well, Jack, right as rain, they say! I knew you would come out allright! It was in the blood that--" and the rest of John Wingfield, Sr.'sspeech fell away into inarticulateness.
It was a weak, emaciated son, this son whom he saw in contrast to the onewho had entered his office unannounced one morning; and yet the fathernow felt that same indefinable radiation of calm strength closing histhroat that he had felt then. Jack was looking steadily in his father'sdirection, but through him as through a thin shadow and into thedistance. He smiled, but very faintly and very meaningly.
"Father, you will keep the bargain I have made," he said, as if this werea thing admitting of no dispute. "It is fair to the other one, isn't it?Yes, we have found the truth at last, haven't we? And the truth makes itall clear for him and for you and for me
."
"You mean--it is all over--you stay out here for good--you--" said JohnWingfield, Sr. gropingly.
Then another figure appeared in the doorway and Jack's eyes returned fromthe distances to rest on it fondly. In response to an impulse that hecould not control, Peter Mortimer was peering timidly into the sick-room.
"Why, Peter!" exclaimed Jack, happily. "Come farther in, so I can seemore of you than the tip of your nose."
After a glance of inquiry at the doctor, which received an affirmativenod, Peter ventured another step.
"So it's salads and roses, is it, Peter?" Jack continued. "Well, I thinkyou may telegraph any time, now, that the others can come as soon as theyare ready and their places are filled."
Thus John Wingfield, Sr. had his answer; thus the processes of fate thatDr. Bennington had said were in the younger man had worked out their end.Under the spur of a sudden, powerful resolution, the father withdrew. Inthe living-room he met Jasper Ewold. The two men paused, facing eachother. They were alone with the frank, daring features from Velasquez'sbrush and with the "I give! I give!" of the Sargent, both reflecting theafterglow of sunset; while the features of the living--John Wingfield,Sr.'s, in stony anger, and Jasper Ewold's, serene in philosophy--toldtheir story without the touch of a painter's genius.
"You have stolen my son, Jasper Ewold!" declared John Wingfield, Sr.with the bitterness of one whose personal edict excluded defeat from hislexicon, only to find it writ broad across the page. "I suppose you thinkyou have won, damn you, Jasper Ewold!"
The Doge flushed. He seemed on the point of an outburst. Then helooked significantly from the portrait of the ancestor to the portraitof the mother.
"He was never yours to lose!" was the answer, without passion.
John Wingfield, Sr. recoiled, avoiding a glance at the walls where thepictures hung. The Doge stepped to one side to leave the way clear. JohnWingfield, Sr. went out unsteadily, with head bowed. But he had not gonefar before his head went up with a jerk and he struck fist into palmdecisively. Rigidly, ignoring everyone he passed and looking straightahead, he walked rapidly toward the station, as if every step meantwelcome freedom, from the earth that it touched.
His private car was attached to the evening express, and while it startedhomeward with the king and the determinedly filial heir-apparent to thecitadel of the push-buttons, through all the gardens of Little Rivers ranthe joyous news that Jack was "right as rain." It was a thing to start acontinual exchange of visits and to keep the lights burning in the housesunusually late.
But all was dark and silent out at Bill Lang's store. After their returnfrom Agua Fria, the rescuing party, Jim Galway leading, had attended toanother matter. The remnants of Pete Leddy's gang, far from offering anyresistance, explained that they had business elsewhere which admitted ofno delay. There was peace in the valley of Little Rivers. Its phantomshad been laid at the same time as Jack's.
XXXVIII
THEIR SIDE OF THE PASS
"Persiflage! Persiflage!" cried the Doge.
He and Jack were in the full tilt of controversy, Jack pressing anadvantage as they came around the corner of the Ewold house. It was likethe old times and better than the old times. For now there wasunderstanding where then there had been mystery. The stream of theircomradeship ran smoothly in an open country, with no unsounded depths.
"But I notice that you always say persiflage just as I am getting thebetter of the argument!" Jack whipped back.
"Has it taken you all this time to find that out? For what purpose isthe word in the English vocabulary? But I'll take the other side, whichis the easy one, next time, and then we'll see! Boom! boom!" The Dogepursed out his lips in mock terrorization of his opponent. "You arepretty near yourself again, young sir," he added, as he paused at theopening in the hedge.
"Yes, strength has been fairly flooding back the last two or three days.I can feel it travelling in my veins and making the tissues expand. It isglorious to be alive, O Doge!"
"Now, do you want me to take the other side on that question so you canhave another unearned victory? I refuse to humor the invalid any longerand I agree. The proposition that it is glorious to live on such anafternoon as this is carried unanimously. But I will never agree that youcan grow dates the equal of mine."
"Not until my first crop is ripe; then there will be no dispute!"
"That is real persiflage!" the Doge called after Jack.
Jack had made his first visit to the Doge's garden since he had left itto meet Prather and Leddy rather brief when he found that Mary was not athome. She had ridden out to the pass. Her trips to the pass had been sofrequent of late that he had seen little of her during his convalescence.Yet he had eaten her jelly exclusively. He had eaten it with his bread,his porridge, his dessert, and with the quail that Firio had broiled. Hehad even intimated his willingness to mix it with his soup. She advisedhim to stir it into his coffee, instead.
When he was seated in the long chair on the porch and she called to askhow he was, they had kept to the domain of nonsense, with never areference to sombre memories; but she was a little constrained, a littleshy, and he never gave her cause to raise the barrier, even if she hadbeen of the mind in face of a possible recurrence of former provocationswhile he was weak and easily tired. It was enough for him to hear hertalk; enough to look out restfully toward the gray masses of the range;enough to know that the desert had brought him oblivion to the past;enough to see his future as clear as the V of Galeria against the sky,sharing the life of the same community with her.
And what else? He was almost in fear of the very question that was neverout of his mind. She might wish him luck in the wars, but he knew her toowell to have any illusions that this meant the giving of the great thingshe had to give, unless in the full spontaneity of spirit. Thisafternoon, with the flood of returning strength, the question suddenlybecame commanding in a fresh-born suspense.
As he walked back to the house he met Belvy Smith and some of thechildren. Of course they asked for a story, and he continued one about abattered knight and his Heart's Desire, which he had begun some dayspreviously.
"He wasn't a particularly handsome knight or particularly good--inclinedto mischief, I think, when he forgot himself--but he was mightily inearnest. He didn't know how to take no. Say 'No!' to him and push him offthe mountain top and there he was, starting for the peak again! And hewas not so foolish as he might seem. When he reached the top he was happyjust to get a smile from his Heart's Desire before he was tossed backagain. His fingers were worn clear down to the first joint and his feetoff up to the knees, so he could not hold on to the seams of canyons aswell as before. He would have been a ridiculous spectacle if he weren'tso pitiful. And that wasn't the worst of it. He was pretty well shot topieces by the brigands whom he had met on his travels. With every ascentthere was less of him to climb, you see. In fact, he was being worn downso fast that pretty soon there wouldn't be much left of him except hiswishbone. That was indestructible. He would always wish. And after thehardest climb of all, here he is very near the top again, and--"
"And--and--"
"I'll have to finish this story later," said Jack, sending the youngsterson their way, while he went his own to call to Firio, as he entered theyard: "Son of the sun, I feel so strong that I am going for a ride!"
"You wear the big spurs and the grand chaps?" Firio asked.
Jack hesitated thoughtfully.
"No, just plain togs," he answered. "I think we will hang up thatcircus costume as a souvenir. We are past that stage of our career. Mydevil is dead."
It was Firio's turn to be thoughtful.
"_Si_! We had enough fight! We get old and sober! _Si_, I know! We settledown. I am going to begin to shave!" he concluded, stroking the blackdown on his boyish lip.
With the town behind him and the sinking sun over his shoulder, thebattered knight rode toward the foothills and on up the winding path,oblivious of the Eternal Painter's magic and conscious only that everystep brought him nearer
his Heart's Desire. Here was the rock where shewas seated when he had first seen her. What ages had passed since then!And there, around the escarpment, he saw her pony on the shelf! DroppingP.D.'s reins, he hurried on impetuously. With the final turn he foundMary seated on the rock where she had been the day that he had come tosay farewell before he went to battle with the millions. Now as then, shewas gazing far out over that sea of singing, quivering light, and thecrunch of his footsteps awakened her from her revery.
But how differently she looked around! Her breaths were coming in a happystorm, her face crimsoning, her nostrils playing in trembling dilation.In her eyes he saw open gates and a long vista of a fair highway in aglorious land; and the splendor of her was something near and yielding.He sank down beside her. Her hands stole into his; her head dropped onhis shoulder; and he felt a warm and palpitating union with the verybreath of her life.
"What do I see!" cried the Eternal Painter. "Two human beings who haveclimbed up as near heaven as they could and seem as happy as if they hadreached it!"
"We have reached it!" Jack called back. "And we like it, youhoary-bearded, Olympian impersonality!"
Thus they watched the sun go down, gilding the foliage of theirLittle Rivers, seeing their future in the fulness and richness of thelife of their choice, which should spread the oasis the length ofthat valley, and knowing that any excursions to the world over thepass would only sink their roots deeper in the soil of the valleythat had given them life.
"Jack, oh, Jack! How I did fight against the thing that was born in methat morning in the _arroyo_! I was in fear of it and of myself. In fearof it I ran from you that day you climbed down to the pine. But Ishan't run again--not so far but that I can be sure you can catch me.Jack, oh, Jack! And this is the hand that saved you from Leddy--theright hand! I think I shall always like it better than the left hand!And, Jack, there is a little touch of gray on the temples"--Mary wasrunning her fingers very, very gently over the wound--"which I like. Butwe shall be so happy that it will be centuries before the rest of yourhair is gray! Jack, oh, Jack!"
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