by Zane Grey
They tied their horses to the tree and climbed on foot to the levels above. On the earth’s floor, unbroken by tree or elevation, there was not a shadow. It lay silver frosted in the foreground, darkening as it receded. In the arch above no cloud filmed the clearness, the moon, huge and mottled, dominating the sky. The silence was penetrating; not a breath or sound disturbed it. It was the night of the primitive world, which stirred the savage to a sense of the infinite and made him, from shell or clay or stone, carve out a God.
Without speaking they walked forward to a jutting point and looked down on the river. The current sparkled like a dancer’s veil spread on the grass. They could not hear its murmur or see the shifting disturbance of its shallows, only received the larger impression of the flat, gleaming tide split by the black shapes of islands. David pointed to the two sparks of the camp fires.
“See, they’re looking after us as if they were alive and knew they mustn’t lose sight of us.”
“They look quite red in the moonlight,” she answered, interested.
“As if they belonged to man and a drop of human blood had colored them.”
“What a queer idea. Let’s walk on along the bluffs.”
They turned and moved away from the lights, slipping down into the darkness of the channeled ravines and emerging onto the luminous highlands. The solemnity of the night, its brooding aloofness in which they held so small a part, chilled the girl’s high self-reliance. Among her fellows, in a setting of light and action, she was all proud independence. Deprived of them she suffered a diminution of confidence and became if not clinging, at least a feminine creature who might some day be won. Feeling small and lonely she insensibly drew closer to the man beside her, at that moment the only connecting link between her and the living world with which her liens were so close.
The lover felt the change in her, knew that the barrier she had so persistently raised was down. They were no longer mistress and slave, but man and maid. The consciousness of it gave him a new boldness. The desperate daring of the suitor carried him beyond his familiar tremors, his dread of defeat. He thrust his hand inside her arm, timidly, it is true, ready to snatch it back at the first rebuff. But there was none, so he kept it there and they walked on. Their talk was fragmentary, murmured sentences that they forgot to finish, phrases trailing off into silence as if they had not clear enough wits to fit words together, or as if words were not necessary when at last their spirits communed. Responding to the instigation of the romantic hour the young girl felt an almost sleepy content. The arm on which she leaned spoke of strength, it symbolized a protection she would have repudiated in the practical, sustaining sunshine, but that now was very sweet.
David walked in a vision. Was it Susan, this soft and docile being, close against his side, her head moving slowly as her eyes ranged over the magical prospect? He was afraid to speak for fear the spell would break. He did not know which way his feet bore him, but blindly went on, looking down at the profile almost against his shoulder, at the hand under which his had slid, small and white in the transforming light. His silence was not like hers, the expression of a temporary, lulled tranquility. He had passed the stage when he could delay to rejoice in lovely moments. He was no longer the man fearful of the hazards of his fate, but a vessel of sense ready to overflow at the slightest touch.
It came when a ravine opened at their feet and she drew herself from him to gather up her skirts for the descent. Then the tension broke with a tremulous “Susan, wait!” She knew what was coming and braced herself to meet it. The mystical hour, the silver-bathed wonder of the night, a girl’s frightened curiosity, combined to win her to a listening mood. She felt on the eve of a painful but necessary ordeal, and clasped her hands together to bear it creditably. Through the perturbation of her mind the question flashed—Did all women feel this way? and then the comment, How much they had to endure that they never told!
It was the first time any man had made the great demand of her. She had read of it in novels and other girls had told her. From this data she had gathered that it was a happy if disturbing experience. She felt only the disturbance. Seldom in her life had she experienced so distracting a sense of discomfort. When David was half way through she would have given anything to have stopped him, or to have run away. But she was determined now to stand it, to go through with it and be engaged as other girls were and as her father wished her to be. Besides there was nowhere to run to and she could not have stopped him if she had tried. He was launched, the hour had come, the, to him, supreme and awful hour, and all the smothered passion and hope and yearning of the past month burst out.
Once she looked at him and immediately looked away, alarmed and abashed by his appearance. Even in the faint light she could see his pallor, the drops on his brow, the drawn desperation of his face. She had never in her life seen anyone so moved and she began to share his agitation and wish that anything might happen to bring the interview to an end.
“Do you care? Do you care?” he urged, trying to look into her face. She held it down, not so much from modesty as from an aversion to seeing him so beyond himself, and stammered:
“Of course I care. I always have. Quite a great deal. You know it.”
“I never knew,” he cried. “I never was sure. Sometimes I thought so and the next day you were all different. Say you do. Oh, Susan, say you do.”
He was as close to her as he could get without touching her, which, the question now fairly put, he carefully avoided doing. Taller than she he loomed over her, bending for her answer, quivering and sweating in his anxiety.
The young girl was completely subdued by him. She was frightened, not of the man, but of the sudden revelation of forces which she did not in the least comprehend and which made him another person. Though she vaguely understood that she still dominated him, she saw that her dominion came from something much more subtle than verbal command and imperious bearing. All confusion and bewildered meekness, she melted, partly because she had meant to, partly because his vehemence overpowered her, and partly because she wanted to end the most trying scene she had ever been through.
“Will you say yes? Oh, you must say yes,” she heard him imploring, and she emitted the monosyllable on a caught breath and then held her head even lower and felt an aggrieved amazement that it was all so different from what she had thought it would be.
He gave an exclamation, a sound almost of pain, and drew away from her. She glanced up at him, her eyes full of scared curiosity, not knowing what extraordinary thing was going to happen next. He had dropped his face into his hands, and stood thus for a moment without moving. She peered at him uneasily, like a child at some one suffering from an unknown complaint and giving evidence of the suffering in strange ways. He let his hands fall, closed his eyes for a second, then opened them and came toward her with his face beatified. Delicately, almost reverently, he bent down and touched her cheek with his lips.
The lover’s first kiss! This, too, Susan had heard about, and from what she had heard she had imagined that it was a wonderful experience causing unprecedented joy. She was nearly as agitated as he, but through her agitation, she realized with keen disappointment that she had felt nothing in the least resembling joy. An inward shrinking as the bearded lips came in contact with her skin was all she was conscious of. There was no rapture, no up-gush of anything lovely or unusual. In fact, it left her with the feeling that it was a duty duly discharged and accepted—this that she had heard was one of life’s crises, that you looked back on from the heights of old age and told your grandchildren about.
They were silent for a moment, the man so filled and charged with feeling that he had no breath to speak, no words, if he had had breath, to express the passion that was in him. Inexperienced as she, he thought it sweet and beautiful that she should stand away from him with averted face. He gazed at her tenderly, wonderingly, won, but still a thing too
sacred for his touch.
Susan, not knowing what to do and feeling blankly that something momentous had happened and that she had not risen to it, continued to look on the ground. She wished he would say something simple and natural and break the intolerable silence. Finally, she felt that she could endure it no longer, and putting her hand to her forehead, pushed back her hair and heaved a deep sigh. He instantly moved to her all brooding, possessive inquiry. She became alarmed lest he meant to kiss her again and edged away from him, exclaiming hastily:
“Shall we go back? We’ve been a long time away.”
Without speech he slid his hand into the crook of her arm and they began to retrace their steps. She could feel his heart beating and the warm, sinewy grasp of his fingers clasped about hers. The plain was a silver floor for their feet, in the starless sky the great orb soared. The girl’s embarrassment left her and she felt herself peacefully settling into a contented acquiescence. She looked up at him, a tall shape, black between her and the moon. Her glance called his and he gazed down into her eyes, a faint smile on his lips. His arm was strong, the way was strangely beautiful, and in the white light and the stillness, romance walked with them.
There was no talk between them till they reached the horses. In the darkness of the cleft, hidden from the searching radiance, he drew her to him, pressing her head with a trembling hand against his heart. She endured it patiently but was glad when he let her go and she was in the saddle, a place where she felt more at home than in a man’s arms with her face crushed against his shirt, turning to avoid its rough texture and uncomfortably conscious of the hardness of his lean breast. She decided not to speak to him again, for she was afraid he might break forth into those protestations of love that so embarrassed her.
At the camp Daddy John was up, sitting by the fire, waiting for them. Of this, too, she was glad. Good-bys between lovers, even if only to be separated by a night, were apt to contain more of that distressful talk. She called a quick “Good night” to him, and then dove into her tent and sat down on the blankets. The firelight shone a nebulous blotch through the canvas and she stared at it, trying to concentrate her thoughts and realize that the great event had happened.
“I’m engaged,” she kept saying to herself, and waited for the rapture, which, even if belated, ought surely to come. But it did not. The words obstinately refused to convey any meaning, brought nothing to her but a mortifying sensation of being inadequate to a crisis. She heard David’s voice exchanging a low good night with the old man, and she hearkened anxiously, still hopeful of the thrill. But again there was none, and she could only gaze at the blurred blot of light and whisper “I’m engaged to be married,” and wonder what was the matter with her that she should feel just the same as she did before.
CHAPTER IV
The dawn was gray when Susan woke the next morning. It was cold and she cowered under her blankets, watching the walls of the tent grow light, and the splinter between the flaps turn from white to yellow. She came to consciousness quickly, waking to an unaccustomed depression.
At first it had no central point of cause, but was reasonless and all-permeating like the depression that comes from an unlocated physical ill. Her body lay limp under the blankets as her mind lay limp under the unfamiliar cloud. Then the memory of last night took form, her gloom suddenly concentrated on a reason, and she sunk beneath it, staring fixedly at the crack of growing light. When she heard the camp stirring and sat up, her heart felt so heavy that she pressed on it with her finger tips as if half expecting they might encounter a strange, new hardness through the soft envelope of her body.
She did not know that this lowering of her crest, hitherto held so high and carried so proudly, was the first move of her surrender. Her liberty was over, she was almost in the snare. The strong feminine principle in her impelled her like an inexorable fate toward marriage and the man. The children that were to be, urged her toward their creator. And the unconquered maidenhood that was still hers, recoiled with trembling reluctance from its demanded death. Love had not yet come to lead her into a new and wonderful world. She only felt the sense of strangeness and fear, of leaving the familiar ways to enter new ones that led through shadows to the unknown.
When she rode out beside her father in the red splendors of the morning, a new gravity marked her. Already the first suggestion of the woman—like the first breath of the season’s change—was on her face. The humility of the great abdication was in her eyes.
David left them together and rode away to the bluffs. She followed his figure with a clouded glance as she told her father her news. Her depression lessened when he turned upon her with a radiant face.
“If you had searched the world over you couldn’t have found a man to please me better. Seeing David this way, day by day, I’ve come to know him through and through and he’s true, straight down to the core.”
“Of course he is,” she answered, tilting her chin with the old sauciness that this morning looked a little forlorn. “I wouldn’t have liked him if he hadn’t been.”
“Oh, Missy, you’re such a wise little woman.”
She glanced at him quickly, recognizing the tone, and to-day, with her new heavy heart, dreading it.
“Now, father, don’t laugh at me. This is all very serious.”
“Serious! It’s the most serious thing that ever happened in the world, in our world. And if I was smiling—I’ll lay a wager I wasn’t laughing—it was because I’m so happy. You don’t know what this means to me. I’ve wanted it so much that I’ve been afraid it wasn’t coming off. And then I thought it must, for it’s my girl’s happiness and David’s and back of theirs mine.”
“Well, then, if you’re happy, I’m happy.”
This time his smile was not bantering, only loving and tender. He did not dream that her spirit might not be as glad as his looking from the height of middle-age to a secured future. He had been a man of a single love, ignorant save of that one woman, and she so worshiped and wondered at that there had been no time to understand her. Insulated in the circle of his own experience he did not guess that to an unawakened girl the engagement morn might be dark with clouds.
“Love and youth,” he said dreamily, “oh, Susan, it’s so beautiful! It’s Eden come again when God walked in the garden. And it’s so short. Eheu Fugaces! You’ve just begun to realize how wonderful it is, just said to yourself ‘This is life—this is what I was born for,’ when it’s over. And then you begin to understand, to look back, and see that it was not what you were born for. It was only the beginning that was to give you strength for the rest—the prairie all trees and flowers, with the sunlight and the breeze on the grass.”
“It sounds like this journey, like the Emigrant Trail.”
“That’s what I was thinking. The beautiful start gives you courage for the mountains. The memory of it carries you over the rough places, gives you life in your heart when you come to the desert where it’s all parched and bare. And you and your companion go on, fighting against the hardships, bound closer and closer by the struggle. You learn to give up, to think of the other one, and then you say, ‘This is what I was born for,’ and you know you’re getting near the truth. To have some one to go through the fight for, to do the hard work for—that’s the reality after the vision and the dream.”
The doctor, thinking of the vanished years of his married life, and his daughter, of the unknown ones coming, were not looking at the subject from the same points of view.
“I don’t think you make it sound very pleasant,” she said, from returning waves of melancholy. “It’s nothing but hardships and danger.”
“California’s at the end of it, dearie, and they say that’s the most beautiful country in the world.”
“It will be a strange country,” she said wistfully, not thinking alone of California.
“Not for long.”
<
br /> “Do you think we’ll ever feel at home in it?”
The question came in a faint voice. Why did California, once the goal of her dreams, now seem an alien land in which she always would be a stranger?
“We’re bringing our home with us—carrying some of it on our backs like snails and the rest in our hearts like all pioneers. Soon it will cease being strange, when there are children in it. Where there’s a camp fire and a blanket and a child, that’s home, Missy.”
He leaned toward her and laid his hand on hers as it rested on the pommel.
“You’ll be so happy in it,” he said softly.
A sudden surge of feeling, more poignant than anything she had yet felt, sent a pricking of tears to her eyes. She turned her face away, longing in sudden misery for some one to whom she could speak plainly, some one who once had felt as she did now. For the first time she wished that there was another woman in the train. Her instinct told her that men could not understand. Unable to bear her father’s glad assurance she said a hasty word about going back and telling Daddy John and wheeled her horse toward the prairie schooner behind them.
Daddy John welcomed her by pushing up against the roof prop and giving her two thirds of the driver’s seat. With her hands clipped between her knees she eyed him sideways.
“What do you think’s going to happen?” she said, trying to compose her spirits by teasing him.
“It’s going to rain,” he answered.
This was not helpful or suggestive of future sympathy, but at any rate, it was not emotional.
“Now, Daddy John, don’t be silly. Would I get off my horse and climb up beside you to ask you about the weather?”
“I don’t know what you’d do, Missy, you’ve got that wild out here on the plains—just like a little buffalo calf.”
