OVER THE PASS

 BY FREDERICK PALMER

 AUTHOR OF THE VAGABOND, DANBURY RODD, ETC. 

 1912

CONTENTS

PART I--AN EASY TRAVELLER

CHAPTER

 I YOUTH IN SPURS

 II DINOSAUR OR DESPERADO

 III JACK RIDES IN COMPANY

 IV HE CARRIES THE MAIL

 V A SMILE AND A SQUARE CHIN

 VI OBLIVION IS NOT EASY

 VII WHAT HAPPENED AT LANG'S

 VIII ACCORDING TO CODE

 IX THE DEVIL IS OUT

 X MARY EXPLAINS

 XI SEÑOR DON'T CARE RECEIVES

 XII MARY BRINGS TRIBUTE

 XIII A JOURNEY ON CRUTCHES

 XIV "HOW FAST YOU SEW!"

 XV WHEN THE DESERT BLOOMS

 XVI A CHANGE OF MIND

 XVII THE DOGE SNAPS A RUBBER BAND

 XVIII ANOTHER STRANGER ARRIVES

 XIX LOOKING OVER PRECIPICES

 XX A PUZZLED AMBASSADOR

 XXI "GOOD-BY, LITTLE RIVERS!"

 XXII "LUCK, JACK, LUCK!"

PART II--HE FINDS HIMSELF

 XXIII LABELLED AND SHIPPED

 XXIV IN THE CITADEL OF THE MILLIONS

 XXV "BUT WITH YOU, YES, SIR!"

 XXVII BY RIGHT OF ANCESTRY

 XXVIII JACK GETS A RAISE

 XXIX A MEETING ON THE AVENUE TRAIL

 XXX WITH THE PHANTOMS

 XXXI PRATHER WOULD NOT WAIT

 XXXII A CRISIS IN THE WINGFIELD LIBRARY

 XXXIII PRATHER SEES THE PORTRAIT

 XXXIV "JOHN WINGFIELD, YOU--"

PART III--HE FINDS HIS PLACE IN LIFE

 XXXV BACK TO LITTLE RIVERS

 XXXVI AROUND THE WATER-HOLE

 XXXVII THE END OF THE WEAVING

XXXVIII THEIR SIDE OF THE PASS

PART I

AN EASY TRAVELLER

I

YOUTH IN SPURS

Here time was as nothing; here sunset and sunrise were as incidentsof an uncalendared, everlasting day; here chaotic grandeur was thatof the earth's crust when it cooled after the last convulsivemovement of genesis. 

In all the region about the Galeria Pass the silence of the dry Arizonaair seemed luminous and eternal. Whoever climbed to the crotch of that V, cut jagged against the sky for distances yet unreckoned by touristfolders, might have the reward of pitching the tents of his imaginationat the gateway of the clouds. 

Early on a certain afternoon he would have noted to the eastward a speckfar out on a vast basin of sand which was enclosed by a rim of tumblingmountains. Continued observation at long range would have shown the speckto be moving almost imperceptibly, with what seemed the impertinence ofinfinitesimal life in that dead world; and, eventually, it would havetaken the form of a man astride a pony. 

The man was young, fantastically young if you were to judge by his garb, a flamboyant expression of the romantic cowboy style which might haveserved as a sensational exhibit in a shop-window. In place of theconventional blue wool shirt was one of dark blue silk. The_chaparejos_, or "chaps, " were of the softest leather, with the fringeat the seams generously long; and the silver spurs at the boot-heelswere chased in antique pattern and ridiculously large. Instead of theconventional handkerchief at the neck was a dark red string tie; whilethe straight-brimmed cowpuncher hat, out of keeping with the generaleffect of newness and laundered freshness, had that tint which onlyexposure to many dewfalls and many blazing mid-days will produce inlight-colored felt. 

There was vagrancy in the smile of his singularly sensitive mouth andvagrancy in the relaxed way that he rode. From the fondness with whichhis gaze swept the naked peaks they might have been cities _en fête_calling him to their festivities. If so, he was in no haste to letrealization overtake anticipation. His reins hung loose. He hummedsnatches of Spanish, French, and English songs. Their cosmopolitanfreedom of variety was as out of keeping with the scene as their lilt, which had the tripping, self-carrying impetus of the sheer joy of living. 

Lapsing into silence, his face went ruminative and then sad. With asudden indrawing of breath he freed himself from his reverie, and bendingover from his saddle patted a buckskin neck in affectionate tattoo. Tawnyears turned backward in appreciative fellowship, but without any break ina plodding dog-trot. Though the rider's aspect might say with the desertthat time was nothing, the pony's expressed a logical purpose. Thus thespeed of their machine-like progress was entirely regulated by theprospect of a measure of oats at the journey's end. 

When they came to the foot-hills and the rider dismounted and led theway, with a following muzzle at times poking the small of his back, upthe tortuous path, rounding pinnacles and skimming the edge of abysses, his leg muscles answered with the readiness of familiarity with climbing. At the top he saw why the pass had received its name of Galeria from theSpanish. A great isosceles of precipitous walls formed a long, naturalgallery, which the heaving of the earth's crust had rent and time haderoded. It lay near the present boundary line of two civilizations: inthe neutral zone of desert expanses, where the Saxon pioneer, with hislips closed on English _s's_, had paused in his progress southward; andthe _conquistadore_, with tongue caressing Castilian vowels, had pausedin his progress northward. 

At the other side the traveller beheld a basin which was a thousandfeet higher than the one behind him. It approached the pass at agentler slope. It must be cooler than the other, its ozone a littlerarer. A sea of quivering and singing light in the afternoon glow, itwas lost in the horizon. 

Not far from the foot-hills floated a patch of foliage, checkered by theroofs of the houses of an irrigation colony, hanging kitelike at the endof the silver thread of a river whose waters had set gardens abloom insterile expanses. There seemed a refusal of intimacy with the one visiblesymbol of its relations with the outer world; for the railroad, with itslines of steel flashing across the gray levels, passed beyond the outeredge of the oasis. 

"This beats any valley I've seen yet, " and the traveller spoke with theconfidence of one who is a connoisseur of Arizona valleys. 

He paused for some time in hesitancy to take a farewell of the rapturousvista. A hundred feet lower and the refraction of the light would presentit in different coloring and perspective. With his spell of visualintoxication ran the consciousness of being utterly alone. But the egoismof his isolation in the towering infinite did not endure; for the soundof voices, a man's and a woman's, broke on his ear. 

The man's was strident, disagreeable, persistent. Its timbre was such ashe had heard coming out of the doors of border saloons. The woman's wasquiet and resisting, its quality of youth peculiarly emphasized by itsrestrained emotion. 

Now the easy traveller took stock of his immediate surroundings, whichhad interested him only as a foothold and vantage-point for the panoramathat he had been breathing in. Here, of all conceivable places, he was indanger of becoming eavesdropper to a conversation which was evidentlyvery personal. Rounding the escarpment at his elbow he saw, on a shelf ofdecaying granite, two waiting ponies. One had a Mexican saddle of thecowboy type. The other had an Eastern side-saddle, which struck him asexotic in a land where women mostly ride astride. And what woman, whatever style of riding she chose, should care to come to this pass?

Judging by the direction from which the voices came, the speakers werehidden by still another turn in the defile. A few more steps brought eyeas well as ear back to the living world with the sight of a girl seatedon a bowlder. He could see nothing of her face except the cheek, whichwas brown, and the tip of a chin, which he guessed was oval, and herhair, which was dark under her hatbrim and shimmering with gold where itwas kissed by the rays of the sun. An impression as swift as a flash oflight could not exclude inevitable curiosity as to the full face; acuriosity emphasized by the poised erectness of her slender figure. 

The man was bending over her in a familiar way. He was thirty, perhaps, in the prime of physical vigor, square-jawed, cocksure, a six-shooterslung at his hip. Though she was not giving way before him, her attitude, in its steadiness, reflected distress in a bowstrung tremulousness. Suddenly, at something he said which the easy traveller could not quiteunderstand, she sprang up aflame, her hand flying back against the rockwall behind her for support. Then the man spoke so loud that he wasdistinctly audible. 

"When you get mad like that you're prettier'n ever, " he said. 

It was a peculiar situation. It seemed incredible, melodramatic, unreal, in sight of the crawling freight train far out on the levels. 

"Aren't you overplaying your part, sir?" the easy traveller asked. 

The man's hand flew to his six-shooter, while the girl looked around inswift and eager impulse to the interrupting voice. Its owner, the colorscheme of his attire emphasized by the glare of the low sun, expressed inhis pose and the inquiring flicker of a smile purely the element of thecasual. Far from making any movement toward his own six-shooter, heseemed oblivious of any such necessity. With the first glimpse of herface, when he saw the violet flame of her anger go ruddy with surpriseand relief, then fluid and sparkling as a culminating change of emotion, he felt cheap for having asked himself the question--which now seemed sosuperficial--whether she were good-looking or not. She was, undoubtedly, yes, undoubtedly good-looking in a way of her own. 

"What business is it of yours?" demanded the man, evidently under theimpression that he was due to say something, while his fingers stillrested on his holster. 

"None at all, unless she says so, " the deliverer answered. "Is it?" heasked her. 

After her first glance at him she had lowered her lashes. Now she raisedthem, sending a direct message beside which her first glance had beendumb indifference. He was seeing into the depths of her eyes in theconsciousness of a privilege rarely bestowed. They gave wing to athousand inquiries. He had the thrill of an explorer who is about toenter on a voyage of discovery. Then the veil was drawn before his shiphad even put out from port. It was a veil woven with fine threads ofappreciative and conventional gratitude. 

"It is!" she said decisively. 

"I'll be going, " said the persecutor, with a grimace that seemed mixedpartly of inherent bravado and partly of shame, as his pulse slowed downto normal. 

"As you please, " answered that easy traveller. "I had no mind to exertany positive directions over your movements. "

His politeness, his disinterestedness, and his evident disinclination toany kind of vehemence carried an implication more exasperating than anopen challenge. They changed melodrama into comedy. They made hisprotagonist appear a negligible quantity. 

"There's some things I don't do when women are around, " the persecutorreturned, grudgingly, and went for his horse; while oppressive silenceprevailed. The easy traveller was not looking at the girl or she at him. He was regarding the other man idly, curiously, though not contemptuouslyas he mounted and started down the trail toward the valley, only to drawrein as he looked back over his shoulder with a glare which took the easytraveller in from head to foot. 

"Huh! You near-silk dude!" he said chokingly, in his rancor which hadgrown with the few minutes he had had for self-communion. 

"If you mean my shirt, it was sold to me for pure silk, " the easytraveller returned, in half-diffident correction of the statement. 

"We'll meet again!" came the more definite and articulate defiance. 

"Perhaps. Who can tell? Arizona, though a large place, has so few peoplethat it is humanly very small. "

Now the other man rose in his stirrups, resting the weight of his body onthe palm of the hand which was on the back of his saddle. He was rigid, his voice was shaking with very genuine though dramatic rage drawn to afine point of determination. 

"When we do meet, you better draw! I give you warning!" he called. 

There was no sign that this threat had made the easy traveller tighten asingle muscle. But a trace of scepticism had crept into his smile. 

"Whew!" He drew the exclamation out into a whistle. 

"Whistle--whistle while you can! You won't have many more chances! Draw, you tenderfoot! But it won't do any good--I'll get you!"

With this challenge the other settled back into the saddle and proceededon his way. 

"Whew!" The second whistle was anything but truculent and anything butapologetic. It had the unconscious and spontaneous quality of the delightof the collector who finds a new specimen in wild places. 

From under her lashes the girl had been watching the easy travellerrather than her persecutor; first, studiously; then, in the confusion ofembarrassment that left her speechless. 

"Well, well, " he concluded, "you must take not only your zoology, butyour anthropology as you find it!"

His drollness, his dry contemplation of the specimen, and hisabsurdly gay and unpractical attire, formed a combination of elementssuddenly grouped into an effect that touched her reflex nerves afterthe strain with the magic of humor. She could not help herself: sheburst out laughing. At this, he looked away from the specimen; lookedaround puzzled, quizzically, and, in sympathetic impulse, beganlaughing himself. Thus a wholly unmodern incident took a whimsicalturn out of a horror which, if farcical in the abstract, was no lesspotent in the concrete. 

"Quite like the Middle Ages, isn't it?" he said. 

"But Walter Scott ceased writing in the thirties!" she returned, quick tofall in with his cue. 

"The swooning age outlasted him--lasted, indeed, into the era ofhoop-skirts; but that, too, is gone. "

"They do give medals, " she added. 

"For rescuing the drowning only; and they are a great nuisance to carryaround in one's baggage. Please don't recommend me!"

Both laughed again softly, looking fairly at each other inunderstanding, twentieth-century fashion. She was not to play theclassic damsel or he the classic rescuer. Yet the fact of a young manfinding a young woman brutally annoyed on the roof of the world, fiveor six miles from a settlement--well, it was a fact. Over the bump oftheir self-introduction, free of the serious impression of herexperience, she could think for him as well as for herself. This struckher with sudden alarm. 

"I fear I have made you a dangerous enemy, " she said. "Pete Leddy is theprize ruffian of our community of Little Rivers. "

"I thought that this would be an interesting valley, " he returned, inbland appreciation of her contribution of information about the habits ofthe specimen. 

II

DINOSAUR OR DESPERADO

She faced a situation irritating and vitalizing, and inevitably, underits growing perplexity, her observation of his appearance andcharacteristics had been acute with feminine intuition, which is sofrequently right, that we forget that it may not always be. She imaginedhim with a certain amiable aimlessness turning his pony to one side so asnot to knock down a danger sign, while he rode straight over a precipice. 

What would have happened if Leddy had really drawn? she asked herself. Probably her deliverer would have regarded the muzzle of Leddy's gun instudious vacancy before a bullet sent him to kingdom come. Allspeculation aside, her problem was how to rescue her rescuer. She feltalmost motherly on his account, he was so blissfully oblivious torealities. And she felt, too, that under the circumstances, she ought tobe formal. 

"Now, Mister--" she began; and the Mister sounded odd and stilted in herears in relation to him. 

"Jack is my name, " he said simply. 

"Mine is Mary, " she volunteered, giving him as much as he had givenand no more. "Now, sir, " she went on, in peremptory earnestness, "thisis serious. "

"It _was_, " he answered. "At least, unpleasant. "

"It is, _now_. Pete Leddy meant what he said when he said that hewould draw. "

"He ought to, from his repeated emphasis, " answered Jack, in agreeableaffirmation. 

"He has six notches on his gun-handle--six men that he has killed!"Mary went on. 

"Whew!" said Jack. "And he isn't more than thirty! He seems a hard workerwho keeps right on the job. "

She pressed her lips together to control her amusement, before she askedcategorically, with the precision of a school-mistress:

"Do you know how to shoot?"

He was surprised. He seemed to be wondering if she were not makingsport of him. 

"Why should I carry a six-shooter if I did not?" he asked. 

This convinced her that his revolver was a part of his play cowboycostume. He had come out of the East thinking that desperado etiquette ofthe Bad Lands was _opéra bouffe_. 

"Leddy is a dead shot. He will give you no chance!" she insisted. 

"I should think not, " Jack mused. "No, naturally not; otherwise theremight have been no sixth notch. The third or the fourth, even the secondobject of his favor might have blasted his fair young career as awood-carver. Has he set any limit to his ambition? Is he going to make itan even hundred and then retire?"

"I don't know!" she gasped. 

"I must ask, " he added, thoughtfully. 

Was he out of his head? Certainly his eye was not insane. Its bluish-graywas twinkling enjoyably into hers. 

"You exasperated him with that whistle. It was a deadly insult to hisdesperado pride. You are marked--don't you see, marked?" she persisted. "And I brought it on! I am responsible!"

He shook his head in a denial so unmoved by her appeal that she was surehe would send Job into an apoplectic frenzy. 

"Pardon me, but you're contradicting your own statement. You just said itwas the whistle, " he corrected her. "It's the whistle that gives me CheckNumber Seven. You haven't the least bit of responsibility. The whistlegets it all, just as you said. "

This was too much. Confuting her with her own words! Quibbling with hisown danger in order to make her an accomplice of murder! She lost hertemper completely. That fact alone could account for the audacity of hernext remark. 

"I wonder if you really know enough to come in out of the rain!"she stormed. 

"That's the blessing of living in Arizona, " he returned. "It is such adry climate. "

She caught herself laughing; and this only made her the more intense asecond later, on a different tack. Now she would plead. 

"Please--please promise me that you will not go to Little Riversto-night. Promise that you will turn back over the pass!"

"You put me between the devil and the dragon. What you ask is impossible. I'll tell you why, " he went on, confidentially. "You know this is theland of fossil dinosaurs. "

"I had a brute on my hands, " she thought; "now I have the Mad Hatter andthe March Hare in collaboration!"

"There is a big dinosaur come to life on the other side, " he proceeded. "I just got through the pass in time. I could feel his breath on myback--a hot, gun-powdery breath! It was awful, simply awful and horrible, too. And just as I had resigned myself to be his entrée, by great luckhis big middle got wedged in the bottom of the V, and his scales scrapedlike the plates of a ship against a stone pier!"

To her disgust she was laughing again. 

"If I went back now out of fear of Pete Leddy, " he continued, "thatdinosaur would know that I was such insignificant prey he would not eventake the trouble to knock me down with a forepaw. He would swallow mealive and running! Think of that slimy slide down the red upholstery ofhis gullet, not to mention the misery of a total loss of my dignity andself-respect!"

He had spoken it all as if he believed it true. He made it seemalmost true. 

"I like nonsense as much as anybody, " she began, "and I do not forgetthat you did me a great kindness. "

"Which any stranger, any third person coming at the right moment mighthave done, " he interrupted. "Sir Walter's age has passed. "

"Yes, but Pete Leddy belongs still farther back. We may laugh at hisruffianly bravado, but no one may laugh at a forty-four calibre bullet!Think what you are going to make me pay for your kindness! I must paywith memory of the sound of a shot and the fall of a body there in thestreets of Little Rivers--a nightmare for life! Oh, I beg of you, thoughit is fun for you to be killed, consider me! Don't go down into thatvalley! I beg of you, go back over the pass!"

There was no acting, no suspicion of a gesture. She stood quite still, while all the power of her eyes reflected the misery which she picturedfor herself. The low pitch of her voice sounded its depths with thatrestraint which makes for the most poignant intensity. As she reached herclimax he had come out of his languid pose. He was erect and rigid. Shesaw him as some person other than the one to whom she had begun herappeal. He was still smiling, but his smile was of a different sort. Instead of being the significant thing about him in expression of hiscasualness, it seemed the softening compensation for his stubbornness. 

"I'd like to, but it is hardly in human nature for me to do that. Ican't!" And he asked if he might bring up her pony. 

"Yes, " she consented. 

She thought that the faint bow of courtesy with which he had accompaniedthe announcement of his decision he would have given, in commonpoliteness, to anyone who pointed at the danger sign before he rode overthe precipice. 

"May I ride down with you, or shall I go ahead?" he inquired, after hehad assisted her to mount. 

"With me!" she answered, quickly. "You are safe while you are with me. "

The decisive turn to her mobile lips and the faint wrinkles of a frown, coming and going in various heraldry, formed a vividly sentient andversatile expression of emotions while she watched his silhouette againstthe sky as he turned to get his own pony. 

"Come, P. D. --come along!" he called. 

In answer to his voice an equine face, peculiarly reflective of trailwisdom, bony and large, particularly over the eyes, slowly turned towardits master. P. D. Was considering. 

"Come along! The trail, P. D. !" And P. D. Came, but with democraticindependence, taking his time to get into motion. "He is never fast, "Jack explained, "but once he has the motor going, he keeps at it all day. So I call him P. D. Without the Q. , as he is never quick. "

"Pretty Damn, you mean!" she exclaimed, with a certain spontaneous prideof understanding. Then she flushed in confusion. 

"Oh, thank you! It was so human of you to translate it out loud! It isn'tprofane. Look at him now. Don't you think it is a good name for him?"Jack asked, seriously. 

"I do!"

She was laughing again, oblivious of the impending tragedy. 

III

JACK RIDES IN COMPANY

Let not the Grundy woman raise an eyebrow of deprecation at the informalintroduction of Jack and Mary, or we shall refute her with her ownprecepts, which make the steps to a throne the steps of the socialpyramid. If she wishes a sponsor, we name an impeccable majesty of thevery oldest dynasty of all, which is entirely without scandal. We remindher of the ancient rule that people who meet at court, vouched for byroyal favor, need no introduction. 

These two had met under the roof of the Eternal Painter. His palette issomewhere in the upper ether and his head in the interplanetary spaces. His heavy eyebrows twinkle with star-dust. Dodging occasional flyingmeteors, which harass him as flies harass a landscapist out of doors on ahot day, he is ever active, this mighty artist of the changing desertsky. So fickle his moods, so versatile his genius, so quick to creationhis fancy, that he never knows what his next composition will be till thesecond that it is begun. 

No earthly rival need be jealous of him. He will never clog thegalleries. He always paints on the same canvas, scraping off one pictureto make room for another. And you do not mind the loss of the old. Youlive for the new. 

His Majesty has no artistic memory. He is as young as he was the daythat he flung out his first tentative lunette after chaos. He is thepatron saint of all pilgrims from the city's struggle, where they foundno oases of rest. He melts "pasts" and family skeletons and hiddenstories of any kind whatsoever into the blue as a background with theabandoned preoccupation of his own brushwork. His lieges, who seekoblivion in the desert, need not worry about the water that will neverrun over the millwheel again, or dwell in prophecy on floods to come. Theomnipotence of the moment transports and soothes them. 

"Time is nothing!" says the Eternal Painter. "If you feel important, remember that man's hectic bustling makes but worm-work on the planet. Live and breathe joyfully and magnificently! Do not strain your eyes overembroidery! Come to my open gallery! And how do you like the way I setthose silver clouds a-tumbling? Do you know anything better under thedome of any church or capitol? Shall I bank them? Line them with purple?It is done! But no! Let us wipe it all out, change the tint of ourbackground, and start afresh!"

With his eleven hundred million billionth sunset, or thereabouts, HisMajesty held a man and a woman who had met on the roof of the world inthrall. He was lurid at the outset, dipping his camel's hair in at theround furnace door sinking toward the hills, whose red vortex shottongues of flame into canyons and crevasses and drove out their lurkingshadows with the fire of its inquisition. The foliage of Little Riversbecame a grove of quivering leaves of gold, set on a vast beaten platterof gold. And the man and the woman, like all things else in thelandscape, were suffused in this still, Parnassian, penetratingbrilliancy, which ought to make even a miser feel that his hoarded eaglesand sovereigns are ephemeral dross. 

"I love it all--all the desert!" said Mary Ewold. 

"And I, too!"

"I have for six years. "

"I for five. "

The sentences had struck clearly as answering chimes, impersonally, intheir preoccupied gazing. 

"It gave me life!" he added. 

"And it gave me life!"

Then they looked at each other in mutual surprise and understanding; eachin wonder that the other had ever been anything but radiant ofout-of-doors health. That fleck on the lungs which brought a doctor'sorders had long ago been healed by the physician of the ozone they werebreathing. 

"And you remained, " he said. 

"And you, also, " she answered. 

Their own silence seemed to become a thing apart from the silence of theinfinite. It was as if both recognized a common thought that even theEternal Painter could not compel oblivion of the past to which they didnot return; of the faith of cities to which they had been bred. But it isone of the Eternal Painter's rules that no one of his subjects should askanother of his subjects why he stays on the desert. Jack was the first tospeak, and his voice returned to the casual key. 

"Usually I watch the sunset while we make camp, " he said. "I am very lateto-night--late beyond all habit; and sunset and sunrise do make one acreature of habit out here. Firio and my little train will grow impatientwaiting for me. "

"You mean the Indian and the burro with the silver bells that came overthe pass some time before you?"

Of course they belonged to him, she was thinking, even as she made theinquiry. This play cowboy, with his absurdly enormous silver spurs, wouldnaturally put bells on his burro. 

"Yes, I sent Firio with Wrath of God and Jag Ear on ahead and told him towait at the foot of the descent. Wrath of God will worry--he is of aworrying nature. I must be going. "

In view of the dinosaur nonsense she was already prepared for a varietyof inventional talk from him. As they started down from the pass insingle file, she leading, the sun sank behind the hills, leaving theEternal Painter, unhindered by a furnace glare in the centre of thecanvas, to paint with a thousand brushes in the radiant tints of theafterglow. 

"You don't like that one, O art critics!" we hear him saying. "Well, hereis another before you have adjusted your _pince-nez, _ and I will brush itaway before you have emitted your first Ah! I do not criticise. Ipaint--I paint for the love of it. I paint with the pigments of thefirmament and the imagination of the universe. "

The two did not talk of that sky which held their averted glances, whileknowing hoofs that bore their weight kept the path. For how can you talkof the desert sky except in the banality of exclamations? It is _lèsemajesté_ to the Eternal Painter to attempt description. 

At times she looked back and their eyes met in understanding, as truesubjects of His Majesty, and then they looked skyward to see what changesthe Master's witchery had wrought. In supreme intoxication of thesenses, breathing that dry air which was like cool wine coming in longsips to the palate, they rode down the winding trail, till, after asurpassing outburst, the Eternal Painter dropped his brush for the night. 

It was dusk. Shadows returned to the crevasses. Free of the magic of thesky, with the curtains of night drawing in, the mighty savagery of thebare mountains in their disdain of man and imagination reasserted itself. It dropped Mary Ewold from the azure to the reality of Pete Leddy. Shewas seeing, the smoking end of a revolver and a body lying in a pool ofblood; and there, behind her, rode this smiling stranger, proceeding sogenially and carelessly to the fate which she had provided for him. 

With the last turn, which brought them level with the plain, they cameupon an Indian, a baggage burro, and a riding-pony. The Indian sprang up, grinning: his welcome and doffing a Mexican steeple-hat. 

"I must introduce you all around, " Jack told Mary. 

She observed in his manner something new!--a positive enthusiasm for histhree retainers, which included a certain well-relished vanity in theirloyalty and character. 

"Firio has Sancho Panza beaten to a frazzle, " Jack said. "Sancho was fatand unresourceful; even stupid. Fancy him broiling a quail on a spit!Fancy what a lot of trouble Firio could have saved Don Quixote de laMancha! Why, confound it, he would have spoiled the story!"

Firio was a solid grain, to take Jack's view, winnowed out of bushels ofaboriginal chaff; an Indian, all Indian, without any strain of Spanishblood in the primitive southern strain. 

"And Firio rides Wrath of God, " Jack continued, nodding to a pony with alow-hung head and pendant lip, whose lugubrious expression wasexaggerated by a scar. "He looks it, don't you think?--always miserable, whether his nose is in the oats or we run out of water. He is our sadphilosopher, who has just as dependable a gait as P. D. I have manytheories about the psychology of his ego. Sometimes I explain it by adesire both to escape and to pursue unhappiness, which amounts to asolemn kind of perpetual motion. But he has a positively sweet nature. There is no more malice in his professional mournfulness than in thecheerful humor of Jag Ear. "

"It is plain to see which is Jag Ear, " she observed, "and how he earnedhis name. "

Every time a burro gets into the corn, an Indian master cuts off a bitof long, furry ear as a lesson. Before Jag Ear passed into kindlierhands he had been clipped closer than a Boston terrier. Only a singleupstanding fragment remained in token of a graded education which hadavailed him nothing. 

"There's no curtailing Jag Ear's curiosity, " said Jack. "To him, everything is worth trying. That is why he is a born traveller. Hehas been with me from Colorado to Chihuahua, on all my wanderingsback and forth. "

While he spoke, Firio mounted Wrath of God and, with Jag Ear's bellsjingling, the supply division set out on the road. Jack and Maryfollowed, this time riding side by side, pony nose to pony nose, in anintimacy of association impossible in the narrow mountain trail. It wasan intimacy signalized by silence. There was an end to the mightytransports of the heights; the wells of whimsicality had dried up. Theweight of the silence seemed balancing on a brittle thread. All theafternoon's events aligned themselves in a colossal satire. In the halflight Jack became a gaunt and lonely figure that ought to be confined insome Utopian kindergarten. 

Mary could feel her temples beating with the fear of what was waiting forhim in Little Rivers, now a dark mass on the levels, just dark, withoutcolor or any attraction except the mystery that goes with the shroud ofnight. She knew how he would laugh at her fears; for she guessed that hewas unafraid of anything in the world which, however, was no protectionfrom Pete Leddy's six-shooter. 

"I--I have a right to know--won't you tell me how you are going to defendyourself against Pete Leddy?" she demanded, in a sudden outburst. 

"I hadn't thought of that. Certainly, I shall leave it to Pete himself toopen hostilities. I hadn't thought of it because I have been too busythinking out how I was going to break a piece of news to Firio. I havebeen an awful coward about it, putting it off and putting it off. I hadplanned to do it on my birthday two weeks ago, and then he gave me thesebig silver spurs--spent a whole month's wages on them, think of that! Ibought this cowboy regalia to go with them. You can't imagine how thatpleased him. It certainly was great fun. "

Mary could only shake her head hopelessly. 

"Firio and Jag Ear and Wrath of God and old P. D. Here--we've sort ofgrown used to one another's foolishness. Now I can't put it off anylonger, and I'd about as soon be murdered as tell him that I am goingEast in the morning. "

"You mean you are going to leave here for good?" She mistrusted herown hearing. She was dazzled by this sudden burst of light throughthe clouds. 

"Yes, by the first train. This is my last desert ride. "

Why had he not said so at first? It would not only have saved her fromworry, but from the humiliation of pleading with a stranger. Doubtless hehad enjoyed teasing her. But no matter. The affair need not last muchlonger, now. She told herself that, if necessary, she would mount guardover him for the remaining twelve hours of his stay. Once he was aboardthe Pullman he would be out of danger; her responsibility would be overand the whole affair would become a bizarre memory; an incident closed. 

"Back to New York, " he said, as one who enters a fog without acompass. "Back to fight pleosaurs, dinosaurs, and all kinds ofmonsters, " he added, with a cheeriness which rang with the first falsenote she had heard from him. "I don't care, " he concluded, and brokeinto a Spanish air, whose beat ran with the trickling hoof-beats ofthe ponies in the sand. 

"That is it!" she thought. "That explains. He just does not care aboutanything. "

Ahead, the lamps were beginning to twinkle in the little settlement whichhad sent such a contrast in citizenship as Mary Ewold and Pete Leddy outto the pass. They were approaching a single, isolated building, from thedoor of which came a spray of light and the sound of men's voices. 

"That is Bill Lang's place, " Mary explained. "He keeps a store, with abar in the rear. He also has the post-office, thanks to his politicalinfluence, and this is where I have to stop for the mail when I returnfrom the pass. "

She had not spoken with any sense of a hint which it was inevitable heshould accept. 

"Let me get it for you;" and before she had time to protest, he haddismounted, drawing rein at the edge of the wooden steps. 

She rode past where his pony was standing. When he entered the door, histallness and lean ease of posture silhouetted in the light, she couldlook in on the group of idling male gossips. 

"Don't!"

It was a half cry from her, hardly audible in an intensity which she knewwas futile in the surge of her torturing self-incrimination. Why had shenot thought that it would be here that Pete Leddy was bound to wait foranyone coming in by the trail from Galeria? The loungers suddenly droppedto the cover of boxes and barrels, as a flicker of steel shot upward, andbehind the gleaming rim of a revolver muzzle held rigid was a brown handand Leddy's hard, unyielding face. 

What matter if the easy traveller could shoot? He was caught like a mancoming out of an alley. He had no chance to draw in turn. In the click ofa second-hand the thing would be over. Mary's eyes involuntarily closed, to avoid seeing the flash from the revolver. She listened for the report;for the fall of a body which should express the horror she had visualizedfor the hundredth time. A century seemed to pass and there was no soundexcept the beat of her heart, which ran in a cataract throb to hertemples; no sound except that and what seemed to be soft, regular stepson the bare floor of the store. 

"Coward!" she told herself, with the agony of her suspensebreaking. "He saved you from inexpressible humiliation and you areafraid even to look!"

She opened her eyes, prepared for the worst. Had she gone out of herhead? Could she no longer trust her own eyesight? What she saw wasinconceivable. The startled faces of the loungers were rising frombehind the boxes and barrels. Pete Leddy's gun had dropped to his sideand his would-be victim had a hand on Pete's shoulder. Jack was talkingapparently in a kindly and reasoning tone, but she could not make outhis words. 

One man alone evidently had not taken cover. It was Jim Galway, arancher, who had been standing at the mail counter. To judge by hisexpression, what Jack was saying had his approval. 

With a nod to Leddy and then a nod to the others, as if in amicableconclusion of the affair, Jack wheeled around to the counter, disclosingLeddy's face wry with insupportable chagrin. His revolver was still inhis hand. In the swift impulse of one at bay who finds himself released, he brought it up. There was murder, murder from behind, in the catlikequickness of his movement; but Jim Galway was equally quick. He threw hiswhole weight toward Leddy in a catapult leap, as he grasped Leddy's wristand bore it down. Jack faced about in alert readiness. Seeing that Galwayhad the situation pat, he put up his hand in a kind of questioning, puzzled remonstrance; but Mary noticed that he was very erect. He spokeand Galway spoke in answer. Evidently he was asking that Leddy bereleased. To this Galway consented at length, but without drawing backuntil he had seen Leddy's gun safe in the holster. 

Then Leddy raised himself challengingly on tiptoes to Jack, who turned toGalway in the manner of one extending an invitation. On his part, Leddyturned to Ropey Smith, another of Little Rivers' ruffians. After this, Leddy went through the door at the rear; the loungers resumed their seatson the cracker barrels and gazed at one another with dropped jaws, whileBill Lang proceeded with his business as postmaster. 

IV

HE CARRIES THE MAIL

When the suspense was over for Mary, the glare of the store lamp wentdancing in grotesque waves, and abruptly, uncannily, fell away into thedistant, swimming glow of a lantern suffused with fog. She swayed. Onlythe leg-rest kept her from slipping off the pony. Her first returningsense of her surroundings came with the sound of a voice, the samecareless, pleasant voice which she had heard at Galeria asking Pete Leddyif he were not overplaying his part. 

"You were right, " said the voice. "It was the whistle that made himso angry. "

Indistinctly she associated a slowly-shaping figure with the voice andrealized that she had been away in the unknown for a second. Yes, it wasall very well to talk about Sir Walter being out of fashion, but she hadbeen near to fainting, and in none of the affectation of the hoop-skirtage, either. Had she done any foolish thing in expression of a weaknessthat she had never known before? Had she extended her hand for support?Had he caught her as she wobbled in the saddle? No. She was relieved tosee that he was not near enough for that. 

"By no stretch of ethics can you charge yourself with furtherresponsibility or fears, " he continued. "Pete and I understand each otherperfectly, now. "

But in his jocularity ran something which was plain, if unspoken. It wasthat he would put an end to a disagreeable subject. His first words toher had provided a bridge--and burned it--from the bank of thedisagreeable to the bank of agreeable. Her own desire, with full masteryof her faculties coming swiftly, fell in with his. She wanted to blot outthat horror and scotch a sudden uprising of curiosity as to the exactnature of the gamble in death through which he had passed. It was enoughthat he was alive. 

The blurry figure became distinct, smiling with inquiry in a glance fromher to the stack of papers, magazines, and pamphlets which crowded hiscircling arms. He seemed to have emptied the post-office. There had notbeen any Pete Leddy; there had been no display of six-shooters. He hadgone in after the mail. Here he was ready to deliver it by the bushel, while he waited for orders. She had to laugh at his predicament as helowered his chin to steady a book on the top of the pile. 

"Oh, I meant to tell you that you were not to bring the second-classmatter!" she told him. "We always send a servant with a basket for that. You see what comes of having a father who is not only omnivorous, but hasa herbivorous capacity. "

He saw that the book had a row of Italian stamps across the wrapper. Unless that popular magazine stopped slipping, both the book and a heavyGerman pamphlet would go. He took two hasty steps toward her, in mockdistress of appeal. 

"I'll allow salvage if you act promptly!" he said. 

She lifted the tottering apex just in time to prevent its fall. 

"I'll take the book, " she said. "Father has been waiting months forit. We can separate the letters and leave the rest in the store to besent for. "

"The railroad station is on the other side of the town, isn't it?" heasked. 

"Yes. "

"I shall camp nearby, so it will be no trouble to leave my burden at yourdoor as I pass. "

"He does have the gift of oiling the wheels in either, big or littlemoments, " she thought, as she realized how simple and considerate hadbeen his course from the first. He was a stranger going on his way, stopping, however, to do her or any other traveller a favor _en route_. 

"Firio, we're ready to hear Jag Ear's bells!" he called. 

"_Sí_!" answered Firio. 

All the while the Indian had kept in the shadow, away from the spray oflight from the store lamp, unaware of the rapid drama that had passedamong the boxes and barrels. He had observed nothing unusual in the younglady, whose outward manifestation of what she had, witnessed was theclosing of her eyes. 

It was out of the question that Jack should mount a horse when botharms were crowded with their burden. He walked beside Mary's stirrupleather in the attitude of that attendant on royalty who bears a crownon a cushion. 

"Little Rivers is a new town, isn't it?" he asked. 

"Yes, the Town Wonderful, " she answered. "Father founded it. "

She spoke with an affection which ran as deep into the soil as youngroots after water. If on the pass she had seemed a part of the desert, of great, lonely distances and a far-flung carpet of dreams, here sheseemed to belong to books and gardens. 

"I wish I had time to look over the Town Wonderful in the morning, but mytrain goes very early, I believe. "

After his years of aimless travelling, to which he had so readilyconfessed, he had tied himself to a definite hour on a railroadschedule as something commanding and inviolable. Such inconsistencydid not surprise her. Had she not already learned to expectinconsistencies from him?

"Oh, it is all simple and primitive, but it means a lot to us, " she said. 

"What one's home and people mean to him is pretty well all of one's ownhuman drama, " he returned, seriously. 

The peace of evening was in the air and the lights along the singlestreet were a gentle and persistent protest of human life against themighty stretch of the enveloping mantle of night. From the cottages ofthe ranchers came the sound of voices. The twang of a guitar quiveringstarward made medley with Jag Ear's bells. 

Here, for a little distance, the trail, in its long reach on the desert, had taken on the dignity of the urban name of street. On either side, fronting the cottages, ran the slow waters of two irrigation ditches, gleaming where lamp-rays penetrated the darkness. The date of eachrancher's settlement was fairly indicated by the size of thequick-growing umbrella and pepper-trees which had been planted for shade. Thus all the mass of foliage rose like a mound of gentle slope toward thecentre of the town, where Jack saw vaguely the outlines of a ramblingbungalow, more spacious if no more pretentious than its neighbors in itsarchitecture. At a cement bridge over the ditch, leading to a broadveranda under the soft illumination of a big, wrought-iron lantern, Marydrew rein. 

"This is home, " she said; "and--and thank you!"

He could not see her face, which was in the shadow turned toward him, ashe looked into the light of the lantern from the other side of her pony. 

"And--thank you!"

It was as if she had been on the point of saying something else andcould not get the form of any sentence except these two words. Was thereanything further to say except "Thank you"? Anything but to repeat"Thank you"?

There he stood, this stranger so correctly introduced by the EternalPainter, with his burden, waiting instructions in this moment of awkwarddiffidence. He looked at her and at the porch and at his bundle of mailin a quizzical appeal. Then she realized that, in a peculiar lapse ofabstraction, she had forgotten about his encumberment. 

Before she could speak there was a sonorous hail from the house; a hailin keeping with the generous bulk of its owner, who had come through thedoor. He was well past middle-age, with a thatch of gray hair halfcovering his high forehead. In one hand he held the book that he had beenreading, and in the other a pair of big tortoise-shell glasses. 

"Mary, you are late--and what have we here?"

He was beaming at Jack as he came across the bridge and he broke intohearty laughter as he viewed Jack's preoccupation with thesecond-class matter. 

"At last! At last we have rural free delivery in Little Rivers! We arethe coming town! And your uniform, sir"--Jasper Ewold took in the cowboyoutfit with a sweeping glance which warmed with the picturesqueeffect--"it's a great improvement on the regulation; fit for freedelivery in Little Rivers, where nobody studies to be unconventional inany vanity of mistaking that for originality, but nobody need beconventional. "

He took some of the cargo in his own hands. With the hearty breeze of hispersonality he fairly blew Jack onto the porch, where magazines andpamphlets were dropped indiscriminately in a pile on a rattan settee. 

"You certainly have enough reading matter, " said Jack. "And I must begetting on to camp. "

For he had no invitation to stay from Mary and the conventional factthat he had to recognize is that a postman's call is not a social call. As he turned to go he faced her coming across the bridge. An Indianservant, who seemed to have materialized out of the night, had takencharge of her pony. 

"To camp! Never!" said Jasper Ewold. "Sir Knight, slip your lance in thering of the castle walls--but having no lance and this being no castle, well, Sir Knight in _chaparejos_--that is to say, Sir Chaps--let meinform you"--here Jasper Ewold threw back his shoulders and tossed hismane of hair, his voice sinking to a serious basso profundo--"yes, informyou, sir, that there is one convention, a local rule, that no strangercrosses this threshold at dinner-time without staying to dinner. " Therewas a resonance in his tone, a liveliness to his expression, that wasinfectious. 

"But Firio and Jag Ear and Wrath of God wait for me, " Jack said, enteringwith real enjoyment into the grandiose style. 

"High sounding company, sir! Let me see them!" demanded Jasper Ewold. 

Jack pointed to his cavalcade waiting in the half shadows, where thelamp-rays grew thin. Wrath of God's bony face was pointed lugubriouslytoward the door; Jag Ear was wiggling his fragment of ear. 

"And Moses on the mountain-top says that you stay!" declaredJasper Ewold. 

Jack looked at Mary. She had not spoken yet and he waited on her word. 

"Please do!" she said. "Father wants someone to talk to. "

"Yes, Sir Chaps, I shall talk; otherwise, why was man given a tongue inhis head and ideas?"

Refusal was out of the question. Accordingly, Firio was sent on to makecamp alone. 

"Now, Sir Chaps, now, Mr. --" began Jasper Ewold, pausing blankly. "Why, Mary, you have not given me his city directory name!"

"Mr. --" and Mary blushed. She could only pass the, blame back to theEternal Painter's oversight in their introduction. 

"Jack Wingfield!" said Jack, on his own account. 

"Jack Wingfield!" repeated Jasper Ewold, tasting the name. 

A flicker of surprise followed by a flicker of drawn intensity ran overhis features, and he studied Jack in a long glance, which he masked justin time to save it from being a stare. Jack was conscious of thescrutiny. He flushed slightly and waited for some word to explain it;but none came. Jasper Ewold's Olympian geniality returned in aspontaneous flood. 

"Come inside, Jack Wingfield, " he said. "Come inside, Sir Chaps--for thatis how I shall call you. "

The very drum-beat of hospitality was in his voice. It was a wonderfulvoice, deep and warm and musical; not to be forgotten. 

V

A SMILE AND A SQUARE CHIN

When a man comes to the door book in hand and you have the testimony ofthe versatility and breadth of his reading in half a bushel of mail forhim, you expect to find his surroundings in keeping. But in JasperEwold's living-room Jack found nothing of the kind. 

Heavy, natural beams supported the ceiling. On the gray cement walls werefour German photographs of famous marbles. The Venus de Milo lookedacross to the David of Michael Angelo; the Flying Victory across toRodin's Thinker. In the centre was a massive Florentine table, its broadtop bare except for a big ivory tusk paper-knife free from any mountingof silver. On the shelf underneath were portfolios of the reproductionsof paintings. 

An effect which at first was one of quiet spaciousness became impressiveand compelling. Its simplicity was without any of the artificiality thatsometimes accompanies an effort to escape over-ornamentation. No onecould be in the room without thinking through his eyes and with hisimagination. Wherever he sat he would look up to a masterpiece as thesole object of contemplation. 

"This is my room. Here, Mary lets me have my way, " said Jasper Ewold. "And it is not expensive. "

"The Japanese idea of concentration, " said Jack. 

Jasper Ewold, who had been watching the effect of the room on Jack, as hewatched it on every new-comer, showed his surprise and pleasure that thisyoung man in cowboy regalia understood some things besides camps andtrails; and this very fact made him answer in the vigorous and enjoyedcombatancy of the born controversialist. 

"Japanese? No!" he declared. "The little men with their storks and vaseshave merely discovered to us in decoration a principle which was Greek ina more majestic world than theirs. It was the true instinct of theclassic motherhood of our art before collectors mistook their residencesfor warehouses. "

"And the books?" Jack asked, boyishly. "Where are they? Yes, what do youdo with all the second-class matter?"

The question was bait to Jasper Ewold. It gave him an opportunity fordiscourse. 

"When I read I want nothing but a paper-cutter close at hand--a good, bigpaper-cutter, whose own weight carries it through the leaves. And I wantto be alone with that book. If I am too lazy to go to the library foranother, then it is not worth reading. When I get head-achy with printand look up, I don't want to stare at the backs of more books. I wantsomething to rest and fill the eye. I--"

"Father, " Mary admonished him, "I fear this is going to be long. Why notcontinue after Mr. Wingfield has washed off the dust of travel and we areat table?"

"Mary is merely jealous. She wants to hurry you to the dining-room, whichwas designed to her taste, " answered her father, with an affectation ofgrand indignation. "The dust of travel here is clean desert dust--but Iadmit that it is gritty. Come with me, Sir Chaps!"

He bade Jack precede him through a door diagonally opposite the one bywhich he had entered from the veranda. On the other side Jack foundhimself surrounded by walls of books, which formed a parallelogram arounda great deal table littered with magazines and papers. Here, indeed, theprinted word might riot as it pleased in the joyous variety and chaos ofthat truly omnivorous reader of herbivorous capacity. Out of the libraryJack passed into Jasper Ewold's bedroom. It was small, with a soldier'scot of exaggerated size that must have been built for his amplitude ofperson, and it was bare of ornament except for an old ivory crucifix. 

"There's a pitcher and basin, if you incline to a limited operation foroutward convention, " said Jasper Ewold; "and through that door you willfind a shower, if you are for frank, unlimited submersion of thealtogether. "

"Have I time for the altogether?" Jack asked. 

"When youth has not in this house, it marks a retrocession towardbarbarism for Little Rivers which I refuse to contemplate. Take yourshower, Sir Chaps, and"--a smile went weaving over the hills and valleysof Jasper Ewold's face--"and, mind, you take off those grand boots orthey will get full of water! You will find me in the library when you arethrough;" and, shaking with subterranean enjoyment of his own joke, heclosed the door. 

Cool water from the bowels of the mountains fell on a figure as slenderas that of the great Michael's David pictured in the living-room; afigure whose muscles ran rippling with leanness and suppleness, withoutthe bunching over-development of the athlete. He bubbled in shiverydelight with the first frigid sting of the downpour; he laughed inecstasy as he pulled the valve wide open, inviting a Niagara. 

While he was still glowing with the rough intimacy of the towel, heviewed the trappings thrown over the chair and his revolver holster onthe bureau in a sense of detachment, as if in the surroundings ofcivilization some voice of civilization made him wish for flannels inwhich to dine. Then there came a rap at the door, and an Indian appearedwith an envelope addressed in feminine handwriting. On the corner of thepage within was a palm-tree--a crest to which anybody who dwelt on thedesert might be entitled; and Jack read:

"DEAR MR. WINGFIELD:

"Please don't tell father about that horrible business on the pass. Itwill worry him unnecessarily and might interfere with my afternoon rides, which are everything to me. There is not the slightest danger in thefuture. After this I shall always go armed. 

"Sincerely yours, "MARY EWOLD. "

The shower had put him in such lively humor that his answer was born in aflash from memory of her own catechising of him on Galeria. 

"First, I must ask if you know how to shoot, " he scribbled beneath hersignature. 

The Indian seemed hardly out of the doorway before he was backwith a reply:

"I do, or I would not go armed, " it said. 

She had capped his satire with satire whose prick was, somehow, delicious. He regarded the sweep of her handwriting with a lingeringinterest, studying the swift nervous strokes before he sent the note backwith still another postscript:

"Of course I had never meant to tell anybody, " he wrote. "It is not athing to think of in that way. "

This, he thought, must be the end of the correspondence; but he waswrong. The peripatetic go-between reappeared, and under Jack's lastcommunication was written, "Thank you!" He could hardly write "Welcome!"in return. It was strictly a case of nothing more to say by eitherduelist. In an impulse he slipped the sheet, with its palm symbolic ofdesert mystery and oasis luxuriance, into his pocket. 

"Here I am in the midst of the shucks and biting into the meat of thekernel, " said Jasper Ewold, as Jack entered the library to find himstanding in the midst of wrappings which he had dropped on the floor;"yes, biting into very rich meat. "

He held up the book which was evidently the one that had balanceduncertainly on the pile which Jack had brought from the post-office. 

"Professor Giuccamini's researches! It is as interesting as a novel. Butcome! You are hungry!"

Book in hand, and without removing his tortoise-shell spectacles, hepassed out into the garden at the rear. There a cloth was laid undera pavilion. 

"In a country where it never rains, " said the host, "where it is eternalspring, walls to a house are conventions on which to stack books and hangpictures. Mary has chosen nature for her decorative effect--cheaper, even, than mine. In the distance is Galeria; in the foreground, what wasdesert six years ago. "

The overhead lamp deepened to purple the magenta of the bougainvilleavines running up the pillars of the pavilion; made the adjacent rows ofpeony blossoms a pure, radiant white; while beyond, in the shadows, was abroad path between rows of young palms. 

Mary appeared around a hedge which hid the open-air kitchen. The girl ofthe gray riding-habit was transformed into a girl in white. Jack saw heras a domestic being. He guessed that she had seen that the table was setright; that she had had a look-in at the cooking; that the hands whoseboast it was that they could shoot, had picked the jonquils in theslender bronze vase on the table. 

"Father, there you are again, bringing a book to the dining-room againstthe rules, " she warned him; "against all your preachments about readingat meals!"

"That's so, Mary, " said Jasper Ewold, absently, regarding the book as ifsome wicked genius had placed it in his hand quite unbeknown to him. "But, Mary, it is Professor Giuccamini at last! Giuccamini that I havewaited for so long! I beg your pardon, Sir Chaps! When I have somebody totalk to I stand doubly accused. Books at dinner! I descend into dotage!"

In disgust he started toward the house with the book. But in the verydoorway he paused and, reopening the book, turned three or four pageswith ravenous interest. 

"Giuccamini and I agree!" he shouted. "He says there is no doubt thatBurlamacchi and Pico were correct. Cosmo de' Medici did call Savonarolato his death-bed, and I am glad of it. I like good stories to turn outtrue! But here I have a listener--a live listener, and I ramble on aboutdead tyrants and martyrs. I apologize--I apologize!" and he disappearedin the library. 

"Father does not let me leave books in the living-room, which is his. Why should he bring them to the dining-room, which is mine?" Maryexplained. 

"There must be law in every household, " Jack agreed. 

"Yes, somebody fresh to talk to, at, around, and through!" called JasperEwold, as he reappeared. "Yes, and over your head; otherwise I shall notbe flattered by my own conversation. "

"He glories in being an intellectual snob, " Mary said. "Please pretend attimes not to understand him. "

"Thank you, Mary. You are the corrective that keeps my paternalsuperiority in balance, " answered her father, with a comprehending waveof his hand indicating his sense of humor at the same time as playfulinsistence on his role as forensic master of the universe. 

How he did talk! He was a mill to which all intellectual grist waswelcome. Over its wheel the water ran now singing, again with the roar ofa cataract. He changed theme with the relish of one who rambles at will, and the emotion of every opinion was written on the big expanse of hisfeatures and enforced with gestures. He talked of George Washington, ofAndrea del Sarto, of melon-growing, trimming pepper-trees, the DivinaCommedia, fighting rose-bugs, of Schopenhauer and of Florence--a greatdeal about Florence, a city that seemed to hang in his mind as a sort ofRenaissance background for everything else, even for melon-growing. 

"You are getting over my head!" Jack warned him at times, politely. 

"That is the trouble, " said Jasper Ewold. "Consider the hardship ofbeing the one wise man in the world! I find it lonely, inconvenient, stupefying. Why, I can't even convince Jim Galway that I know more aboutdry farming than he!"

Jack listened raptly, his face glowing. Once, when he looked in hishost's direction suddenly, after speaking to Mary, he found that he wasthe object of the same inquiring scrutiny that he had been on the porch. In lulls he caught the old man's face in repose. It had sadness, then, the sadness of wreckage; sadness against which he seemed to fence in hiswordy feints and thrusts. 

"Christian civilization began in the Tuscan valley, " the philosopherproceeded, harking back to the book which had arrived by the evening'smail. "Florence was a devil--Florence was divine. They raised geniusesand devils and martyrs: the most cloud-topping geniuses, the worstdevils, the most saintly martyrs. But better than being a drone in aFlorence pension is all this"--with a wave of his hand to the garden andthe stars--"which I owe to Mary and the little speck on her lungs whichbrought us here after--after we had found that we had not as much moneyas we thought we had and an old fellow who had been an idling student, mostly living abroad all his life, felt the cramp of the material factsof board-and-clothes money. It made Mary well. It made me know thefulness of wisdom of the bee and the ant, and it brought me back to thespirit of America--the spirit of youth and accomplishment. Instead ofdreaming of past cities, I set out to make a city like a true American. Here we came to camp in our first travelled delight of desert spaces forher sake; and here we brought what was left of the fortune and started asettlement. "

The spectator-philosopher attitude of audience to the world's stagepassed. He became the builder and the rancher, enthusiastically dwellingon the growth of orchards and gardens in expert fondness. As Jacklistened, the fragrance of flowers was in his nostrils and in intervalsbetween Jasper Ewold's sentences he seemed to hear the rustle of borningleaf-fronds breaking the silence. But the narrative was not an idyll. Toil and patience had been the handmaidens of the fecundity of the soil. Prosperity had brought an entail of problems. Jasper Ewold mentioned thembriefly, as if he would not ask a guest to share the shadows which theybrought to his brow. 

"The honey of our prosperity brings us something besides the bees. Itbrings those who would share the honey without work, " said he. "It bringsthe Bill Lang hive and Pete Leddy. "

At the mention of the name, Jack's and Mary's glances met. 

"You have promised not to tell, " hers was saying. 

"I will not, " his was answering. 

But clearly he had grasped the fact that Little Rivers was getting out ofits patron's hands, and every honest man in that community wanted to berid of Pete Leddy. 

"I should think your old friend, Cosmo de' Medici, would have found away, " Jack suggested. 

"Cosmo is for talk, " said Mary. "At heart father is a Quaker. "

"Some are for lynching, " said Jasper Ewold, thoughtfully. "Begin topromote order with disorder and where will you end?" he inquired, belligerently. "This is not the Middle Ages. This is the Little Riversof peace. "

Then, after a quotation from Cardinal Newman, which seemed prettyfar-fetched to deal with desert ruffians, he was away again, setting outfruit trees and fighting the scale. 

"And our Date Tree Wonderful!" he continued. "This year we get our firstfruit, unless the book is wrong. You cannot realize what this first-bornof promise means to Little Rivers. Under the magic of water it completesthe cycle of desert fecundity, from Scotch oats and Irish potatoes to theArab's bread. Bananas I do not include. Never where the banana grows hasthere been art or literature, a good priesthood, unimpassionedlaw-makers, honest bankers, or a noble knighthood. It is just a littletoo warm. Here we can build a civilization which neither roasts us insummer nor freezes us in winter. "

There was a fluid magnetism in the rush of Jasper Ewold's junketingverbiage which carried the listener on the bosom of a pleasant stream. Jack was suddenly reminded that it must be very late and he had faroverstayed the retiring hour of the desert, where the Eternal Paintercommands early rising. 

"Going--going so soon!" protested Jasper Ewold. 

"So late!" Jack smiled back. 

To prove that it was, he called attention to the fact, when they passedthrough the living-room to the veranda, that not a light remained in anyranch-house. 

"I have not started my talk yet, " said Jasper. "But next time you come Iwill really make a beginning--and you shall see the Date Tree Wonderful. "

"I go by the morning train, " Jack returned. 

"So! so!" mused Jasper. "So! so!" he objected, but not gloomily. "I get agood listener only to lose him!"

But Jack was hardly conscious of the philosopher's words. In thatinterval he had still another glimpse of Mary's eyes without the veil andsaw deeper than he had before; saw vast solitudes, inviting yet offeringno invitation, where bright streams seemed to flash and sing under thesunlight and then disappear in a desert. That was her farewell to theeasy traveller who had stopped to do her a favor on the trail. And heseemed to ask nothing more in that spellbound second; nor did he afterthe veil had fallen, and he acquitted himself of some spoken form ofthanks for an evening of happiness. 

"A pleasant journey!" Mary said. 

"Luck, Sir Chaps, luck!" called Jasper Ewold. 

Jack's easy stride, as he passed out into the night, confirmed the lastglimpse of his smiling, whimsical "I don't care" attitude, which neverminded the danger sign on the precipice's edge. 

"He does not really want to go back to New York, " Mary remarked, and wassurprised to find that she had spoken her thought aloud. 

"I hardly agree with that opinion, " said her father absently, histhoughts far afield from the fetter of his words. "But of one thing I amsure, John Wingfield! A smile and a square chin!"

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. 

"Señorita! señorita!" he exclaimed, and his voice, vibrant with somethingstronger than surprise, had a certain knowing quality, as if heunderstood more than he dared to utter. "Señorita, 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. 

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

"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, señorita? 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. 

VII

WHAT HAPPENED AT LANG'S

While Jack had been playing the pioneer of rural free delivery in LittleRivers, Pete Leddy, in the rear of Bill Lang's store, was refusing allstimulants, but indulging in an unusually large cud of tobacco. 

"Liquor ain't no help in drawing a bead, " he explained to the loungerswho followed him through the door after Jack had gone. 

If Pete did not want to drink it was not discreet to press him, considering the mood he was in. The others took liberal doses, whichseemed only to heighten the detail of the drama which they had witnessed. To Mary it had been all pantomime; to them it was dynamic with language. It was something beyond any previous contemplation of possibility intheir cosmos. 

The store had been enjoying an average evening. All present wereexpressing their undaunted faith in the invincibility of James J. Jeffries, when a smiling stranger appeared in the doorway. He was dressedlike a regular cowboy dude. His like might have appeared on the stage, but had never been known to get off a Pullman in Arizona. And the instanthe appeared, up flashed Pete Leddy's revolver. 

The gang had often discussed when and how Pete would get his seventhvictim, and here they were about to be witnesses of the deed. Instincttaught them the proper conduct on such occasions. The tenderfoot was asgood as dead; but, being a tenderfoot and naturally a bad shot and proneto excitement, he might draw and fire wild. They ducked with the avidityof woodchucks into their holes--all except Jim Galway, who remainedleaning against the counter. 

"I gin ye warning!" they heard Pete say, and closed their eyesinvoluntarily--all except Jim Galway--with their last impression thetenderfoot's ingenuous smile and the gleam on Pete's gun-barrel. Theywaited for the report, as Mary had, and then they heard steps and lookedup to see that dude tenderfoot, still smiling, going straight toward themuzzle pointed at his head, his hands at his side in no attempt to draw. The thing was incredible and supernatural. 

"Pete is letting him come close first, " they thought. 

But there, unbelievable as it was, Pete was lowering his revolver andthe tenderfoot's hand was on his shoulder in a friendly, explanatoryposition. Pete seemed in a trance, without will-power over his triggerfinger, and Pete was the last man in the world that you would expectto lose his nerve. Jim Galway being the one calm observer, whosevision had not been disturbed by precipitancy in taking cover, let ushave his version. 

"He just walked over to Pete--that's all I can say--walked over to him, simple and calm, like he was going to ask for a match. All I could thinkof and see was his smile right into that muzzle and the glint in hiseyes, which were looking into Pete's. Someway you couldn't shoot intothat smile and that glint, which was sort of saying, 'Go ahead! I'mleaving it to you and I don't care!'--just as if a flash of powder wasall the same to him as a flash of lightning. "

The desert had given Jack life; and it would seem as if what the deserthad given, it might take away. He was not going to humble himself bythrowing up his arms or standing still for execution. He was on his wayinto the store and he continued on his way. If something stopped him, then he would not have to take the train East in the morning. 

"Now if you want to kill me, Pete Leddy, " the astonished group heard thisstranger say, "why, I'm not going to deny you the chance. But I don'twant you to do it just out of impulse, and I know that is not your ownreasoned way. You certainly would want sporting rules to prevail and thatI should have an equal chance of killing you. So we will go outside, stand off any number of paces you say, let our gun-barrels hang down evenwith the seams of our trousers, and wait for somebody to say 'one, two, three--fire!'"

Not once had that peculiar smile faded from Jack's lips or the glint inhis eyes diverted from its probe of Leddy's eyes. His voice went wellwith the smile and with an undercurrent of high voltage which seemed theaudible corollary of the glint. Every man knew that, despite his gayadornment, he was not bluffing. He had made his proposition in deadlyearnest and was ready to carry it out. Pete Leddy shuffled and bit theends of his moustache, and his face was drawn and white and his shoulderburning under the easy grip of Jack's hand. From the bore of theunremitting glance that had confounded him he shifted his gazesheepishly. 

"Oh, h--l!" he said, and the tone, in its disgust and its attempt tolaugh off the incident, gave the simplicity of an exclamation from hislimited vocabulary its character. "Oh, h--l! I was just trying you out asa tenderfoot--a little joke!"

At this, all the crowd laughed in an explosive breath of relief. Theinflection of the laugh made Pete go red and look challengingly from faceto face, with the result that all became piously sober. 

"Then it is all right? I meant in no way to wound your feelings or evenyour susceptibilities, " said Jack; and, accepting the incident as closed, he turned to the counter and asked for the Ewold mail. 

Free from that smile and the glint of the eyes, Pete came to in a torrentof reaction. He, with six notches on his gun-handle, had been trifledwith by a grinning tenderfoot. Rage mounted red to his brow. No man whohad humiliated him should live. He would have shot Jack in the back if ithad not been for Jim Galway, lean as a lath, lantern-jawed, with deep-setblue eyes, his bearing different from that of the other loungers. Jim hadnot joined in the laugh over Pete's explanation; he had remainedimpassive through the whole scene; but the readiness with which heknocked Leddy's revolver down showed that this immovability had letnothing escape his quiet observation. 

When Jack looked around and understood what had passed, his facewas without the smile. It was set and his body had stiffened freeof the counter. 

"I'll take the gun away from him. It's high time somebody did, "said Galway. 

"I think you had better, if that is the only way that he knows how tofight, " said Jack. "I have wondered how he got the six. Presumably hemurdered them. "

"To their faces, as I'll get you!" Leddy answered. "I'll play your waynow, one, two, three--fire!"

Galway, convinced that this stranger did not know how to shoot, turned to Jack:

"It's not worth your being a target for a dead shot, " he said. 

"In the morning, yes, " answered Jack; and he was smiling again in a waythat swept the audience with uncanniness. "But to-night I am engaged. Make it early to-morrow, as I have to take the first train East. "

"Well, are you going to let me go?" Leddy asked Jim, while he looked inappeal to the loungers, who were his men. 

"Yes, by all means, " Jack told Galway. "And as I shall want a man withme, may I rely on you? Four of us will be enough, with a fifth to givethe word. "

"Ropey Smith can go with me, " said Leddy. 

It scarcely occurred to them to give the name of duel to this meeting, which Jack held was the only fair way when one felt that he must havesatisfaction from an adversary in the form of death. An _arroyo_ a milefrom town was chosen and the time dawn, for a meeting which was toreverse the ethics of that boasted fair-play in which the man who firstgets a bead is the hero. 

"It seems a mediaeval day for me, " Jack said, when the details wereconcluded. "Good-night, gentlemen, " he added, after Bill Lang, withfingers that bungled from agitation, had filled his arms withsecond-class matter. 

Jim Galway resumed his position, leaning against the counter watchfullyas the gang filed out to the rear to wet up, and in his right hand, whichwas in his pocket, nestled an automatic pistol. 

"I'd shot Pete Leddy dead--'twas the first real fair chance within thelaw--so help me, God! I would, " he thought, "if there had been time tospare, and save that queer tenderfoot's life. And me a second in aregular duel! Well, I'll be--but it ain't no regular duel. One of 'em isgoing to drop--that is, the tenderfoot is. I don't just know how to linehim up. He beats me!"

VIII

ACCORDING TO CODE

It was the supreme moment of night before dawn. A violet mist shroudedeverything. The clamminess of the dew touched Mary's forehead and herhand brushed the moisture-laden hedge as she left the Ewold yard. Sheremembered that Jack had said that he would camp near the station, sothere was no doubt in which direction she should go. Hastening along thesilent street, it was easy for her to imagine that she and Ignacio werethe only sentient beings, abroad in a world that had stopped breathing. 

Softly, impalpably, with both the graciousness of a host and thedeterminedness of an intruder who will not be gainsaid, the first rays ofmorning light filtered into the mist. The violet went pink. From palepink it turned to rose-pink; to the light of life which was as yet asstill as the light of the moon. The occasional giant cactus in the openbeyond the village outskirts ceased to be spectral. 

For the first time Mary Ewold was in the presence of the wonder ofdaybreak on the desert without watching for the harbinger of gold in theV of the pass, with its revelation of a dome of blue where unfathomablespace had been. For the first time daybreak interested her only inbroadening and defining her vision of her immediate surroundings. 

When the permeating softness suddenly yielded to full transparency, spreading from the fanfare of the rising sun come bolt above the range, and the mist rose, she left the road at sight of two ponies and a burroin a group, their heads together in drooping fellowship. She knew them atonce for P. D. , Wrath of God, and Jag Ear. Nearby rose a thin spiral ofsmoke and back of it was a huddled figure, Firio, preparing the morningmeal. Animals and servant were as motionless as the cactus. Evidentlythey did not hear her footsteps. They formed a picture of nightlyoblivion, unconscious that day had come. Firio's face was hidden by hisbig Mexican hat; he did not look up even when she was near. She noted thetwo blanket-rolls where the two comrades of the trail had slept. She sawthat both were empty and knew that Jack had already gone. 

"Where is Mr. Wingfield?" she demanded, breathlessly. 

Firio was not startled. To be startled was hardly in his Indian nature. The hat tipped upward and under the brim-edge his black eyes gleamed, asthe sandy soil all around him gleamed in the dew. He shrugged hisshoulders when he recognized the lady speaking as the one who had delayedhim at the foot of the pass the previous afternoon. Thanks to her, he hadbeen left alone without his master the whole evening. 

"He go to stretch his legs, " answered Firio. 

Apparently, Sir Chaps had been disinclined to disturb the routine of campby telling Firio anything about the duel. 

"Where did he go? In which direction?" Mary persisted. 

Firio moved the coffee-pot closer to the fire. This seemed to requirethe concentration of all his faculties, including that of speech. He wasa fit servant for one who took duels so casually. 

"Where? Where?" she repeated. 

"Where? Have you no tongue?" snapped Ignacio. 

Firio gazed all around as if looking for Jack; then nodded in thedirection of rising ground which broke at the edge of a depression aboutfifty yards away. Her impatience had made the delay of a minute seemhours, while the brilliance of the light had now become that of broadday. She forgot all constraint. She ran, and as she ran she listened fora shot as if it were something inevitable, past due. 

And then she uttered a muffled cry of relief, as the scene in adepression which had been the bed of an ancient river flashed before herwith theatric completeness. In the bottom of it were five men, twomoving and three stationary. Jim Galway and Ropey Smith were walkingside by side, keeping a measured step as they paced off a certaindistance, while Bill Lang and Pete Leddy and Jack stood by. Leddy andLang were watching the process inflexibly. Jack was in the costume whichhad flushed her curiosity so vividly on the pass and he appeared thesame amused, disinterested and wondering traveller who had then comeupon strange doings. 

She stopped, her temples throbbing giddily, her breaths coming in gasps;stopped to gain mastery of herself before she decided what she would donext. On the opposite bank of the _arroyo_ was a line of heads, likethose of infantry above a parapet, and she comprehended that, in thesame way that news of a cock-fight travels, the gallery gods of LittleRivers had received a tip of a sporting event so phenomenal that itchanged the sluggards among them into early risers. They were makingthemselves comfortable lying flat on their stomachs and exposing aslittle as possible of their precious bodies to the danger of thattenderfoot firing wild. 

It was a great show, of which they would miss no detail; and all hadtheir interest whetted by some possible new complication of the plot whenthey saw the tall, familiar figure of Jasper Ewold's daughter standingagainst the skyline. She felt the greedy inquiry of their eyes; sheguessed their thoughts. 

This new element of the situation swept her with a realization of thepunishment she must suffer for that chance meeting on Galeria and thenwith resentful anger, which transformed Jack Wingfield's indifference tocallous bravado. 

Must she face that battery of leers from the town ruffians while sheimplored a stranger, who had been nothing to her yesterday and would benothing tomorrow, to run away from a combat which was a creation of hisown stubbornness? She was in revolt against herself, against him, andagainst the whole miserable business. If she proceeded, public opinionwould involve her in a sentimental interest in a stranger. She must livewith the story forever, while to an idle traveller it was only anadventure at a way-station on his journey. 

She had but to withdraw in feigned surprise from the sight of a scenewhich she had come upon unawares and she would be free of any associationwith it. For all Little Rivers knew that she was given to random walksand rides. No one would be surprised that she was abroad at this earlyhour. It would be ascribed to the nonsense which afflicted the Ewolds, father and daughter, about sunrises. 

Yes, she had been in a nightmare. With the light of day she was seeingclearly. Had she not warned him about Leddy? Had not she done her part?Should she submit herself to fruitless humiliation? Go to him in as muchdistress as if his existence were her care? If he would not listen to heryesterday, why should she expect him to listen to her now?

She would return to her garden. Its picture of content and isolationcalled her away from the stare of the faces on the other bank. She turnedon her heel abruptly, took two or three spasmodic steps and stoppedsuddenly, confronted with another picture--one of imagination--that ofJack Wingfield lying dead. The recollection of a voice, the voice thathad stopped the approach of Leddy's passion-inflamed face to her own onthe pass, sounded in her ears. 

She faced around, drawn by something that will and reason could notovercome, to see that Jim Galway and Ropey Smith had finished their taskof pacing off the distance. The two combatants were starting for theirstations, their long shadows in the slant of the morning sunlighttravelling over the sand like pursuing spectres. Leddy went with thequick, firm step which bespoke the keenness of his desire; Jack moreslowly, at a natural gait. His station was so near her that she couldreach him with a dozen steps. And he was whistling--the only sound in asilence which seemed to stretch as far as the desert--whistling gaily inapparent unconsciousness that the whole affair was anything but play. The effect of this was benumbing. It made her muscles go limp. She sankdown for very want of strength to keep erect; and Ignacio, hardlyobserved, keeping close to her dropped at her side. 

"Ignacio, tell the young man, the one who was our guest last evening, that I wish to see him!" she gasped. 

With flickering, shrewd eyes Ignacio had watched her distress. He cravedthe word that should call him to service and was off with a bound. Hisrushing, agitated figure was precipitated into a scene hard set as men ona chess-board in deadly serenity. Leddy and Jack, were already facingeach other. 

"Señor! Señor!" Ignacio shouted, as he ran. "Señor Don't Care of the BigSpurs--wait!"

The message which he had to give was his mistress's and, therefore, nobody else's business. He rose on tiptoes to whisper it into Jack'sear. Jack listened, with head bent to catch the words. He looked over toMary for an instant of intent silence and then raised his empty lefthand in signal. 

"Sorry, but I must ask for a little delay!" he called to Leddy. His tonewas wonderful in its politeness and he bowed considerately to hisadversary. 

"I thought it was all bluff!" Leddy answered. "You'll get it, though--you'll get it in the old way if you haven't the nerve to take itin yours!"

"Really, I am stubbornly fond of my way, " Jack said. "I shall be only aminute. That will give you time to steady your nerves, " he added, in theencouraging, reassuring strain of a coach to a man going to the bat. 

He was coming toward Mary with his easy, languid gait, radiant of casualinquiry. The time of his steps seemed to be reckoned in succeedinghammer-beats in her brain. He was coming and she had to find reasons tokeep him from going back; because if it had not been for her he would bequite safe. Oh, if she could only be free of that idea of obligation tohim! All the pain, the confusion, the embarrassment was on her side. Hisvery manner of approach, in keeping with the whole story of his conducttoward her, showed him incapable of such feelings. She had anotherreaction. She devoutly wished that she had not sent for him. 

Had not his own perversity taken his fate out of her hands? If hepreferred to die, why should it be her concern? Should she volunteerherself as a rescuer of fools? The gleaming sand of the _arroyo_ rose ina dazzling mist before her eyes, obscuring him, clothing him with theunreality of a dream; and then, in physical reality, he emerged. He wasso near as she rose spasmodically that she could have laid her hand onhis shoulder. His hat under his arm, he stood smiling in the bland, questioning interest of a spectator happening along the path, even as hehad in her first glimpse of him on the pass. 

"I don't care! Go on! Go on!" she was going to say. "You have made sportof me! You make sport of everything! Life itself is a joke to you!"

The tempest of the words was in her eyes, if it did not reach hertongue's end. It was halted by the look of hurt surprise, of real pain, which appeared on his face. Was it possible, after all, that he couldfeel? The thought brought forth the passionate cry of her mission afterthat sleepless night. 

"I beg of you--I implore you--don't!"

Had anyone told her yesterday that she would have been begging any manin melodramatic supplication for anything, she would have thought ofherself as mad. Wasn't she mad? Wasn't he mad? Yet she broke intopassionate appeal. 

"It is horrible--unspeakable! I cannot bear it!"

A flood of color swept his cheeks and with it came a peculiar, feminine, almost awkward, gentleness. His air was that of wordless humility. Heseemed more than ever an uncomprehending, sure prey for Leddy. 

"Don't you realize what death is?" she asked. 

The question, so earnest and searching, had the contrary effect on him. It changed him back to his careless self. He laughed in the way of onewho deprecates another's illusion or passing fancy. This added to herconviction that he did not realize, that he was incapable of realizing, his position. 

"Do you think I am about to die?" he asked softly. 

"With Pete Leddy firing at you twenty yards away--yes! And you pose--youpose! If you were human you would be serious!"

"Pose?" He repeated the word. It startled him, mystified him. "Theclothes I bought to please Firio, you mean?" he inquired, his facelighting. 

"No, about death. It is horrible--horrible! Death for which I amresponsible!"

"Why, have you forgotten that we settled all that?" he asked. "It was notyou. It was the habit I had formed of whistling in the loneliness of thedesert. I am sorry, now, that I did not stick to singing, even at theexpense of a sore throat. "

Now he called to Leddy, and his voice, high-pitched and powerful, seemedto travel in the luminous air as on resilient, invisible wires. 

"Leddy, wasn't it the way I whistled to you the first time we met thatmade you want satisfaction? You remember"--and he broke into a whistle. His tone was different from that to Leddy on the pass; the whistle wasdifferent. It was shrill and mocking. 

"Yes, the whistle!" yelled Leddy. "No man can whistle to me like thatand live!"

Jack laughed as if he appreciated all the possibilities of humor inherentin the picture of the bloodthirsty Leddy, the waiting seconds and thegallery. He turned to Mary with a gesture of his outstretched hands:

"There, you see! I brought it on myself. "

"You are brutal! You are without feeling--you are ridiculous--you--" shestormed, chokingly. 

And in face of this he became reasoning, philosophical. 

"Yes, I admit that it is all ridiculous, even to farce, this little_comédie humaine_. But we must remember that beside the age of the desertnone of us last long. Ridiculous, yes; but if I will whistle, why, then, I must play out the game I've started. "

He was looking straight into her eyes, and there was that in his gazewhich came as a surprise and with something of the effect of a blade outof a scabbard. It chilled her. It fastened her inactive to the earth witha helplessness that was uncanny. It mixed the element of fear for himwith the element of fear of him. 

"Remember I am of age--and I don't mind, " he added, with the faintestglint of satire in his reassurance. 

He was walking away, with a wave of his hand to Leddy; he was goingover the precipice's edge after thanking the danger sign. He did nothasten, nor did he loiter. The precipice resolved itself into anincident of a journey of the same order as an ankle-deep streamtrickling across a highway. 

IX

THE DEVIL IS OUT

She had done her best and she had failed. What reason was there for herto remain? Should she endure witnessing in reality the horror which shehad pictured so vividly in imagination? A flash of fire! The fall of acareening figure to the earth! Leddy's grin of satisfaction! Therejoicing of his clan of spectators over the exploit, while youth whichsang airs to the beat of a pony's hoofs and knew the worship of theEternal Painter lay dead!

What reason to remain except to punish herself! She would go. Butsomething banished reason. She was held in the leash of suspense, staringwith clearness of vision in one second; staring into a mist the next;while the coming and going of Ignacio's breaths between his teeth was theonly sound in her ears. 

"Señor Don't Care of the Big Spurs will win!" he whispered. 

"He will?" she repeated, like one marvelling, in the tautness of everynerve and muscle, that she had the power of speech. 

She peered into Ignacio's face. Its Indian impassivity was gone. His lipswere twitching; his eyes were burning points between half-closed lids. 

"Why?" she asked. "How?"

"I know. I watch him. I have seen a mountain lion asleep in a tree. Hispaw is like velvet. He smiles. There seems no fight in him. I know. Thereis a devil, a big devil, in Señor Don't Care. It sleeps so much it veryterrible when it awakes. And Pete Leddy--he is all the time awake; allthe time too ready. Something in him will make his arm shake when themoment to shoot comes and something in Señor Don't Care--his devil--willmake his arm steady. "

Could Ignacio be right? Did Jack really know how to shoot? Was heconfident of the outcome? Were his smiles the mask of a conviction thathe was to kill and not to be killed? After all, had his attitude towardher been merely acting? Had she undergone this humiliation as the fish onthe line of the mischievous play of one who had stopped over a train inorder to do murder? No! If he were capable of such guile he knew thatLeddy could shoot well and that twenty yards was a deadly range for agood shot. He was taking a chance and the devil in him was laughing atthe chance, while it laughed at her for thinking that he was an innocentgoing to slaughter in expression of a capricious sense of chivalry. 

"He will win--he will win if Leddy plays fair!" Ignacio repeated. 

Now she was telling herself that it was solely for the sake of herconscience that she wanted to see Señor Don't Care survive; solely forthe sake of her conscience that she wanted to see him go aboard the trainsafe. After that, she could forget ever having owed this trifler thefeeling of gratitude for a favor done. Literally, he must live in orderto be a dead and unremembered incident of her existence. 

And Jack was back at his station, with the bright sunlight heighteningthe colors of his play cowboy attire, his weight on the ball of his rightfoot thrown well ahead of the other, his head up, but the whole effectlanguid, even deferential. He seemed about to take off his hat to thejoyous sky of a fair day in May. His shadow expressed the same feeling ashis pose, that of tranquil youth with its eyes on the horizon. Leddy hadthe peculiar slouch of the desperado, which is associated with the spreadof pioneering civilization by the raucous criers of red-bloodedindividualism. If Jack's bearing was amateurish, then Pete's wasprofessional in its threatening pose; and his shadow, like himself, hadan unrelieved hardness of outline. 

Both drew their guns from their holsters and lowered them till thebarrels lay even with the trousers seams. They awaited the word to firewhich Bill Lang, who stood at an angle equidistant from the two men, was to give. 

"Wait!" Jack called, in a tone which indicated that something hadrecurred to him. Then a half laugh from him fell on the brilliant, shining, hard silence with something of the sound of a pebble slippingover glare ice. 

"Leddy, it has just occurred to me that we are both foolish--honestly, weare!" he said. "The idea when Arizona is so sparsely settled of ourstarting out to depopulate it in such a premeditated manner on such abeautiful morning, and all because I was such an inept whistler! Why, ifI had realized what a perfectly bad whistler I was I would never havewhistled again. If my whistle hurt your feelings I am sorry, and I--"

"No, you don't!" yelled Leddy. "I've waited long enough! It'sfight, you--"

"Oh, all right! You are so emphatic, " Jack answered. His voice was stillpleasant, but shot with something metallic. The very shadow of him seemedto stiffen with the stiffening of his muscles. 

"Ready!" called Bill Lang. 

The ruling passion that had carved six notches on his gun-handleoverwhelmed Pete Leddy. At least, let us give him the benefit of thedoubt and say that this and not calculation was responsible for hisaction. Before the word for preparation was free of Lang's lips, andwithout waiting for the word to fire, his revolver came up in a swiftquarter-circle. He was sure of his aim at that range with a ready draw. Again and again he had thus hit his target in practice and six times hehad winged his man by such agile promptness. 

With the flash from the muzzle all the members of the gallery rose onhands and knees. They were as sure that there was to be a seventh notchas of their identity. There was no question in their minds but Pete hadplayed a smart trick. They had known from the first that he would win. And the proof of it was in the sudden, uncontrollable movement of theadversary. 

Jack whirled half round. He was falling. But even as he fell he was stillfacing his adversary. He plunged forward unsteadily and came to rest onhis left elbow. A trickle of blood showed on the chap of his left leg, which had tightened as his knee twisted under him. Leddy's rage had beenso hot that for once his trigger finger had been too quick. He had aimedtoo low. But he was sure that he had done for his man and he lookedtriumphantly toward the gallery gods whose hero he was. They had nowrisen to their feet. In answer to their congratulations he waved hisleft hand, palm out, in salutation. His gun-hand had dropped back to histrousers seam. 

Even as it dropped, Jack's revolver had risen, his own gun-hand steadiedin the palm of his left hand, which had an elbow in the sand for a rest. Victor and spectators, in their preoccupation with the relief and elationof a drama finished, had their first warning of what was to come in avoice that did not seem like the voice of the tenderfoot as they hadheard it, but of another man. And Leddy was looking at a black hole in arim of steel which, though twenty yards away, seemed hot against hisforehead, while he turned cold. 

"Now, Pete Leddy, do not move a muscle!" Jack told him. "Pete Leddy, you did not play my way. I still have a shot due, and I am going tokill you!"

Jack's face seemed never to have worn a smile. It was all chin, and thin, tightly-pressed lips, and solid, straight nose, bronze and unyielding. 

"And I am going to kill you!"

This was surely the devil of Ignacio's imagery speaking in him--a cold, passionless, gray-eyed devil. Though they had never seen him shoot, everybody felt now that he could shoot with deadly accuracy and thatthere was no play cowboy in his present mood. He had the bead of deathon Leddy and he would fire with the first flicker of resistance. Hiscall seemed to have sunk the feet of everyone beneath the sand tobed-rock and riveted them there. Lang and the two seconds were asmotionless as statues. 

Mary recalled Leddy's leer at her on the pass, with its intent ofsomething more horrible than murder. Savagery rose in her heart. It wasright that he should be killed. He deserved his fate. But no sooner wasthe savagery born--born, she felt, of the very hypnosis of that carvedface--than she cast it out shudderingly in the realization that she hadwished the death of a fellow human being! She looked away from Jack; andthen it occurred to her that he must be bleeding. He was again acompanion of the trail, his strength ebbing away. Her impulse wasretarded by no fear of the gallery now. It brought her to her feet. 

"But first drop your revolver!" she heard Jack call, as she ran. 

She saw it fall from Leddy's trembling hand, as a dead leaf goes free ofa breeze-shaken limb. All the fight was out of him. The courage of sixnotches was not the courage to accept in stoicism the penalty of foulplay. And that black rim was burning his forehead. 

"Galway, you have a gun?" Jack asked. 

"Yes, " Galway answered, mechanically. His presence of mind, which hadbeen so sure in the store, was somewhat shaken. He had seen men killed, but never in such deliberate fashion. 

"Take it out'"

There was a quality in the command like frosty madness, which oneinstinctively obeyed. The half-prostrate figure of the tenderfoot seemedto dominate everything--men, earth, and air. 

Mary had a glimpse of Galway drawing an automatic pistol from his pocketwhen she dropped at Jack's side. She knew that Jack had not heard or seenher approach. All his will was flowing out along a pistol's sight, evenas his blood was flowing out on the sand in a broadening circle of red. 

It was well that she had come. Her fingers were splashed as she felt forthe artery, which she closed by leaning her whole weight on the thumb. 

Ignacio had followed her and immediately after him came Firio, who hadbeen startled in his breakfast preparations by the sound of a shot andhad set out to investigate its cause. He was as changed as his master; atwitching, fierce being, glaring at her and at the wound and thenprolongedly and watchfully at Pete Leddy. 

"Can you shoot to kill?" Jack asked Galway, in a piercing summons. 

"Yes, " drawled Galway. 

"Then up with your gun--quick! There! A bead on Ropey Smith!"

Galway had the bead before Ropey could protest. 

"Give Ropey ten seconds to drop his gun or we will care for him at thesame time as Pete'" Jack concluded. 

Ropey did not wait the ten seconds. He was over-prompt for thesame reasons of temperament that made Pete Leddy prefer his ownway of fighting. 

"I take it that we can count on the neutrality of our spectators. Theycannot be interested in the success of either side, " Jack observed, withdry humor, but still methodically. "All they ask is a spectacle. "

"Yes, you bet!" came a voice from the gallery, undisguisedly eagerto concur. 

"Now, Pete and Ropey, " Jack began, and broke off. 

There was a poignant silence that waited on the processes of his mind. Not only was there no sound, but to Mary there seemed no movementanywhere in the world, except the pulse of the artery trying to drive itsflood past the barrier of her thumb. Jack kept his bead unremittingly onPete. It was Firio who broke the silence. 

"Kill him! He is bad! He hates you!" said Firio. 

"_Sí, sí_! If you do not kill him now, you must some time, " said Ignacio. 

Mary felt that even if Jack heard them he would not let their adviceinfluence him. On the bank before she had hastened to him a strange andawful visitor in her heart had wished for Leddy's death. Now she wishedfor him to go away unharmed. She wished it in the name of her ownresponsibility for all that had happened. Yet her tongue had no urgingword to offer. She waited in a supernatural and dreadful curiosity onJack's decision. It was as if he were to answer one more question inexplanation of the mystery of his nature. Could he deliberately shootdown an unarmed man? Was he that hard?

"I am thinking just how to deal with you, Pete and Ropey, " Jackproceeded. "As I understand it, you have not been very useful citizens ofLittle Rivers. You can live under one condition--that you leave town andnever return armed. Half a minute to decide!"

"I'll go!" said Pete. 

"I'll go!" said Ropey. 

"And keep your words?"

"Yes!" they assented. 

But neither moved. The fact that Jack had not yet lowered hisrevolver made them cautious. They were obviously over-anxious to playsafe to the last. 

"Then go!" called Jack. 

Pete and Ropey slouched away, leaving behind Ropey's gun, which wasunimportant as it had only one notch, and Pete's precious companion ofmany campaigns with its six notches, lying on the sand. 

"And, gentlemen, " Jack called to the spectators, "our littleentertainment is over now. I am afraid that you will be late forbreakfast. "

Apparently it came as a real inspiration to all at once that they mightbe, for they began to withdraw with a celerity that was amazinglyspontaneous. Their heads disappeared below the skyline and only theactors were left. Pete and Ropey--Bill Lang following--walked away alongthe bed of the _arroyo_, instead of going over the bank. Pete paused whenhe was out of range. The old threat was again in his pose. 

"I'm not through with you, yet!" he called. 

"Why, I hope you are!" Jack answered. 

He let his revolver fall with a convulsion of weakness. Mary wondered ifhe were going to faint. She wondered if she herself were not going tofaint, in a giddy second, while the red spot on the sand shaped itself inrevolving grotesquery. But the consciousness that she must not lift herweight from the artery was a centering idea to keep her faculties in somesort of equilibrium. 

He was looking around at her, she knew. Now she must see his face afterthis transformation in him which had made her fears of his competencysilly imaginings; after she had linked her name with his in anoverwhelming village sensation. She was stricken by unanalyzable emotionsand by a horror of her nearness to him, her contact with his very blood, and his power. She was conscious of a glimpse of his turning profile, still transfixed with the cool purpose of action. Then they were gazingfull at each other, eyes into eyes, directly, questioningly. He wassmiling as he had on the pass; as he had when he stood with his armsfull of mail waiting for the signal to deposit his load. His devil hadslipped back into his inner being. 

He spoke first, and in the voice that went with his vaguest mood; thevoice in which he had described his escape from the dinosaur whose scaleshad become wedged in the defile at the critical moment. 

"You have a strong thumb and it must be tired, as well as allbluggy, " he said, falling into a childhood symbol for taking thewhole affair in play. 

Could he be the same man who had said, "I am going to kill you!" sorelentlessly? He had eased the situation with the ready gift he had foreasing situations; but, at the same time, he had made those unanalyzableemotions more complex, though they were swept into the background for themoment. He glanced down at his leg with comprehending surprise. 

"Now, certainly, you are free of all responsibility, " he added. "You keptthe strength in me to escape the fate you feared. Jim Galway will make atourniquet and relieve you. "

The first available thing for tightening the tourniquet was the barrelof Pete Leddy's gun and the first suggestion for material came from her. It was the sash of her gown, which Galway knotted with his strong, sunburned fingers. 

When she could lift her numbed thumb from its task and rose to her feetshe had a feeling of relief, as if she were free of magnetic bonds anduncanny personal proximity. The incident was closed--surely closed. Shewas breathing a prayer of thanks when a remark from Galway to Jackbrought back her apprehension. 

"I guess you will have to postpone catching to-day's train, " he said. 

Certainly, Jack must remain until his wound had healed and his strengthhad returned. And where would he go? He could not camp out on the desert. As Jasper Ewold had the most commodious bungalow it seemed natural thatany wounded stranger should be taken there. The idea chilled her as aninsupportable intrusion. Jack hesitated a moment. He was evidentlyconsidering whether he could not still keep to his programme. 

"Yes, Jim, I'm afraid I shall have to ask you for a cot for a few days, "he said, finally. 

Again he had the right thought at the right moment. Had he surmised whatwas passing in her mind?

"Seeing that you've got Pete Leddy out of town, I should say that youwere fairly entitled to a whole bed, " Jim drawled. "These two Indianshere can make a hustle to get some kind of a litter. "

Now she could go. That was her one crying thought: She could go! Andagain he came to her rescue with his smiling considerateness. 

"You have missed your breakfast, I'll warrant, " he said to her. "Pleasedon't wait. You were so brave and cool about it all, and--I--" A fainttide of color rose to his cheeks, which had been pale from loss of blood. For once he seemed unable to find a word. 

Mary denied him any assistance in his embarrassment. 

"Yes, " she answered, almost bluntly. Then she added an excuse: "And youshould have a doctor at once. I will send him. "

She did not look at Jack again, but hastened away. When she was over thebank of the _arroyo_ out of sight she put her fingers to her temples instrong pressure. That pulse made her think of another, which had beenunder her thumb, and she withdrew her fingers quickly. 

"It is the sun! I have no hat, " she said to herself, "and I didn'tsleep well. "

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--Señor 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; noSeñor 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 Señor 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. "

XI

SEÑOR DON'T CARE RECEIVES

Jack lounged in an armchair in the Galway sitting-room with his bandagedleg bolstered on a stool after Dr. Patterson had fished a bit of leadout of the wound. Tribute overflowed from the table to the chairs andfrom the chairs to the floor; pineapples, their knobby jackets allyellow from ripening in the field, with the full succulency of root-fedand sun-drawn flavor; monstrous navel oranges, leaden with the weight ofjuice, richer than cloth of gold and velvet soft; and every fruit of thefertile soil and benignant climate; and jellies, pies, and custards. Butthese were only the edibles. There were flowers in equal abundance. Theybanked the windows. 

"It's Jasper Ewold's idea to bring gifts when you call, " explained JimGalway. "Jasper is always sowing ideas and lots of them have sprung upand flourished. "

Jack had not been in Little Rivers twenty-four hours, and he had played apart in its criminal annals and become subject to all the embarrassmentof favors of a royal bride or a prima donna who is about to sail. In abower, amazed, he was meeting the world of Little Rivers and its wife. Men of all ages; men with foreign accent; men born and bred as farmers;men to whom the effect of indoor occupation clung; men still weak, butwith red corpuscles singing a song of returning health in theirarteries--strapping, vigorous men, all with hands hardened by manuallabor and in their eyes the far distances of the desert, in contrast tothe sparkle of oasis intimacy. 

Women with the accent of college classrooms; women who made plural nounsthe running mates of singular verbs; women who were novices inhousework; women drilled in drudgery from childhood--all expanding, alldwelling in a democracy that had begun its life afresh in a new land, and all with the wonder of gardens where there had been only sagebrushin their beings. 

There was something at odds with Jack's experience of desert towns in thepicture of a bronzed rancher, his arms loaded with roses, saying, inboyish diffidence:

"Mister, you fit him fair and you sure fixed him good. Just a fewroses--they're so thick over to our place that they're getting a pest. Thought mebbe they'd be nice for you to look at while you was tied up toa chair nursing Pete's soovenir!"

One visitor whose bulk filled the doorway, the expansion of his smilespreading over a bounteous rotundity of cheek, impressed himself as apersonality who had the distinction in avoirdupois that Jim Galway had inleanness. In his hand he had five or six peonies as large as saucers. 

"Every complete community has a fat man, seh!" he announced, with acertain ample bashfulness in keeping with his general amplitude and amusical Southern accent. 

"If it wants to feel perfectly comfortable it has!" said Jack, by wayof welcome. 

"Well, I'm the fat man of Little Rivers, name being Bob Worther!"said he, grinning as he came across the room with an amazingly quick, easy step. 

"No rivals?" inquired Jack. 

"No, seh! I staked out the first claim and I've an eye out for anynew-comers over the two hundred mark. I warn them off! Jasper Ewold is upto two hundred, but he doesn't count. Why, you ought to have seen me, seh, before I came to this valley!"

"A living skeleton?"

"No, seh! Back in Alabama I had reached a point where I broke so manychairs and was getting so nervous from sudden falls in the midst ofconversation, when I made a lively gesture that I didn't dare sit downaway from home except at church, where they had pews. I weighed threehundred and fifty!"

"And now?"

"I acknowledge two hundred and forty, including my legs, which are verypowerful, having worked off that extra hundred. I've got the boss jobfor making a fat man spider-waisted--inspector of ditches and dams. Anyother man would have to use a horse, but I hoof it, and that's economyall around. And being big I grow big things. Violets wouldn't be muchmore in my line than drawnwork. I've got this whole town beat onpeonies and pumpkins. Being as it's a fat man's pleasure to cheerpeople up, I dropped in to bring you a few peonies and to say that, considering the few well-selected words you spoke to Pete Leddy on thistown's behalf, I'm prepared to vote for you for anything from coronerto president, seh!"

Later, after Bob had gone, a small girl brought a spray of gladiolus, their slender stems down to her toe-tips and the opening blossoms halfhiding her face. Jack insisted on having them laid across his knee Shewas not a fairy out of a play, as he knew by her conversation. 

"Mister, did you yell when you was hit?" she asked. 

Jack considered thoughtfully. It would not do to be vagarious under sucha shrewd examination; he must be exact. 

"No, I don't think I did. I was too busy. "

"I'll bet you wanted to, if you hadn't been so busy. Did it hurt much?"

"Not so very much. "

"Maybe that was why you didn't yell. Mother says that all you can see isa little black spot--except you can't see it for the bandages. Is thatthe way yours is?"

"I believe so. In fact, I'll tell you a secret: That's the fashionin wounds. "

"Mother will be glad to know she's right. She sets a lot by her opinion, does mother. Say, do you like plums?"

Jack already had a peck of plums, but another peck would not add much tothe redundancy as far as he was concerned. 

"I'll bring you some. We've got the biggest plums in Little Rivers--oh, so big! Bigger'n Mr. Ewold's! I'll bring some right away. " She paused, however, in the doorway. "Don't you tell anybody I said they werebigger'n Mr. Ewold's, " she went on. "It might hurt his feelings. He'swhat they call the o-rig-i-nal set-tler, and we always agree that hegrows the biggest of everything, because--why, because he's got such abig laugh and such a big smile. Mother says sour-faced people oughtn't tohave a face any bigger'n a crab apple; but Mr. Ewold's face couldn't betoo big if it was as big as all outdoors! Good-by. I reckon you won't bes'prised to hear that I'm the dreadful talker of our family. "

"Wait!" Jack called. "You haven't told me your name. "

"Belvedere Smith. Father says it ain't a name for living things. Butmother is dreadfully set in her ideas of names, and she doesn't like itbecause people call me Belvy; but they just naturally will. "

"Belvedere, did you ever hear of the three little blue mice"--Jack wasleaning toward her with an air of fascinating mystery--"that thought theycould hide in the white clover from the white cat that had two blackstripes on her back?"

There was a pellmell dash across the room and her face, with wide-openeyes dancing in curiosity, was pressed close to his:

"Why did the cat have two black stripes? Why? why?"

"Just what I was going to tell, " said the pacifier of desperadoes. 

"They were off on a tremendous adventure, with anthills for mountainsand clover-stems for the tree-trunks of forests in the path. Tragedyseemed due for the mice, when a bee dropped off a thistle blossom for aremarkable reason--none other than that a hummingbird cuffed him in theear with his wing--and the bee, looking for revenge with his stinger onthe first vulnerable spot, stung the cat right in the Achilles tendon ofhis paw, just as that paw was about to descend with murderous purpose. The cat ran away crying, with both black stripes ridges of fur stickingup straight, while the rest of the fur lay nice and smooth; and themice giggled so that their ears nearly wiggled off their heads. So allended happily. "

"He does beat all!" thought Mrs. Galway, who had overheard part of thenonsense from the doorway. "Wouldn't it make Pete Leddy mad if he couldhear the man who took his gun away getting off fairy stuff like that!"

Mrs. Galway had brought in a cake of her own baking. She wasslightly jealous of the neighbors' pastry as entering into her ownparticular field of excellence. Jack saw that the supply of cake inthe Galway pantry must be as limitless as the pigments on theEternal Painter's palette. 

"The doctor said that I was to have a light diet, " he expostulated; "andI am stuffed to the brim. "

"I'll make you some floating island, " said Mrs. Galway, refusing tostrike her colors. 

"That isn't filling and passes the time, " Jack admitted. 

"Jim says if you had to Fletcherize on floating island you would starveto death and your teeth would get so used to missing a step on the stairsthat they would never be able to deal with real victuals at all. "

"Mrs. Galway, " Jack observed sagely, dropping his head on the back of thechair, "I see that it has occurred to you and Jim that it is an excellentworld and full of excellent nonsense. I am ready to eat both fluffy islesand the yellow sea in which they float. I am ready to keep on gettinghungry with my efforts, even though you make it continents and oceans!"

From his window he had a view, over the dark, polished green of Jim'sorange trees, of the range, brown and gray and bare, holding steadyshadows of its own and host to the shadows of journeying clouds, with thepass set in the centre as a cleft in a forbidding barrier. In the yardWrath of God, Jag Ear, and P. D. Were tethered. Deep content illumined thefaces of P. D. And Jag Ear; but Wrath of God was as sorrowful as ever. Acheerful Wrath of God would have excited fears for his health. 

"Yet, maybe he is enjoying his rest more than the others, " Jack toldFirio, who kept appearing at the window on some excuse or other. "Perhapshe takes his happiness internally. Perhaps the external signs are onlythe last stand of a lugubriousness driven out by overwhelming forces ofinternal joy. "

"_Sí, sí_!" said Firio. 

"Firio, you are eminently a conversationalist, " said Jack. "You agreewith any foolishness as if it were a new theory of ethics. You are anideal companion. I never have to listen to you in order that I may inturn have my say. "

"_Sí_, " said Firio. He leaned on the windowsill, his black eyes shiningwith ingenuous and flattering appeal: "I will broil you a quail on aspit, " he whispered. "It's better than stove cooking. "

"Don't talk of that!" Jack exclaimed, almost sharply. The suggestionbrought a swift change to sadness over his face and drew a veil ofvagueness over his eyes. "No, Firio, and I'll tell you why: the odor of aquail broiled on a spit belongs at the end of a day's journey, when youcamp in sight of no habitation. You should sit on a dusty blanket-roll;you should eat by the light of the embers or a guttering candle. No, Firio, we'll wait till some other day. And it's not exactly courtesy toour hostess to bring in provender from the outside. "

The trail had apparently taught Firio all the moods of his master. Heknew when it was unwise to persist. 

"_Sí_!" he whispered, and withdrew. 

Jack looked at Galeria and then back quickly, as if resisting its call. He smiled half wryly and readjusted his position in the chair. Over thehedge he could see the heads and shoulders of passers-by. Jim Galway hadcome into the room, when Jasper Ewold's broad back and great head hovein sight with something of the steady majesty of progress of afull-rigged ship. 

"The Doge!" Jack exclaimed, brightening. 

Jim was taken unawares. Was it the name of a new kind of semi-tropicalfruit not yet introduced into Arizona?

"Not the Doge of Venice--hardly, when Mr. Ewold's love runs to Florence!The Doge of Little Rivers!"

"Why, the Doge--of course!" Jim was "on" now and grinning. "I didn'tthink of my history at first. That's a good one for Jasper Ewold!"

"O Doge of Little Rivers, I expected you in a gondola of state!" saidJack, with a playfully grandiloquent gesture, as Jasper's abundancefilled the doorway. "But it is all the more compliment to me that youshould walk. "

"Doge, eh?" Jasper tasted the word. "Pooh!" he said. "Persiflage!persiflage! I saw at once yesterday that you had a weakness for it. "

"And Miss Ewold? How is she?" Jack asked. Remembering the promisethat Mary had exacted from him, he took care not to refer to her partin the duel. 

His question fell aptly for what Jasper had to say. Being a man used tokeeping the gate ever open to the full flood of spontaneity, he becamestilted in the repetition of anything he had thought out and rehearsed. He was overcheerful, without the mellowness of tone which gave his cheerits charm on the previous evening. 

"She's not a bit the worse. Why, she went for a ride out to the pass thisafternoon as usual! I've had the whole story, from the pass till theminute that Jim put the tourniquet on your leg. She recognizes the greatkindness you did her. "

"Not a kindness--an inevitable interruption by any passer-by, "Jack put in. 

"Naturally she felt that it was a kindness, a service, and when she knewyou were in danger she acted promptly for herself, with a desert girl'sself-reliance. When it was all over she saw the whole thing in its properperspective, as an unpleasant, preposterous piece of barbarism which hadturned out fortunately. "

"Oh, I am glad of that!" Jack exclaimed, in relief that spoke rejoicingin every fibre. "I had worried. I had feared lest I had insisted too muchon going on. But I had to. And I know that it was a scene that only menought to witness--so horrible I feared it might leave a disagreeableimpression. "

"Ah, Mary has courage and humor. She sees the ridiculous. She laughs atit all, now!"

"Laughs?" asked Jack. "Yes, it was laughable;" and he broke intolaughter, in which Jasper joined thunderously. 

Jasper kept on laughing after Jack stopped, and in genuine relief to findthat the affair was to be as uninfluencing a chapter in the easytraveller's life as in Mary's. 

"Our regret is that we may have delayed you, sir, " Jasper proceeded. "Youmay have had to postpone an important engagement. I understand that youhad planned to take the train this morning. "

"When one has been in the desert for a long time, " Jack answered, "a fewdays more or less hardly matter in the time of his departure. In a weekDr. Patterson says that I may go. Meanwhile, I shall have the pleasureof getting acquainted with Little Rivers, which, otherwise, I shouldhave missed. "

"I am glad!" Jasper Ewold exclaimed with dramatic quickness. "Glad thatyour wound is so slight--glad that you need not be shut up long when youare due elsewhere. "

What books should he bring to the invalid to while away the time? "TheThree Musketeers" or "Cyrano"? Jack seemed to know his "Cyrano" so wellthat a copy could be only a prompt. He settled deeper in his chair and, more to the sky than to Jasper Ewold, repeated Cyrano's address to hiscadets, set to a tune of his own. His body might be in the chair, with abandaged leg, but clearly his mind was away on the trail. 

"Yes, let me see, " he said, coming back to earth. "I should like the'Road to Rome, ' something of Charles Lamb, Aldrich's 'Story of a BadBoy, ' Heine---but no! What am I saying? Bring me any solid book oneconomics. I ought to be reading economics. Economics and Charles Lamb, that will do. Do you think they could travel together?"

"All printed things can, if you choose. I'll include Lamb. "

"And any Daudet lying loose, " Jack added. 

"And Omar?"

"I carry Omar in my head, thank you, O Doge!"

"Sir Chaps of the enormous spurs, you have a broad taste for one whorides over the pass of Galeria after five years in Arizona, " said theDoge as he rose. He was covertly surveying that soft, winning, dreamyprofile which had turned so hard when the devil that was within came tothe surface. 

"I was fed on books and galleries in my boyhood, " Jack said; butwith a reticence that indicated that this was all he cared to tellabout his past. 

XII

MARY BRINGS TRIBUTE

Every resident except the cronies of Pete Leddy considered it a duty, once a day at least, to look over the Galway hedge and ask how SeñorDon't Care was doing. That is, everyone with a single exception, whichwas Mary. Jack had never seen her even pass the house. It was as if hisvery existence had dropped out of her ken. The town remarked the anomaly. 

"You have not been in lately, " Mrs. Galway reminded her. 

"My flowers have required a lot of attention; also, I have been ridingout to the pass a good deal, " she answered, and changed the subject togeraniums, for the very good reason that she had just been weeding hergeranium bed. 

Mrs. Galway looked at her strangely and Mary caught the glance. Sheguessed what Mrs. Galway was thinking: that she had been a littleinconsiderate of a man who had been wounded in her service. 

"Probably it is time I bore tribute, too, " she said to herself. 

That afternoon she took down a glass of jelly from the pantry shelves andset forth in the line of duty, frowning and rehearsing a presentationspeech as she went. With every step toward the Galway cottage she wasincreasingly confused and exasperated with herself for even thinking of aspeech. As she drew near she heard a treble chorus of "ohs!" and "ahs!"and saw Jack on the porch surrounded by children. 

"It's dinosaur foolishness again!" she thought, pungently. 

He was in the full fettle of nonsense, his head a little to one side andlowered, while he looked through his eyebrows at his hearers, measuringthe effect of his words. She thought of that face when he called toLeddy, "I am going to kill you!" and felt the pulse of inquiry beat overall that lay in this man's repertory between the two moods. 

"Then, counting each one in his big, deep, bass voice, like this, " he wassaying, "that funny little dwarf kept dropping oranges out of the tree onthe big giant, who could not wiggle and was squeaking in protest in hislittle, old woman's voice. Every orange hit him right on the bridge ofhis nose, and he was saying: 'You know I never could bear yellow! Itfusses me so. '"

"He doesn't need any jelly! I am going on!" Mary thought. 

Then Jack saw a slim, pliant form hastening by and a brown profile underhair bare of a hat, with eyes straight ahead. Mary might have been a unitof marching infantry. The story stopped abruptly. 

"Yes--and--and--go on!" cried the children. 

Jack held up his hand for silence. 

"How do you do?" he called, and she caught in his tone and in her firstglimpse of his face a certain mischievousness, as if he, who missed nopoints for idle enjoyment of any situation, had a satisfaction in takingher by surprise with his greeting. This put her on her mettle with thequickness of a summons to fence. She was as nonchalant as he. 

"And you are doing well, I learn, " she answered. 

"Oh, come in and hear it, Miss Ewold! It's the best one yet!" criedBelvedere Smith. "And--and--"

"And--and--" began the chorus. 

Mary went to the hedge. She dropped the glass of jelly on the thickcarpet of the privet. 

"I have just brought my gift. I'll leave it here. Belvy will bring itwhen the story is over. I am glad you are recovering so rapidly. "

"And--and--" insisted the chorus. 

"You oughtn't to miss this story. It's a regular Jim dandy!"Belvedere shouted. 

"Yes, won't you come in?" Jack begged in serious urgency. "I pridemyself that it is almost intellectual toward the close. "

"I have no doubt, " she said, looking fairly at him from under her hand, which she held up to shade her face, so he saw only the snap of her eyesin the shadow. "But I am in a hurry. "

And he was looking at a shoulder and a quarter profile as sheturned away. 

"Did you make the jelly yourself?" he called. 

"Yes, I am not afraid of the truth--I did!" she answered with a backwardglance and not stopping. 

"Oh, bully!" he exclaimed with great enthusiasm, in which she detected astrain of what she classified as impudence. 

"But all the time the giant was fumbling in his pocket for his greenhandkerchief. You know the dwarf did not like green. It fussed him justas much as yellow fussed the giant. But it was a narrow pocket, so narrowthat he could only get his big thumb in, and very deep. So, you see--"and she heard the tale proceeding as she walked on to the end of thestreet, where she turned around and came back across the desert andthrough the garden. 

On the way she found it amusing to consider Jack judicially as a humanexhibit, stripped of all the chimera of romance with which Little Rivershad clothed his personality. If he had not happened to meet her on thepass, the townspeople would have regarded this stranger as an invasion ofreal life by a character out of a comic opera. She viewed the specimenunder a magnifying glass in all angles, turning it around as if it were abronze or an ivory statuette. 

1. In his favor: Firstly, children were fond of him; but his extravaganceof phrase and love of applause accounted for that. Secondly, Firio wasdevoted to him. Such worshipful attachment on the part of a native Indianto any Saxon was remarkable. Yet this was explained by his love of color, his foible for the picturesque, his vagabond irresponsibility, and, mostly, by his latent savagery--which she would hardly have been willingto apply to Ignacio's worshipful attachment to herself. 

2. Against him: Everything of any importance, except in the eyes ofchildren and savages; everything in logic. He would not stand analysis atall. He was without definite character. He was posing, affected, pleasedwith himself, superficial, and theatrical, and interested in people onlyso long as they amused him or gratified his personal vanity. 

"I had the best of the argument in leaving the jelly on the hedge, andthat is the last I shall hear of it, " she concluded. 

Not so. Mrs. Galway came that evening, a bearer of messages. 

"He says it is the most wonderful jelly that ever was, " said Mrs. Galway. "He ate half the glass for dinner and is saving the rest forbreakfast--I'm using his own words and you know what a killing way he hasof putting things--saving it for breakfast so that he will have somethingto live through the night for and in the morning the joy of it will notbe all a memory. He wants to know if you have any more of the same kind. "

"Yes, a dozen glasses, " Mary returned. "Tell him we are glad of theopportunity of finishing last year's stock, and I send it provided heeats half a glass with every meal. "

"I don't know what his answer will be to that, " said Mrs. Galway, contracting her brow studiously at Mary. "But he would have one quick. Healways has. He's so poetic and all that, we're planning to go to thestation to see him off and pelt him with flowers; and Dr. Patterson isgoing to fashion a white cat out of white carnations, with deep red onesfor the black stripes, for the children to present. "

"Hurrah!" exclaimed Mary blithely, and went for the jelly. 

She was spared further bulletins on the state of health of the woundeduntil her father returned from his daily call the next morning. She wasin the living-room and she knew by his step on the porch, vigorous yetlight, that he was uplifted by good news or by the anticipation of theexploitation of some new idea--a pleasure second only to that of theidea's birth. Such was his elation that he broke one of his own rules bytossing some of the books loaned to Jack onto the broad top of the tableof the living-room, which was sacred to the isolation of the ivorypaper-knife. 

"He has named the date!" shouted the Doge. "He goes by to-morrow's train!It will be a gala affair, almost an historical moment in the earlyhistory of this community. I am to make a speech presenting him with thefreedom of the whole world. Between us we have hit on a proper modernsymbol of the gift. He slips me his Pullman ticket and I formally offerit to him as the key to the hospitality of the seven seas, the twohemispheres, and the teeming cities that lie beyond the range. It will begreat fun, with plenty of persiflage. And, Mary, they suggest that youwrite some verses--ridiculous verses, in keeping with the wholenonsensical business. "

"You mean that I am to stand on the platform and read poetry dedicated tohim?" she demanded. 

"Poetry, Mary? You grow ambitious. Not poetry--foolish doggerel. Orsomeone will read it for you. "

He had not failed to watch the play of her expression. She had receivedall his nonsense, announced in his best style of simulated forensicgrandeur, with a certain unchanging serenity which was unamused: whichwas, indeed, barely interested. 

"And someone else shall write it, for I don't think of any verses, "she said, with a slight shrug of the shoulder. "Besides, I shall notbe there. "

"Not be there! People will remark your absence!"

"Will they?" she asked, thoughtfully, as if that had not occurred to her. "No, they will be too occupied with the persiflage. I am going to rideout to the pass in the morning very early--before daybreak. "

"But"--he was positively frolicsome as he caught her hands and wavedthem back and forth, while he rocked his shoulders--"when you arestubborn, Mary, have your way. I will make your excuses. And I to worknow. It is the hour of the hoe, " as he called all hours except those ofdarkness and the hot midday. 

For Jasper Ewold was no idler in the affairs of his ranch or of the town. Few city men were so busy. His everlasting talk was incidental, like thebabbling of a brook which, however, keeps steadily flowing on; and thestored scholarship of his mind was supplemented by long evenings with noother relaxation but reading. Now as he went down the path he broke intosong; and when the Doge sang it was something awful, excusable only bythe sheer happiness that brought on the attack. 

Mary had important sewing, which this morning she chose to do in her roomrather than in her favorite spot in the garden. She closed the shutterson the sunny side and sat down by the window nearest the garden, peculiarly sensible of the soft light and cool spaciousness of an innerworld. The occasional buzz of a bee, the flutter of the leaves of thepoplar, might have been the voice of the outer world in Southern Spain orSouthern Italy, or anywhere else where the air is balmy. 

And to-morrow! Out to Galeria in the fervor of a pilgrim to some shrine, with the easy movement of her pony and the rigid lines of the passgradually drawing nearer and the sky ever distant! She would be mistressof her thoughts in all the silent glamour of morning on the desert. Shewould hear the train stop at the station, its heavy effort as it pulledout, and watch it winding over the flashing steel threads in a clamor ofstridency and harshness, which grew fainter and fainter. And she wouldsmile as it disappeared around a bend in the range. She would smile athim, at the incident, just as carelessly as he had smiled when he told ofthe dinosaur. 

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. "

"_Sí_!"

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. "

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

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

"_Sí_!" 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--"

"_Sí_! 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. "

"_Sí_!" 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. 

XIV

"HOW FAST YOU SEW!"

And she had not seen him! He was touched with a sense of guilt forhaving looked so long; for not having at once called to her; and ratherthan give her the shock of calling now, he moved toward her, the scuffof his limp, pendent foot attracting her attention. Her start at thesound was followed, when she saw him, with amazement and a flush and amovement as if she would rise. But she controlled the movement, if notthe flush, and fell back into her chair, picking up her sewing, whichhad dropped on the table. 

It was like him, she might well think, to come unexpectedly, withoutinvitation or announcement. She was alert, ready to take the offensive asthe best means of defence, and wishing, in devout futility, that he hadstayed away. He was smiling happily at everything in cosmos and at her asa part of it. 

"Good afternoon!"

"Good afternoon!"

"That last lot of jelly was better than the first, " he said softly. 

"Was it? You must favor vintage jelly!"

"I came to call--my p. P. C. Call--and to see your garden, " he added. 

"Is there any particular feature that interests you?" she asked. "Thedate-trees? The aviary? The nursery?"

"No, " he answered, "not just yet. It is very cool here under theumbrella-trees, isn't it? I have walked all the way from the Galways andI'll rest a while, if I may. "

He was no longer the play cavalier in overornamented _chaparejos_ andcart-wheel spurs, but a lame fellow in overalls, who was hitching towardher on crutches, his cowpuncher hat held by the brim and flopping withevery step. But he wore the silk shirt and the string tie, and somehow hemade even the overalls seem "dressy. "

"Pray sit down, " she said politely. 

Standing his crutches against the table, he accepted the invitation. Sheresumed her sewing, eyes on the needle, lips pressed into a straight lineand head bending low. He might have been a stranger on a bench in apublic park for all the attention she was paying to him. She realizedthat she was rude and took satisfaction in it as the only way ofexpressing her determination not to reopen a closed incident. 

"It's wonderful--wonderful!" he observed, in a voice of contemplativeawe. 

"What is?" she asked. 

"Why, how fast you sew!"

"Yes?" she said, as automatically as she stitched. "Your wound is quiteall right? No danger of infection?"

"I don't blame you!" he burst out. His tone had turned sad and urgent. 

She looked up quickly, with the flare of a frown. His remark had broughther out of her pose and she became vivid and real. 

"Blame me!" she demanded, sharply, as one who flies to arms. 

But she met a new phase--neither banter, nor fancy, nor unvaryingcoolness in the face of fire. He was all contrition and apology. Must shebe the audience to some fresh exhibition of his versatility?

"I do not blame you for feeling the way that you do, " he said. 

"How do you know how I feel?" she asked; and as far as he could see intoher eyes there was nothing but the flash of sword-points. 

"I don't. I only know how I think you feel--how you might well feel, " heanswered delicately. "After Pete let his gun drop in the store I shouldnot have named terms for an encounter. I should have turned to the lawfor protection for the few hours that I had to remain in town. "

"But to you that would have been avoiding battle!" she exclaimed. 

"Which may take courage, " he rejoined. "What I did was selfish. It wasbravado, with no thought of your position. "

"It is late to worry about that now. What does it matter? I did not wantanyone killed on my account, and no one was, " she insisted. "Besides, youshould not be blue, " this with a ripple of satire; "it is not quite allbravado to face Pete Leddy's gun at twenty yards. "

"And it is not courage. Courage is a force of will driving you intodanger for some high purpose. I want you to realize that I am not such abarbarian that I do not know that I could have kept you out of it all ifI had had proper self-control. Though probably, on the impulse, I woulddo the fool thing over again! Yes, that's the worst of it!"

"There is a devil in him!" Ignacio's words were sounding in her ears. Tohow many men had he said, "I am going to kill you?" What other quarrelshad he known in his wanderings from Colorado to Chihuahua?

"If you really want my opinion, I am glad, so far as I am concerned, thatyou did fight, " she said lightly. "Aren't you a hero? Isn't the town freeof Leddy? And you take the train in the morning!"

"Yes. "

The monosyllable was drawn out rather faintly. For the first time sincethey had met on the pass she felt she was mistress of the situation. This time she had not to plead with him in fear for his life. She couldregard him without any sense of obligation, this invader of her gardenretreat who had to put in one more afternoon in a dull desert townbefore he was away to that outside world which she might know onlythrough books and memory. 

She rose exultantly, disregarding any formality that she would owe to theaverage guest; for an average guest he was not. Her attitude meant thatshe was having the last word; that she was showing her mettle. 

He did not rise. He was staring into the sunlight, as if it were darknessalive with flitting spectres which baffled identification. 

"Yes, back--back to armies of Leddys!" he said slowly. 

But this she saw as still another pose. It did not make her pause ingathering up her sewing. She was convinced that there was nothing morefor her to say, except to give their parting an appearance of ease andunconcern. 

"Is it work you mean? You are not used to that, I take it?" she inquireda little sarcastically. 

"Yes, call it work, " he answered, looking away from the spectres andback to her. 

"And you have never done any work!" she added. 

"Not much, " he admitted, with his old, airy carelessness. He was smilingat the spectres now, as he had at the dinosaur. 

"As there is nothing particular about the garden that I can show you--"she was moving away. 

"No, I will be walking back to the house, " he said after she had taken afew steps. "Will you wait on my slow pace?"

He reached for his crutches, lifted himself to his feet and swung toher side. She who wished that the interview were over saw that it mustbe prolonged. Then suddenly she realized the weakness as well as thebrusqueness of her attitude. She had been about to fly from him asfrom something that she feared. It was not necessary. It was foolish, even cowardly. 

"I thought perhaps you preferred to be alone, you seemed so abstracted, "she said, lamely; and then, as they came out into the sunlight in thecircle, she began talking of the garden as she would to any visitor; ofits beginnings, its growth, and its future, when her father's plansshould have been fulfilled. 

"And in all these years you have never been back East?" he asked. 

"No. We are always planning a trip, but the money which we save for itgoes into more plantings. "

They had been moving slowly toward the house, but now he stopped and hisglance swept the sky and rested on Galeria. 

"It is the best valley of all! I knew it as soon as I saw it from thepass!" and the rapture of the scene was sounding in every syllable likechimes out of the distance. She knew that he was far away from thegarden, and delaying, still delaying. If she spoke she felt that he wouldnot hear what she said. If she went on it seemed certain that she wouldleave him standing there like a statue. 

"And there is more land here to make gardens like this?" he askedslowly, absorbed. 

"Yes, with water and labor and time. "

Though his face was in the full light of the sun, it seemed at times inshadow; then it glowed, as if between two passions. For an instant it wasgrim, the chin coming forward, the brows contracting; then it wastransformed with something that was as a complete surrender to thetransport of irresistible temptation. He looked down at her quickly andshe saw him in the mood of story-telling to the children, suffused withthe radiance of a decision. 

"I prefer the Leddys of Little Rivers to the Leddys of New York, " hesaid. "I am not going to-morrow! I am going to have land and a home underthe aegis of the Eternal Painter and in sight of Galeria, and worship atthe shrine of fecund peace. Will you and the Doge help me?" he asked withan enthusiasm that was infectious. "May I go to his school ofagriculture, horticulture, and floriculture?"

Dumfounded, she bent her head and stared at the ground to hide herastonishment. 

"You want citizens, industrious young citizens, don't you?" he persisted. 

"Yes, yes!" she said hastily and confusedly. 

"Do you know a good piece of land?" he continued. 

"Yes, several parcels, " she answered, recovering her poise and smilingin mockery. 

"Come on!" he cried. 

He was taking long, jumping steps on his crutches as they went up thepath. 

"You will take me to look at the land, won't you, please--now? I want toget acquainted with my future estate. I mean to beat the Smiths at plums, Jim Galway at alfalfa, even rival Bob Worther at pumpkins and peonies. And you will help me lay out the flower garden, won't you? You see, Ishall have to call in the experts in every line to start with, before Ibegin to improve on them and make them all jealous. I may find a kind ofplum that will grow on alfalfa stalks, " he hazarded. "What ahorticultural sensation!"

"And a spineless cactus called the Leddy!"

His eyes were laughing into hers and hers irresistibly laughed back. Sheguessed that he was only joking. He had acted so well in the latest rôlethat she had actually believed in his sincerity for a moment. He meant totake the train, of course, but his resourceful capriciousness hadsupplied him with a less awkward exit from the garden than she hadprovided. He would yet have the last word if she did not watch out--alast mischievous word at her expense. 

"First, you will have to plow the ground, in the broiling hot sun, " shesaid tauntingly, when they had passed around to the porch. She wasstarting into the house with nervous, precipitate triumph. The last wordwas hers, after all. 

"But you are going to show me the land now!"

His tone was so serious and so hurt that she paused. 

"And"--with the seriousness electrified by a glance that sought formutual understanding--"and we are to forget about that duel and the wholehero-desperado business. I am a prospective settler who just arrived thisafternoon. I came direct to headquarters to inquire about property. TheDoge not being at home, won't you show me around?"

Again he had said the right thing at the right time, with a delightfulimpersonality precluding sentiment. 

"I couldn't be unaccommodating, " she admitted. "It is against all LittleRivers ethics. "

"I feel like a butterfly about to come out of his miserable chrysalis!Haven't you a walking-stick? I am going to shed the crutches!"

She became femininely solicitous at once. 

"Are you sure you ought? Did the doctor say you might? Is thewound healed?"

"There isn't any wound!" he answered. "That is one of the things which weare to forget. "

She brought a stick and he laid the crutches on the porch. 

He favored the lame leg, yet he kept up a clipping pace, talking thewhile as fast as the Doge himself as they passed through one of the sidestreets out onto the cactus-spotted, baking, cracked levels. 

"This is it!" she said finally. "This is all that father and I had tobegin with. "

"Enough!" he answered, and held out his hands, palms open. "Withcallouses I will win luxuriance!"

She showed him the irrigation ditch from which he should draw his water;she told him of the first steps; She painted all the difficulties in thedarkest colors, without once lessening the glow of his optimism. He wasso overwhelmingly, boyishly happy that she had to be happy with him inmaking believe that he was about to be a real rancher. But he should nothave the sport all on his side. He must not think that she accepted thislatest departure of his imagination incarnated by his Thespian gift inanything but his own spirit. 

"You plowing! You spraying trees for the scale! You digging up weeds! Youstacking alfalfa! You settling down in one place as a unit of co-ordinateindustry! You earning bread by the sweat of your brow! You withcallouses!" Thus she laughed at him. 

Very seriously he held out his hands and ran a finger around a palm andacross the finger-joints:

"That is where I shall get them, " he said. "But not on the thumb. Ibelieve you get them on the thumb only by playing golf. "

He asked about carpenters and laborers; he chose the site for his house;he plotted the walks and orchards. She could not refuse her advice. Whocan about the planning of new houses and gardens? He had everythingquite settled except the land grant from the Doge when they startedback; while the sun, with the swift passage of time in such fascinatingdiversion, had swung low in its ellipse. When they reached the mainstreet the Doge was on the porch passing his opinion on the EternalPainter's evening work. 

"Some very remarkable purples to-night, I admit, Your Majesty, withoutany intention of giving you too good an opinion of yourself; butotherwise, you are not up to your mark. There must have been a downpourin the rainy world on the other side of the Sierras that moistened yourpigments. Next thing we know you will be turning water-colorist!" he wassaying, when he heard Jack's voice. 

"Here's a new settler!" Jack called. "I am going to stay in Little Riversand win all the prizes. "

"You are joking!" gasped the Doge. 

"Not joking, " said Jack. "I want to close the bargain to-night. "

"You bring color and adventure--yes! I did not expect the honor--thetown will be delighted! I am overwhelmed! Will you plow with PeteLeddy's gun drawn by Wrath of God, sir, and harrow with your spurs drawnby Jag Ear? Shall you make a specialty of olives? Do you dare to aspireas high as dates?"

The Doge's speech had begun incoherently, but steadied into rallyinghumor at the close. 

"I haven't seen the date-tree yet, " said Jack. "Not until I have can Ijudge whether or not I shall dare to rival the lord of the manor in hisown specialty. And there are business details which I must settle withyou, O Doge of this city of slender canals!"

"O youth, will you tarry with peace between wars?" answered the Doge, inquick response to the spirit of nonsense as a basis for their newrelations. "Come, and I will show you our noblest product of peace, theDate-Tree Wonderful!" he said, leading the way to the garden, while Maryhurried rather precipitately into the house. 

Jasper Ewold was at his best, a glowing husbandman, when he pointed aloftto the clusters of fruit pendent from the crotches of the stiffbranches, enclosed in cloth bags to keep them free of insects. 

"Do you see strange lettering on the cloth?" he asked. 

"Yes, it looks like Arabic. "

"So it is! Among other futile diversions in a past incarnation I studiedArabic a little, and I still have my lexicon. Perhaps my constructionmight not please the grammarians of classic Bagdad, but the sentiment isthere safe enough in the language of the mother romance world of thedate: 'All hail, first-born of our Western desert fecundity!' It iscalling out to the pass and the range from the wastes where thesagebrush has had its own way since the great stir that there was in theworld at genesis. "

"With the unlimited authority I have in bestowing titles, " said Jack, "Ihave a mind to make you an Emir. But it's a pity that you haven't a camelsquatting under your date-tree and placidly chewing his cud. "

"A tempting thought!" declared the Doge unctuously. 

"Bob Worther could ride him on the tours of inspection. I think thejounce would be almost as good a flesh-reducer as pedestrianism. "

"There you go! You would have the camel wearing bells, with reins of redleather and a purple saddle-cloth hung with spangles, and Bob--ourexcellent Bob--in a turban! Persiflage, sir! A very demoralization ofthe faculties with cataracts of verbiage, sir!" declared the Doge as hestarted back to the house. "Little Rivers is a practical town, " heproceeded seriously. "We indulge in nonsense only after sunset and when astranger appears riding a horse with a profane name. Yes, a practicaltown; and I am surprised at your disloyalty to your own burro bymentioning camels. "

"It rests with you, I believe, to let me have the land and also thewater, " said Jack. 

"We grow businesslike!" returned the Doge with a change of manner. 

"Very!" declared Jack. 

"The requirement is that you become a member of the water users'association and pay your quota of taxes per acre foot; and the price youpay for your land also goes to the association. But I decide on theeligibility of the applicant. "

They were in front of the house by this time, and again the Doge gaveJack that sharp, quick, knowing glance of scrutiny through his heavy, tufted eyebrows, before he proceeded:

"The concession for the use of the river for irrigation is mine, administered by the water users' association as if it were theirs, underthe condition that no one who has not my approval can have membership. That is, it is practically mine, owing to my arrangement with old Mr. Lefferts, who lives upstream. He is an eccentric, a hermit. He came heremany years ago to get as far away from civilization as he could, I judge. That gives him an underlying right. Originally he had two partners, squawmen. Both are dead. He had made no improvements beyond drawing enoughwater for a garden and for his horse and cow. When I came to make abargain with him he named an annual sum which should keep him for therest of his life; and thus he waived his rights. First, Jim Galway, thenother settlers drifted in. I formed the water users' association. Alltaxes and sums for the sale of land go into keeping the dam and ditchesin condition. "

"You take nothing for yourself!"

"A great deal. The working out of an idea--an idea in moulding a littlecommunity in my old age in a fashion that pleases me; while my ownproperty, of course, increases in value. At my death the rights go to thecommunity. But no Utopia; Sir Chaps! Just hard-working, cheerful men andwomen in a safe refuge!"

"And I am young!" exclaimed Jack, with a hopeful smile. "I have goodhealth. I mean to work. I try to be cheerful. Am I eligible?"

"Sir Chaps, you--you have done us a great favor. Everybody likes you. SirChaps"--the Doge hesitated for an instant, with a baffling, unspokeninquiry in his eyes--"Sir Chaps, I like your companionship and yourmastery of persiflage. Jim Galway, who is secretary of the association, will look after details of the permit and Bob Worther will turn the wateron your land, and the whole town will assist you with advice! Luck, SirChaps, in your new vocation!"

That evening, while the Doge took down the David and set a fragment fromthe frieze of the Parthenon in its place, Little Rivers talked of thedelightful news that it was not to lose its strange story-teller andduelist. Little Rivers was puzzled. Not once had Jack intimated a thoughtof staying. By his own account, so far as he had given any, his wound hadmerely delayed his departure to New York, where he had pressing business. He had his reservation on the Pullman made for the morning express; hehad paid a farewell call at the Ewolds, and apparently then had changedhis mind and his career. These were the only clues to work on, except theone suggested by Mrs. Galway, who was the wise woman of the community, while Mrs. Smith was the propagandist. 

"I guess he likes the way Mary Ewold snubs him!" said Mrs. Galway. 

But there was one person in town who was not surprised at Jack'sdecision. When Jack sang out as he entered the Galway yard on returningfrom the Doge's, "We stay, Firio, we stay!" Firio said: "_Sí_, SeñorJack!" with no change of expression except a brighter gleam than usual inhis velvety eyes. 

XV

WHEN THE DESERT BLOOMS

Perhaps we may best describe this as a chapter of Incidents; or, to use asimile, a broad, eddying bend in a river on a plateau, with cataracts andcanyons awaiting it on its route to the sea. Or, discarding the simileand speaking in literal terms, in a search for a theme on which to hangthe incidents, we revert to Mary's raillery at the announcement of aneasy traveller that he was going to turn sober rancher. 

"You plowing! You blistering your hands! You earning your bread by thesweat of your brow!"

But there he was in blue overalls, sinking his spade deep for settings, digging ditches and driving furrows through the virgin soil, while themasons and carpenters built his ranch house. 

"They are straight furrows, too!" Jack declared. 

"Passably so!" answered Mary. 

"And look at the blisters!" he continued, exhibiting his puffy palms. 

"You seem to think blisters a remarkable human phenomenon, a sensationalnovelty to a laboring population!"

"Now, would you advise pricking?" he asked, with deference to herjudgment. 

"It is so critical in your case that you ought to consult a doctor ratherthan take lay advice. "

"Jim Galway says that the thorough way, I mulched my soil beforeputting in my first crop of alfalfa is a model for all future settlers, "he ventured. 

She remarked that Jim was always encouraging to new-comers, and remarkedthis in a way that implied that some new-comers possibly needed hazing. 

"And I am up at dawn and hard at it for six hours before midday. "

"Yes, it is wonderful!" she admitted, with a mock show of beingoverwhelmingly impressed. "Nobody in the world ever worked ten hours aday before!"

"I'm doing more than any man that I pay two-fifty. I do perspire, and ifyou don't call that earning your bread with the sweat of your brow, whythis is an astoundingly illogical world!"

"There is a great difference between sporadic display and that continuitywhich is the final proof of efficiency, " she corrected him. 

"Long, involved sentences often indicate the loss of an argument!"declared Jack. 

"There isn't any argument!" said Mary with superior disinterestedness. 

By common inspiration they had established a truce of nonsense. She stillcalled him Jack; he still called her Mary. It was the only point of tacitadmission that they had ever met before he asked her to show aprospective settler a parcel of land. 

Their new relations were as the house of cards of fellowship: cards ofglass, iridescent and brittle, mocking the idea that there could beoblivion of the scene in Lang's store, the crack of Leddy's pistol in the_arroyo_, or the pulse of Jack's artery under her thumb! She was surethat he could forget these experiences, even if she could not. That washis character, as she saw it, free of clinging roots of yesterday'sevents, living some new part every day. 

In the house of cards she set up a barrier, which he saw as a veil overher eyes. Not once had he a glimpse of their depths. There was only thesurface gleam of sunbeams and sometimes of rapier-points, merry butsignificant. She frequently rode out to the pass and occasionally, whenhis day's work was done, he would ride to the foot of the range to meether, and as they came back he often sang, but never whistled. Indeed, hehad ceased to whistle altogether. Perhaps he regarded the omission as aninsurance against duels. 

Aside from nonsense they had common interests in cultural and daily life, from the Eternal Painter's brushwork to how to dress a salad. She didextend her approval for the generous space which he was allowing forflower-beds, and advised him in the practical construction of hiskitchen; while the Doge decorated the living-room with Delia Robbias, which, however, never arrived at the express office. He was a neighboralways at home in the Ewold house. The Doge revelled in theirdisputations, yet never was really intimate or affectionate as he waswith Jim Galway, who knew not the Pitti, the Prado, nor the Louvre, andcould not understand the intoning of Dante in the original as Jack could, thanks to his having been brought up in libraries and galleries. 

The town, which was not supposed to ask about pasts, could not helppuzzling about his. What was the story of this teller of stories? Thesecluded little community was in a poor way to find out, even if theconscientious feeling about a custom had not been a restraint that keptwonder free from inquiring hints. They took him for what he was in alltheir personal relations; that was the delightful way of Little Rivers, which inner curiosity might not alloy. His broader experience of thatworld over the pass which stretched around the globe and back to theother range-wall of the valley, seemed only to make him fall more easilyinto the simple ways of the fellow-ranchers of the Doge's selection, whowere genuine, hall-marked people, whatever the origin from which theindividual sprang. He knew the fatigue of productive labor as somethingfar sweeter than the fatigue that comes from mere exercise, and theneophyte's enthusiasm was his. 

"I'm sitting at the outer edge of the circle, " he told Jim Galway. "But when my first crop is harvested I shall be on the inside--areal rancher!"

"You've already got one foot over the circle, " said Jim. 

"And with my first crop of dates I'll be in the holy of holies ofpastoral bliss!"

"Yes, I should say so!" Jim responded, but in a way that indicatedsurprise at the thought of Jack's remaining in Little Rivers long enoughfor such a consummation. 

When his alfalfa covered the earth with a green carpet Jack was under aspell of something more than the never-ending marvel of dry seedsspringing into succulent abundance without the waving of any magic wand. 

"I made it out of the desert!" he cried. "It laughs in triumph at thebare stretches around it, waiting on water!"

"That is it, " said Jim; "waiting on water!"

"The promise of what might come!"

"It will come! Some day, Jack, you and I will ride up into the rivercanyon and I will show you a place where you can see the blue sky betweenprecipitous walls two hundred feet high. The abyss is so narrow you canthrow a stone across it. "

"What lies beyond?" asked Jack, his eyes lighting vividly. 

"A great basin which was the bed of an ancient lake before the water woreits way through. "

"A dam between those walls--and you have another lake!"

"Yes, and the spring freshets from the northern water-shed all held in areservoir--none going to waste! And, Jack, as population spreads the dammust come. "

"Why, the Doge has a kingdom!"

"Yes, that's the best of it, the rights being in his hands. He sharesup with everybody and we get it when he dies. That's why we are readyto accept the Doge's sentiments as kind of gospel. If ornamental hedgeswaste water and bring bugs and are contrary to practical ranchingideas, why--well, why not? It's our Little Rivers to enjoy as weplease. We aren't growing so fast, but we're growing in a clean, beautiful way, as Jasper Ewold says. What if that river was owned byone man! What if we had to pay the price he set for what takes theplace of rain, as they do in some places in California? We're going tosay who shall build that dam!"

"Think of it! Think of it!" Jack half whispered, his imagination in play. "Plot after plot being added to this little oasis until it extends fromrange to range, one sea of green! Many little towns, with Little Riversthe mother town, spreading its ideas! Yes, think of being in at themaking of a new world, seeing visions develop into reality as, stone bystone, an edifice rises! I--I--" Jack paused, a cloud sweeping over hisfeatures, his eyes seeming to stare at a wall. His body alone seemed inLittle Rivers, his mind on the other side of the pass. He was in one ofthose moods of abstraction that ever made his fellow-ranchers feel thathe would not be with them permanently. 

Indeed, he had whole days when his smile had a sad turn; when, though hespoke pleasantly, the inspiration of talk was not in him and when BelvySmith could not rouse any action in the cat with two black stripes downits back. But many Little Riversites, including the Doge, had their saddays, when they looked away at the pass oftener than usual, as if seeinga life-story framed in the V. His came usually, as Mrs. Smith observed, when he had a letter from the East. And it was then that he would pretendto cough to Firio. These mock coughing spells were one of the fewmanifestations that made the impassive Firio laugh. 

"Now you know I am not well, don't you, Firio?" he would ask, waggishly, the very thought seeming to take him out of the doldrums. "I could neverlive out of this climate. Why, even now I have a cough, kuh-er!"

Firio had turned a stove cook. He accepted the humiliation in a spirit ofloyalty. But often he would go out among the sagebrush and return with afeathery tribute, which he would broil on a spit in a fire made in theyard. Always when Jack rode out to meet Mary at the foot of the range, Firio would follow; and always he had his rifle. For it was part ofJack's seeming inconsistency, emphasizing his inscrutability, that hewould never wear his revolver. It hung beside Pete's on the wall of theliving-room as a second relic. Far from being a quarrel-maker, he waspeaceful to the point of Quakerish predilection. 

"Nobody ever hears anything of Leddy, " said Jim; "but he will neverforget or forgive, and one day he will show up unexpectedly. "

"Not armed!" said Jack. 

"Do you think he will keep his word?"

"I know he will. I asked him and he said he would. "

"You're very simple, Jack. But mind, he can keep his word and still usea gun outside the town!"

"So he might!" admitted Jack, laughing in a way that indicated that thesubject was distasteful to him; for he would never talk of the duel. 

Now we come to that little affair of Pedro Nogales. Pedro was ahalf-breed, whose God among men was Pete Leddy no less than Jack wasFirio's and the Doge was Ignacio's. In his shanty back of Bill Lang's theMexicans and Indians lost their remaining wages in gambling after he hadfilled them with _mescal_. It happened that Gonzalez, head man of thelaborers under Bob Worther, who had saved quite a sum, came awaypenniless after taking but one drink. Every ounce of Bob's avoirdupoiswas in a rage. 

"It's time we cleaned out Pedro's place, seh!" he told Jack; "and you andJim Galway have got to help me do it!"

"I don't like to get into a row, " said Jack very soberly. 

"Then I'll undertake the job alone, " Bob retorted. "That will be a gooddeal worse, for when I get going I lose my temper and I tell you, seh, I've got a lot to lose! And, Jack, are you going to stand by and seerobbery done by the meanest, most worthless greaser in the valley--and agood Indian the victim?"

"Yes, Jack, " said Jim, "you've got such a formidable reputation sinceyour set-to with Leddy that the Indians think you are a regular master ofmagic. You're just the one to make Pedro come to terms. "

"A formidable reputation without firing a shot!" admitted Jackquizzically, and consented. 

"You'll surely want your gun this time!" Bob warned him. 

"No, " said Jack. 

"But--"

"I have hung up my gun!" Jack said decisively. "We'll try to handle thispeacefully. Come on!"

"Well, we've got our guns, anyway!" Jim put in. 

It was mid-afternoon, a slack hour for Pedro's kind of trade, and theshanty was empty of customers when the impromptu vigilance committeeentered. Pedro himself was half dozing in the faro dealer's chair. Hissmall, ferret eyes flashed a spark at the visitors as he rose, but he waspoliteness itself. 

"Señores! It is great honor! Be seated, señores!" he said with eloquentdeference. 

The very sight of him set all the ounces in Bob quivering in an outburst:

"No chairs for us! You fork over Gonzalez's money that you trickedout of him!"

"I take Gonzalez's money! I? Señores?"

"It's a hundred and twenty dollars that he earned honestly, and thequicker you lay your hands on it the better for you!" Bob roared back. 

Pedro was quite impassive. 

"Señores, if Gonzalez need money--señores, I honest man! Señores, sitdown! We talk!" Pedro dropped back into his chair and his hand, withcat-like quickness, shot under the faro table. 

Jack had come through the door after Jim and Bob. He was standing alittle behind them, and while they had been watching Pedro's face he hadwatched Pedro's movements. 

"Pedro, take your hand out from under the table and without your gun!"said Jack; and Jim Galway caught a thrill in Jack's voice that he hadheard in the _arroyo_. 

Pedro looked into Señor Don't Care's eyes and saw a bead, though theywere not looking along the glint of a revolver barrel. 

"_Sí_, señor!" said Pedro, settling back in the chair with palms out inintimation of his pacific intentions. 

"Now, Pedro, you have Gonzalez's money, haven't you?" Jack went on, inthe reasoning fashion that he had adopted to Leddy in the store. "Andyou aren't going to make yourself or Bob trouble. You are going togive it back!"

"_Sí_, señor!" said Pedro wincing. 

While he was producing the money and counting it, his furtive glance keptwatch of Jack. Then, as the committee turned to go, he suddenly exclaimedwith angry surprise and disillusion:

"You got no gun!"

While Jim and Bob waited for Jack to precede them out of the door Jim hadtime to note Pedro's baleful, piercing look at Jack's back. 

"Just as I told you, Jack--and I reckon you saved a big row. You justput a scare into that hellion with a word, like you had a thousand devilsin you!" said Jim. 

"It's all over!" Jack answered, looking more hurt than pleased over thecongratulations. "Very fortunately over. "

"But, " Jim observed, tensely, "Pedro is not only Leddy's bitterpartisan and ready to do his bidding, Pedro's a bit loco, besides--thekind that hesitates at nothing when he gets a grudge. You've got tolook out for him. "

"Oh, no!" said Jack, in the full swing of a Señor Don't Care mood. 

Jim and Bob began to entertain the feelings of Mary on the pass, when shethought of Jack as walking over precipices regardless of danger signs. After all, did he really know how to shoot? If he would not look afterhimself, it was their duty to look after him. Jim suggested that the rulewhich Jack had made for Leddy should have universal application. No onewhosoever should wear arms in Little Rivers without a permit. The newordinance had the Doge's approval; and Jim and Bob, both of whom hadpermits, kept watch that it was enforced, particularly in the case ofPedro Nogales. 

Meanwhile, Jack kept the ten-hour-a-day law. His alfalfa was growingwith prolific rapidity, but Firio had the air of one who waitsbetween journeys. 

"Never the trail again?" he asked temptingly, one day. 

"Never the trail again!" Jack declared firmly. 

"_Sí, sí, sí_--the trail again!"

"You think so? Then why do you ask?"

"To make a question, " answered Firio. "The big sadness will be toostrong. It will make you move--_sí_!"

"The big sadness!" Jack exclaimed. He seized Firio by the shoulders andlooked narrowly at him, and Firio met the gaze with soft, puzzling lightsin his eyes. "Ho! ho! A big sadness! How do you know?" he laughed. 

"I learn on the trail when I watch you look at the stars. And SeñoritaEwold, she know; but she think the big sadness a devil. She--" and hepaused. 

"She--yes?" Jack asked. 

"She--" Firio started again. 

Jack suddenly raised his hands from Firio's shoulders in a gesture ofinterruption. It was not exactly Firio's place to hazard opinions aboutMary Ewold. 

"Never mind!" he said, rather sharply. 

But Firio proceeded fixedly to finish what he had to say. 

"She has a big sadness, which makes her ride to the pass. She rides outso she can ride back smiling. "

"Firio, don't mistake your imagination for divination!" Jack warned him. 

As Firio did not understand the meaning of this he said nothing. Probablyhe would have said nothing even if he had understood. 

"I'll show you the nature of the big sadness and that the devil is a joydevil when we harvest our first crop of alfalfa, " Jack concluded. "Then Ishall make a holiday! Then I shall be a real rancher and something isgoing to happen!"

"The trail!" exclaimed Firio, and the soft light in his eyes flashed. "_Sí_! The trail and the big spurs and the revolver in the holster!"

"No!"

But Firio said "_Sí_"! with the supreme confidence of one who holds thatbelief in fulfilment will make any wish come true. 

XVI

A CHANGE OF MIND

It was Sunday afternoon; or, to date it by an epochal event, the dayafter Jack's alfalfa crop had fallen before the mower. Mary was seated onthe bench under the avenue of umbrella-trees reading a thin edition ofMarcus Aurelius bound in flexible leather. Of late she had developed afondness for the more austere philosophers. Jack, whose mood was entirelyto the sonneteers, came softly singing down the avenue of palms andpresented himself before her in a romping spirit of interruption. 

"O expert in floriculture!" he said, "the humble pupil acting as aCommittee of One has failed utterly to agree with himself as to the formof his new flowerbed. There must be a Committee of Two. Will you come?"

"Good! I am weary of Marcus. I can't help thinking that he too farantedates the Bordeaux mixture!" she answered, springing to her feet withpositive enthusiasm. 

He rarely met positive enthusiasm in her and everything in him called forit at the moment. He found it so inspiring that the problem of the bedwas settled easily by his consent to all her suggestions--a too-readyconsent, she told herself. 

"After all, it is your flower garden, " she reminded him. 

"No, every flower garden in Little Rivers is yours!" he declared. 

The way he said this made her frown. She saw him taking a step on theother side of that barrier over which she mounted guard. 

"Never make your hyperboles felonious!" she warned him. "Besides, ifyou are going to be a real Little Riversite you should have opinions ofyour own. "

"I haven't any to-day--none except victory!" and he held out his palms, exhibiting their yellowish plates. "Look! Even corns on the joints!"

"Yes, they look quite real, " she admitted, censoriously. 

"Haven't I made good? Do you remember how you stood here on the very siteof my house and lectured me? I would not work! I would not--"

"You have worked a little--a little!" she said grudgingly, and showed himas much of the wondrous sparkle in her eyes as he could see out of thecorners between the lashes. She never allowed him to look into her eyesif she apprehended any attempt to cross the barrier. But she could seewell enough out of the corners to know that his glances had a kind ofhungry joy and a promise of some new demonstration in his attitude towardher. She must watch that barrier very shrewdly. 

"Look at my hedge!" he went on. "It is knee-high already, and myumbrella-trees cast enough shade for anybody, if he will wrap himselfaround the trunk. But such things are ornamental. I have a more practicalappeal. Come on!"

His elation was insistent, superior to any prickling gibes of banter, asthey walked on the mealy earth between rows of young orange settings, and the sweet odor of drying alfalfa came to their nostrils, borne by avagrant breeze. He swept his hand toward the field in a gesture of pride, his shoulders thrown back in a deep breath of exultation. 

"The callouses win!" And he exhibited them again. 

But she refused even to glance at them this time. 

"You seem to think callouses phenomenal. Most people in Little Riversaccept them as they do the noses on their faces. "

"They certainly are phenomenal on me. So is my first crop! My first crop!I'll be up at dawn to stack it--and then I'm no longer a neophyte. I aman initiate! I'm a real rancher! A holiday is due! I celebrate!"

He was rhapsodic and he was serious, too. She was provokingly flippant asan antidote for Marcus Aurelius, whom she was still carrying in thelittle flexible leather volume. 

"How celebrate?" she inquired. "By walking through the town with a wispof alfalfa in one hand and exhibiting the callouses on the other? or willyou be drawn on a float by Jag Ear--a float labeled, 'The Idler EnjoyingHis Own Reform?' We'll all turn out and cheer. "

"Amusing, but not dignified and not to my taste. No! I shall celebrate bya terrific spree--a ride to the pass!"

He turned his face toward the range, earnest in its transfixion andsuffused with the spirit of restlessness and the call of the mighty rockmasses, gray in their great ribs and purple in their abysses. She feltthat same call as something fluid and electric running through the airfrom sky to earth, and set her lips in readiness for whatever folly hewas about to suggest. 

"A ride to the pass and a view of the sunset from the very top!" hecried. He looked down at her quickly, and all the force of the call hehad transformed into a sunny, personal appeal, which made her avert herglance. "My day in the country--my holiday, if you will go with me! Willyou, and gaze out over that spot of green in the glare of the desert, knowing that a little of it is mine?"

"Your orange-trees are too young. It's so far away they will hardlyshow, " she ventured, surveying the distance to the pass judicially. 

"Will you?"

"Why, to me a ride to the pass is not a thing to be planned a daybeforehand, " she said deliberately, still studiously observing Galeria. "It is a matter of momentary inspiration. Make it a set engagement and itis but a plodding journey. I can best tell in the morning, " sheconcluded. "And, by the way, I see you haven't yet tried grafting plumson the alfalfa stalks. "

"No. I have learned better. It is not consistent. You see, you mowalfalfa and you pick plums. "

This return to drollery, in keeping with the prescribed order of theirrelations, made her look up in candid amusement over the barrier whichfor a moment he had been endangering. 

"Honestly, Jack, you do improve, " she said, with mock encouragement. "Youseem to have mastered a number of the simple truths of age-oldagricultural experience. "

"But will you? Will you ride to the pass?"

He had the question launched fairly into her eyes. She could not escapeit. He saw one bright flash, whether of real anger or simply vexation athis reversion to the theme he could not tell, and her lashes dropped;she ran the leaf edges of the austere Marcus back and forth in herfingers, thip-thip-thip. That was the only sound for some seconds, verylong seconds. 

"As I've already tried to make clear to you, it's such a businesslikething to ride to the pass unless you have the inspiration, " she remarkedthoughtfully to Marcus. "Perhaps I shall get the inspiration on the wayback to the house;" which was a signal that she was going. "And, by theway, Jack, to return to the object of my coming, if you have ideas ofyour own about flowers incorporate them; that is the way to develop yourfloricultural talent. "

She turned away, but he followed. He was at her side and proceeding withher, his head bent toward her, boyishly, eagerly. 

"You see, I have never been out to the pass, " he remarked urgently. 

"What! You--" she started in surprise and checked herself. 

"Didn't I come by train?" he asked reprovingly. 

"No!" she answered. Her eyes were level with the road, her voice was alittle unnatural. "No! You came over the pass, Jack. "

It was the first time in the months of his citizenship of Little Riversthat she had ever hinted anything but belief in the fiction that they hadfirst met when he asked her to show him a parcel of land. She seemed tobe calling a truth out of the past and grappling with it, while her lipstightened and she drew in her chin. 

"Then I did come over the pass, " he agreed; and after a pause added:"But there was no Pete Leddy. "

"Yes, oh, yes--there was a Pete Leddy!"

"But he will not be there this time!"

And now his voice, in a transport that seemed to touch the cloud heights, was neither like the voice of the easy traveller on the pass, nor thevoice of his sharp call to Leddy to disarm, nor the voice of thestoryteller. It had a new note, a note startling to her. 

"We shall be on the pass without Leddy and smiling over Leddy andthanking him for his unwitting service in making me stop in LittleRivers, " he concluded. 

"Yes, he did that, " she admitted stoically, as if it were some oppressivefact for which she could offer no thanks. 

"I want to see our ponies with their bridles hanging loose! I want thegreat silence! I want company, with imagination speaking from the skyand reality speaking from the patch of green out on the sea of gray!Will you?"

Their steps ran rhythmically together. His look was eager inanticipation, while she kept on running the leaves of the austere Marcusthrough her fingers. Her lips were half open, as if about to speak, butwere without words; the thin, delicate nostrils trembled. 

"Will you? Will you, because I kept the faith of callouses? Will you goforth and dream for a day? We'll tell fairy stories! We'll get a pole andprod the dinosaur through the narrow part of the pass and hear him roarhis awfullest. Will you?"

Her fingers paused in the pages as if they had found a helpful passage. The chin tilted upward resolutely and he had a full view of her eyes, dancing with challenging lights. She was augustly, gloriouslymischievous. 

"Will you go in costume? Will you wear your spurs and the chaps and thesilk shirt?"

The question said that it was not a time to be serious. It sprinkled thecrest of the barrier with gleaming slivers of glass, which might givezest to words spoken across it, but would be most sharp to the touch. 

"I will wear my spurs around my wrists, if you say, tie roses in thefringe of my chaps, bind my hat with a big red silk bandanna, and putstreamers on P. D. 's bits!"

"That is too enticing for refusal, " she answered, playfully. "Iparticularly want to hear the dinosaur roar. "

They had come to the opening of the Ewold hedge, and they paused toconsider arrangements. There was no one in sight on the street except JimGalway, who was approaching at some distance. 

"Shall we start in the morning and have luncheon at the foot of therange?" suggested Jack. 

She favored an early afternoon start; he argued for his point of view, and in their preoccupation with the passage of arms they did not noticePedro Nogales slipping along beside the hedge with soft steps, his handunder his jacket. A gleam out of the bosom of Pedro's jacket, a cry fromMary, and a knife flashed upward and drove toward Jack's neck. 

Jack had seemed oblivious of his surroundings, his gaze centered on Mary. Yet he was able to duck backward so that the blade only slit open hisshirt as Pedro, with the misdirected force of his blow, lunged past itsobject. Mary saw that face which had been laughing into hers, which hadbeen so close to hers in its persistent smile of persuasion, struck whiteand rigid and a glint like that of the blade itself in the eyes. In abreath Jack had become another being of incarnate, unthinking physicalpower and swiftness. One hand seized Pedro's wrist, the other his upperarm, and Mary heard the metallic click of the knife as it struck theearth and the sickening sound of the bone of Pedro's forearm cracking. She saw Pedro's eyes bursting from their sockets in pain and fear; shesaw Jack's still profile of unyielding will and the set muscles of hisneck and the knitting muscles of his forearm driving Pedro over againstthe hedge, as if bent on breaking the Mexican's back in two, and shewaited in frozen apprehension to hear another bone crack, even expectingPedro's death cry. 

"The devil is out of Señor Don't Care!" It was the voice of Ignacio, whohad come around the house in time to witness the scene. 

"What fearful strength! You will kill him!" It was the voice of the Doge, from the porch. 

"Yes, please stop!" Mary pleaded. 

Suddenly, at the sound of her cry, Jack released his hold. The strongcolumn of his neck became apparently too weak to hold the weight of hishead. Inert, he fell against the hedge for support, his hands hanginglimp at his side, while he stared dazedly into space. It seemed then thatPedro might have picked up the knife and carried out his plan of murderwithout defence by the victim. 

"Yes, yes, yes!" Jack repeated. 

Pedro had not moved from the hollow in the hedge which the impress of hisbody had made. He was trembling, his lips had fallen away from histeeth, and he watched Jack in stricken horror, a beaten creature waitingon some judgment from which there was no appeal. 

"We'll tell fairy stories"--Jack's soft tones of persuasion repeatedthemselves in Mary's ears in contrast to the effect of what she had justwitnessed. Her hand slipped along the crest of the hedge, as if tosteady herself. 

"I'll change my mind about going to the pass, Jack, " she said. 

"Yes, Mary, " he answered in a faint tone. 

He looked around to see her back as she turned away from him; then, withan effort, he stepped free of the hedge. 

"Come, we will go to the doctor!" he said to the Mexican. 

He touched Pedro's shoulder softly and softly ran his hand down thesleeve in which the arm hung limp. Pedro had not moved; he still leanedagainst the hedge inanimate as a mannikin. 

"Come! Your legs are not broken! You can walk!" said Jim Galway, who hadcome up in a hurry when he saw what was happening. 

"Pedro, you will learn not to play with the devil in Señor Don't Care!"whispered Ignacio, while Mary had disappeared in the house and the Dogestood watching. 

Jack had stroked Pedro's head while the bone was being set. He hadarranged for Pedro's care. And now he was in his own yard with Jag Earand the ponies, rubbing their muzzles alternately in silentimpartiality, his head bowed reflectively as Firio came around thecorner of the house. At first he half stared at Firio, then he surveyedthe steeds of his long journeyings in questioning uncertainty, and thenlooked back at Firio, smiling wanly. 

"Firio, " he said, "I feel that I am a pretty big coward. Firio, I am fullup--full to overflowing. My mind is stuffed with cobwebs. I--I must thinkthings out. I must have the solitudes. "

"The trail!" prescribed Doctor Firio. 

After Jack had given his ranch in charge to Galway, he rode away inthe dusk, not by the main street, but straight across the levelstoward the pass. 

XVII

THE DOGE SNAPS A RUBBER BAND

Jasper Ewold was a disciple of an old-fashioned custom that has falleninto disuse since the multiplicity of typewriters made writing for one'sown pleasure too arduous; or, if you will have another reason, since ourexistence and feelings have become so complex that we can no longerexpress them with the simple directness of our ancestors. He kept adiary with what he called a perfect regularity of intermittency. A weekmight pass without his writing a single word, and again he might indulgefreely for a dozen nights running. He wrote as much or as little as hepleased. He wrote when he had something to tell and when he was in themood to tell it. 

"It is facing yourself in your own ink, " he said. "It is confessing thatyou are an egoist and providing an antidote for your egoism. Firstly, youwill never be bored by your own past if you can appreciate your errorsand inconsistencies. Secondly, you will never be tempted to bore otherswith your past as long as you wish to pose as a wise man. "

He must have found, as you would find if you had left youth behind andcould see yourself in your own ink, that the first tracery of anycontrolling factor in your life was faint and inconsequential to you atthe time, without presage of its importance until you saw other lines, also faint and inconsequential in their beginnings, drawing in toward itto form a powerful current. 

On the evening that Jack took to the trail again, Jasper Ewold had anumber of thick notebooks out of the box in the library which he alwayskept locked, and placed them on the living-room table beside his easychair, in which he settled himself. Mary was sewing while he pored overhis life in review as written by his own hand. Her knowledge of thesecrets of that chronicle from wandering student days to desert exile waslimited to glimpses of the close lines of fine-written pages across thebreadth of the circle of the lamp's reflection. He surrounded his diarywith a line of mystery which she never attempted to cross. On occasionshe would read to her certain portions which struck his recollectionhappily; but these were invariably limited to his impressions of somecity or some work of art that he was seeing for the first time in thegeniality of the unadulterated joy of living in what she guessed was theperiod of youth before she was born; and never did they throw any lighton his story except that of his views as a traveller and a personality. But he did not break out into a single quotation to-night. It seemed asif he were following the thread of some reference from year to year; forhe ran his fingers through the leaves of certain parts hastily and becamestudiously intense at other parts as he gloomily pondered over them. 

Neither she nor her father had mentioned Jack since the scene by thehedge. This was entirely in keeping with custom. It seemed a matter ofinstinct with both that they never talked to each other of him. Yet shewas conscious that he had been in her father's mind all through theevening meal, and she was equally certain that her father realized thathe was in her mind. 

It was late when the Doge finished his reading, and he finished it withthe page of the last book, where the fine handwriting stopped at the edgeof the blank white space of the future. An old desire, ever strong withMary, which she had never quite had the temerity to express, had becomeimpelling under the influence of her father's unusually long and silentpreoccupation. 

"Am I never to have a glimpse of that treasure? Am I never, never to readyour diary?" she asked. 

The Doge drew his tufted eyebrows together in utter astonishment. 

"What! What, Mary! Why, Mary, I might preach a lesson on the folly offeminine curiosity. Do you think I would ask to see your diary?"

"But I don't keep one. "

"Hoo-hoo-hoo!" The Doge was blowing out his lips in an ado of deprecatorynonsense. "Don't keep one? Have you lost your memory?"

"I had it a minute ago--yes, " after an instant's playful consideration, "I am sure that I have it now. "

"Then, everybody with a memory certainly keeps a diary. Would you wantme to read all the foolish things you had ever thought? Do you think Iwould want to?"

"No, " she answered. 

"There you are, then!" declared the Doge victoriously, as he rose, slipping a rubber band with a forbidding snap over the last book. "Andthis is all stupid personal stuff--but mine own!"

There was an unconscious sigh of weariness as he took up the thumbedleather volumes. He was haggard. "Mine own" had given him no pleasurethat evening. All the years of his life seemed to rest heavily upon himfor a silent moment. Mary feared that she had hurt him by her request. 

"You have read so much you will scarcely do any writing to-night, "she ventured. 

"Yes, I will add a few more lines--the spirit is in me--a few more daysto the long record, " he said, absently, then, after a pause, suddenly, with a kind of suppressed force vibrating in his voice: "Well, our SirChaps has gone. "

"As unceremoniously as he came, " she answered. 

"It was terrible the way he broke Nogales's wrist!" remarked theDoge narrowly. 

"Terrible!" she assented as she folded her work, her head bent. 

"Gone, and doubtless for good!" he continued, still watching her sharply. 

"Very likely!" she answered carelessly without looking up. "His vagariousplaytime for this section is over. "

"Just it! Just it!" the Doge exclaimed happily. 

"And if Leddy overtakes him now, it's his own affair!"

"Yes, yes! He and his Wrath of God and Jag Ear are away to other worlds!"

"And other Leddys!"

"No doubt! No doubt!" concluded the Doge, in high good humor, all thevexation of his diary seemingly forgotten as he left the room. 

But, as the Doge and Mary were to find, they were alone among LittleRiversites in thinking that the breaking of Pedro Nogales's wrist washorrible. Jim Galway, who had witnessed the affair, took a radicallycontrary view, which everyone else not of the Leddy partisanship readilyaccepted. Despite the frequency of Jack's visits to the Ewold garden andall the happy exchange of pleasantries with his hosts, the communitycould not escape the thought of a certain latent hostility toward Jack onthe part of the Doge, the more noticeable because it was so out ofkeeping with his nature. 

"Doge, sometimes I think you are almost prejudiced against Jack Wingfieldbecause he didn't let Leddy have his way, " said Jim, with an outrightfrankness that was unprecedented in speaking to Jasper Ewold. "You'resuch a regular old Quaker!"

"But that little Mexican panting in abject fear against the hedge!"persisted the Doge. 

"A nice, peaceful little Mexican with a knife, sneaking up to plant it inJack's neck!"

"But Jack is so powerful! And his look! I was so near I could see it wellas he towered over Nogales!"

"Yes, no mistaking the look. I saw it in the _arroyo_. It made me thinkof what the look of one of those old sea-fighters might have been likewhen they lashed alongside and boarded the enemy. "

"And the crack of the bone!" continued the Doge. 

"Would you have a man turn cherub when he has escaped having hisjugular slashed by a margin of two or three inches? Would you have himsay, 'Please, naughty boy, give me your knife? You mustn't play withsuch things!'"

"No! That's hyperbole!" the Doge returned with a lame attempt at a laugh. 

"Mebbe it is, whatever hyperbole is, " said Jim; "but if so, hyperbole isa darned poor means of self-defence. Yes, the trouble is you are againstJack Wingfield!"

"Yes, I am!" said the Doge suddenly, as if inward anger had got thebetter of him. 

"And the rest of us are for him!" Jim declared sturdily. 

"Naturally! naturally!" said the Doge, passing his hand over his brow. "Yes, youth and color and bravery!" He shook his head moodily, as ifJim's statement brought up some vital, unpleasant, but inevitable factto his mind. 

"It's beyond me how anybody can help liking him!" concluded Galwaystubbornly. 

"I like him--yes, I do like him! I cannot help it!" the Doge admittedrather grudgingly as he turned away. 

"So we weren't so far apart, after all!" Galway hastened to call afterthe Doge in apology for his testiness. "We like him for what he has beento us and will always be to us. That's the only criterion of character inLittle Rivers according to your own code, isn't it, Jasper Ewold?"

"Exactly!" answered the Doge over his shoulder. 

The community entered into a committee of the whole on Jack Wingfield. With every citizen contributing a quota of personal experience, his storywas rehearsed from the day of his arrival to the day of his departure. Argument fluctuated on the question of whether or not he would everreturn, with now the noes and now the ayes having it. On this point Jimhad the only first-hand evidence. 

"He said to let things grow until he showed up or I heard fromhim, " said Jim. 

"Not what I would call enlightening, " said Bob Worther. 

"That was his way of expressing it; but to do him justice, he showed whata good rancher he was by his attention to the details that had to becared for, " Jim added. 

"He's like the spirit of the winds, I guess, " put in Mrs. Galway. "Something comes a-calling him or a-driving him, I don't know which. Indeed, I'm not altogether certain that it isn't a case of Mary Ewoldthis time!"

"Yes, " agreed Jim. "The fighting look went out of his face when shespoke, and when he saw how horrified she was, why, I never saw such achange come over a man! It was just like a piece of steel wilting. "

However, the children, who had no part in the august discussions of thecommittee of the whole, were certain that their story-teller would comeback. Their ideas about Jack were based on a simple, self-convincingfaith of the same order as Firio's. Lonely as they were, they were hardlymore lonely than their elders, who were supposed to have the philosophyof adults. 

No Jack singing out "Hello!" on the main street! No Jack looking up fromwork to ask boyishly: "Am I learning? Oh, I'll be the boss rancher yet!"No Jack springing all sorts of conceits, not of broad humor, but the kindthat sort of set a "twinkling in your insides, " as Bob Worther expressedit! No Jack inspiring a feeling deeper than twinkles on his sad days! Hehad been an improvement in town life that became indispensable once itwas absent. Little Rivers was fairly homesick for him. 

"How did we ever get along without him before he came, anyway?" BobWorther demanded. 

Then another new-comer, as distinctive from the average settler as Jackwas, diverted talk into another channel, without, however, reconcilingthe people to their loss. 

XVIII

ANOTHER STRANGER ARRIVES

If the history of Little Rivers were to be written in chapter headingsthe first would be, "Jasper Ewold Founded the Town"; the second, "JackWingfield Arrived"; and the third, "John Prather Arrived. "

While Jack came in chaps and spurs, bearing an argosy of fancy, Prathercame by rail, carrying a suitcase in a conventional and businesslikefashion. Bill Deering, as the representative of a spring wagon that didthe local omnibus and express business, was on the platform of thestation when the 11:15 rolled in, and sang out, in a burst of joy, as thestranger, a man in the early twenties, stepped off the Pullman:

"What's this, Jack? Back by train--and in store clothes? Well, ofall--" and saw his mistake when the stranger's full face was turnedtoward him. 

"Yes, I am sometimes called Jack, " said the stranger pleasantly. "Now, where have we met before? Perhaps in Goldfield? No matter. It is time wegot acquainted. My name is Prather, and yours?"

As he surveyed the man before him, Bill was as fussed as the giant of thefairy story had been by a display of yellow. He was uncertain whether hewas giving his own baptismal name or somebody's else. 

"By Jing! No, I don't know you, but you sure are the dead spit of afellow I do know!" said Bill. 

"Well, he has done me the favor of introducing me to you, anyway, " saidPrather, who had a remarkably ingratiating smile. "I would like a placeto stop while I take a look around. Is there a hotel?"

"Rooms over the store and grub at Mrs. Smith's--none better!"

"That will do. "

As they rode into town more than one passer-by called out a ringing"Hello, Jack!" or, "Back, eh, Jack? Hurrah for you!" and then uttered anexclamation of disillusion when Prather turned his head. 

"The others see it, too, " said Bill. 

"They seem to. Who is this double of mine?"

"Jack Wingfield. "

"Jack Wingfield? It seems that our first names are the same, too. Helives here, I take it. "

"Yes. But he's away now. "

"Well, when he comes back"--with a pause of slight irritation--"therewill be no difficulty in telling us apart. "

He put his finger to a triangular patch of mole on his cheek. Hisirritation passed and a sense of appreciative amusement at thedistinction took its place. 

"Now, where shall I find Jasper Ewold?" he asked, as Bill drew up beforethe Smiths. 

A few minutes later the Doge, busy among his orange-trees, hearing astep, looked up with a signal of recognition which changed to blankinquiry when the cheek with the mole was turned toward him. 

"Upon my word, sir, I--I thought that you were--" he began. 

"Mr. Wingfield! Yes, everybody in town seems to think so at first glance, so I am quite used to the comparison by this time, " Prather put in, easily. "It is very interesting to meet the founder of a town, and Ihave come to you to find out about conditions here. "

Prather did not appear as if he had ever done manual labor. He was tooyoung to have turned from ill health or failure in the city to the refugeof the land. Indeed, his quiet gray suit of good material indicatedunostentatious prosperity. Evidently he was well-bred and evidently hewas not an agent for a new style of seeding harrow or weed killer. 

"You think of settling?" asked the Doge. 

"Yes. From all I have heard of Little Rivers, it's a community where Ishould feel at home. "

"Then, sir, we will talk of it at luncheon; it is knocking-off time forthe morning. Yes, I'll talk as much as you please. Come on, Mr. Prather!"They started along the avenue of palms, the Doge still studying the faceat his side. "Pardon me for staring at you, but the resemblance to JackWingfield at first sight is most striking, " he added. 

"Has he travelled much in the West?" asked Prather. 

"Yes, much--leading an aimless life. "

"Then he must be the one that I was taken for in Salt Lake City one day. The man who called out to me saw his mistake, just as you did, when hesaw my full face;" and again Prather made a gesture of understandingamusement to the mole. 

"When you consider what confusion there must be in the workrooms, withthe storks flapping and screeching like newsboys outside the deliveryroom, " mused the Doge, "and when you consider the multitudinouspopulation of the earth, it's surprising that the good Lord is able tofurnish such a variety of faces as he does. But they do say that everyone of us has a few doubles. In the case of famous public men they gettheir pictures in the papers. "

"Yes, very few of us but have been mistaken for a friend by a strangerpassing in the street!" Prather suggested. 

"Only to have the stranger see his mistake at a second glance; and onsecond glance you do not look very much like Jack Wingfield, " the Dogeconcluded. "Just a coincidence in physiognomy!"

And Prather was very frank about his past. 

"I have led rather a hard life, " he said. "Though I was well brought upmy father left mother and me quite penniless. I had to fend for myself atthe age of sixteen. A friend gave me an opportunity to go to Goldfield atthe outbreak of the excitement there. The rough experience of amining-camp was not exactly to my taste, but it meant a livelihood. Myreal interest has always been in irrigation farming. I would rather growa good crop than mine for gold. Well, I saved a little money atGoldfield--saved it to buy land. But land is not the only consideration. The surroundings, the people with whom you have to live count for a greatdeal when you mean to settle permanently. "

"Excellent!" declared the Doge. "A good citizen in full fellowship withyour neighbors! Exactly what we want in Little Rivers. "

Prather had a complexion of that velvety whiteness that never tans. His eyes were calm, yet attractive, with a peculiar insinuating charmwhen he talked that made it seem easy and natural to respond to hiswishes. In listening he had an ingratiating manner that wasflattering to the speaker. 

"A practical man!" the Doge said to Mary that evening. "The kind we needhere. He and I had a grand afternoon of it together. Every one of hisquestions about soils and cultivation was to the point. "

"Not one argument?" she asked. 

"No, Mary; no time for argument. "

"You do like people to agree with you, after all!" she hazarded. For shedid not like Prather. 

"Pooh! Not a matter of agreement! No persiflage! No altitudinousconversation of the kind that grows no crops. Prather wants to learn, andhe's got good, clean ideas, with a trained and accurate mind--the bestpossible combination. I hope he will stay for the very reason that he isnot the kind that takes up a plot of land for life on an impulse, whichusually results in turning on the water and getting discouraged becausenature will not do the rest. But he is very favorably impressed. He saidthat after Goldfield Little Rivers was like Paradise--practical Paradise. Good phrase, practical Paradise!"

In two or three days the new-comer knew everyone in town; but though headdressed the men by their first names they always addressed him as "Mr. Prather. " In another respect besides his features he was like Jack: hewas much given to smiling. 

"The difference between his smile and Jack's, " said Mrs. Galway, who wasat one with Mary in not liking him, "is that his is sort of a drawing-inkind of smile and Jack's sort of radiates. "

The children developed no interest in him. It was evident that he couldnot tell stories, except with an effort. In his goings and comings, everasking pleasant questions and passing compliments, he was usuallyaccompanied by the Doge, and his attitude toward the old man was theadmiring deference of disciple for master. 

"I am sorry I don't understand that, " he would say when the Doge fellinto a scholastic allusion to explain a point. "I was hard at work whenlots of my friends were in college. "

"Learning may be ruination, " responded the Doge, "though it wouldn't havebeen in your case. It's the man that counts. See what you have made ofyourself!"

"Ah, yes, but I feel that I have missed something. When I am settled hereI shall be able to make up for lost time, with your help, sir. "

"Every pigeonhole in my mind will be open at your call!" said the Doge, glowing at the prospect. 

The favor that Prather found in the eyes of Jasper Ewold partly accountedfor what favor he found in Little Rivers' eyes. 

"Prather has certainly made a hit with the Doge!" quoth Bob Worther. "As the Doge gets older I reckon he will like compliments better thanpersiflage. But Jack could pay a compliment, too--only he never usedthe ladle. "

It was Bob, as inspector of ditches and dams, who provided a horse forPrather to inspect the source of the water supply. In keeping with acharacteristic thoroughness, Prather wanted to go up the river into thecanyon. He made himself a very enjoyable companion on the way, drawingout all of Bob's best stories. When they stopped in sight of the streakof blue sky through the breach in the mighty wall that had onceimprisoned the ancient lake, he was silent for some time, while hesurveyed this grandeur of the heights with smiling contemplation, atintervals rubbing the palms of his hands together in a manner habitualwith him when he was particularly pleased. 

"I guess the same idea has struck you that strikes everybody at sight ofthat, seh!" said Bob. 

"Yes, a dam might be practical, " Prather answered. "But it would take alot of capital--a lot of capital!"

On the way back they stopped before a dilapidated shanty near thefoothills. In the midst of a littered yard old man Lefferts, half dozing, occupied a broken chair. 

"Since the Doge came old man Lefferts has had to do no work at all. AMexican looks after him. But it hasn't made him any happier, " Bobexplained as they approached. 

"Howdy yourself?" growled Lefferts in answer to Bob's greeting. 

"He seems to be a character!" whispered Prather to Bob, as he smiled atthe prospect. "To confess the truth, I am a little saddle sore and tired. I didn't get much riding in Goldfield. I think I'll stop and rest and getacquainted. "

"You won't get much satisfaction but growls. "

"That will be all the more fun for me, " rejoined Prather. "But don't letme keep you. "

"No. I must be going on. I've got some things to look after beforenightfall, " said Bob, while Prather, in a humor proof against any hermitcantankerousness, rode into the yard. 

When he returned after dark he said, laughingly, that he had enjoyedhimself, though the conversation was all on one side. The next morning hedecided to take up the plot of land adjoining Jack's. 

"But I shall not be able to begin work for a few weeks, " he said. "I mustgo to Goldfield to settle up my affairs before I begin my new career. "

"If Jack ever comes back I wonder what he will say to his new neighbor!"Little Rivers wondered. 

XIX

LOOKING OVER PRECIPICES

To Mary Ewold the pass was a dividing line between two appeals. TheLittle Rivers side, with the green patch of oasis in the distance, had amessage of peaceful enjoyment of what fortune had provided for her. Underits spell she saw herself content to live within garden walls forever inthe land that had given her life, grateful for the trickles ofintelligence that came by mail from the outside world. 

The other side aroused a mighty restlessness. Therefore, she rarely madethat short journey which spread another panorama of space before her. Butthis was one of the afternoons when she welcomed a tumult of any kind asa relief from her depression; and she went on through the V as soon asshe reached the summit. 

Seated on a flat-topped rock, oblivious of the passage of time, of thedream cities of the Eternal Painter, she was staring far away where thenarrowing gray line between the mountain rims met the sky. She was seeingbeyond the horizon. She was seeing cities of memory and reality. A greatyearning was in her heart. All the monotonous level lap of the heightswhich seemed without end was a symbol that separated her from her desire. 

She imagined herself in a Pullman, flashing by farms and villages; in ashop selecting gowns; viewing from a high window the human stream ofFifth Avenue; taking passage on a steamer; hearing again foreign tongueslong ago familiar to her ears; sensing the rustle of great audiencesbefore a curtain rose; glimpsing the Mediterranean from a car window;feeling herself a unit in the throbbing promenade of the life of manystreets while her hunger took its fill of a busy world. 

"It is hard to do it all in imagination!" she said to herself. "Evenimagination needs an occasional nest-egg of reality by way ofencouragement. "

An hour on the far side of the pass played the emotional part for her ofa storm of tears for many another woman. She rejoiced in being utterlyalone; rejoiced in the grandeur of the very wastes around her as mountingguard over the freedom of her thoughts. There was no living speck on thetrail, which she knew lay across the expanse of parched earth to the edgeof the blue dome; there was not even a bird in the air. Undisturbed, shemight think anything, pray for anything; she might feed the flame ofrevolt till the fuel of many weeks' accumulation had burned itself outand left her calm in the wisdom and understanding that reconciled her toher portion and freshened to return through Galeria to the quiet routineof her daily existence. 

Her mind paused in its travels from capital to capital and she wasconscious solely of the stark majesty of her surroundings. She listened. There was no sound. The spacious stillness was soothing to her nerves; aspecific when all the Eternal Painter's art failed. She closed her eyes, trying to realize that great silence as one would try to realize theInfinite. Then faintly she heard a man's voice singing. It seemed atfirst a trick of the imagination. But nearer and nearer it came, in thefellowship of life joyfully invading the solitude; and with areadjustment of her faculties to the expected event, she watched thepoint where the trail dipped on a sharp turn of grade. 

Above it rose a cowpuncher hat, then a silk shirt with a string tie, andafter that a sage baggage burro with clipped ears, a solemn-faced pony, and an Indian. Jack was watching his steps in the uneven path, and notuntil the full length of him had appeared and he was flush on the levelwith her did he look up. 

She was leaning back, her weight partly poised on the flat of her handon the rock, revealing the full curve of throat and the soft sweep ofthe lines of her slim figure, erect, her head thrown back, her face inshadow with the sun behind playing in her hair, in half-defiantreadiness. She saw him as the spirit of travel--its ease, mystery, unattachedness--which had spanned the distances between her and thehorizon, in the freedom of his wandering choice. His low-pitchedexclamation of surprise was vibrant with appreciation of the picture shemade, and he stood quite still in a second's wistful silence, waiting onher first word after the lapse of the many days since he had brought alook of horror into her eyes. 

"Hello, Jack!" she said in the old tone of comradeship. It struck a sparkelectrifying him with all his old, happy manner. 

He swept off his hat with a grand bow, blinking in the blaze of the sunwhich turned his tan to a bronze and touched the smile, which was born asan inspiration from her greeting, with radiance. 

"Hello to you, Mary, guarding the pass to Little Rivers!" he saidexultantly. "You are just the person I wanted to see. I have been ina hurry to tell you about a certain thing ever since it came to methis morning. "

She guessed that he was about to make up a new story. He must have hadtime for many inventions in the ten days of his absence. But she welcomedany tangent of nonsense that set the right key for the coincidence oftheir meeting. She had refused to ride to the pass with him and here theywere alone together on the pass. Three or four steps, so light that theyseemed to be irresistibly winning permission from her, and he had satdown on another flat-topped rock close by. Firio and the baggage trainmoved on up the trail methodically and stopped well in the background. 

"You know how when you meet a person you are sometimes haunted by aconviction that you have met him before!" he began. "How exasperated youare not to be able to recall the time and place!"

"Had you forgotten where you met the dinosaur?" she asked. "He must havethought you very impolite after all the trouble he had taken to make youremember him the last time you went through the pass. "

"Oh, the dinosaur and I have patched up a truce, because it seems, afterall, that I had mistaken his identity and he was a pleosaur. But"--he didnot take the pains to parry her interruption with more foolery, andproceeded as if she had not spoken--"it has never been out of my mindthat your father gave me a glance at our first meeting which asked thequestion that has kept recurring to me: Where had he and I seen eachother before?"

"Well?" she said curiously, recalling her father's repeated allusions to"this Wingfield, " his strange depression after Jack had left the nightbefore the duel, his reticence and animadversions. 

"I said nothing about it, nor did he. I wonder if it has not been a kindof contest between us as to which should be the first to say 'Tag!'"

She smiled at this and leaned farther back, but with the curtain of hereyelashes widening in tremulous intensity. 

"I knew it would come!" he went on, with dramatic fervor. "Such things docome unexpectedly in a flash when there is a sudden electric connectionwith some dusty pigeonhole in the mind. It was in Florence that he and Imet! In Florence, on the road to Fiesole!"

"Florence! The road to Fiesole!" Mary repeated; and the names seemed torouse in her a rapturous recollection. She leaned forward now, her lipsapart, her eyes glowing. In place of wastes she was seeing brown roofsand the sweep of the Tuscan Valley. 

"And _we_ met--_you_ and _I_!"

"We?" Her glance came sharply back from the distances in the astonishmentof dilating pupils that drew together in inquiry as she saw that he wasin earnest. 

"Yes. I was at the extremely mature age of six and you must have beenabout a year younger. Do you remember it at all?"

"No!" She was silent, concentrated, groping. "No, no!" she repeated. "Five is very immature compared to six!"

"Your father had a beard then, a great blond beard that excited myemulation. When I grew up I was going to have one like it and just suchbushy eyebrows. You came up the Fiesole road at his side, holding fastto his thumb. I was playing at our villa gate. You went up the path withhim to see my mother--I can see just how you looked holding so fast tothat thumb! After a while you came straying out alone. Now don't youremember? Don't you? Something quite sensational happened. "

"No!"

"Well, I showed off what a great boy I was. I walked on the parapet ofthe villa wall. I bowed to my audience aged five with the grandeur of atight-rope performer who has just done his best thriller as a climax tohis turn. "

"Yes--yes!" she breathed, with quick-running emphasis. Out of the mistsof fifteen years had come a signal. She bent nearer to him in the wonderof a thing found in the darkness of memory, which always has thefascination of a communication from another world. "You wanted me to comeup on the wall, " she said, taking up the thread of the story. "You saidit was so easy, and you helped me up, and when I looked down at the roadI was overcome and fell down all in a heap on the parapet. "

"And heavens!" he gasped, living the scene over again, "wasn't Ifrightened for fear you would tumble off!"

"But I remember that you helped me down very nicely--and--and that is allI do remember. What then?"

She had come to a blind alley and perplexity was in her face, though shetried to put the question nonchalantly. What then? How deep ran thecurrent of this past association?

"Why, there wasn't much else. Your father came down the path and his bigthumb took you in tow. I did not see you again. A week later mother and Ihad gone to Switzerland--we were always on the move. "

The candor of his glance told her that this was all. As boy and girl theyhad met under an Italian sky. As man and woman they had met under anArizona sky. 

Now the charm of the Florence of their affections held them with a magictouch. They were not in a savage setting, looking out over savagedistances, but on the Piazzale Michelangelo, looking out over the city ofRenaissance genius which slumbers on the refulgent bosom of its past;they were oblivious of the Eternal Painter's canvasses and enjoyingRaphael's, Botticelli's, and Andrea del Sarto's. Possibly the EternalPainter, in the leniency of philosophic appreciation of their oblivion tohis art, hazarded a guess about the destiny of this pair. He could notreally have known their destiny. No, it is impossible to grant him thepower of divination; for if he had it he might not be so young of heart. 

Their talk flitted here and there in exclamations, each bringing anentail of recollection of some familiar, enjoyed thing; and when at lastit returned to their immediate surroundings the shadow of the range wascreeping out onto the plain, cut by the brilliance of the sun through theV. Mary rose with a quick, self-accusing cry about the lateness of thehour. To him it was a call on his resources to delay their departure. 

"Do you see where that shelf breaks abruptly?" he asked. "It must be theside of a canyon. Have you ever looked down?"

"I started to once. "

"I should not like to go over the pass again without seeing if thisis really a canyon of any account. I feel myself quite an authorityon canyons. "

"It will be dark before we reach Little Rivers!" she protested. 

"Ten minutes--only a step!" and he was appealing in his boyish fashion tohave his way. 

"Nonsense! Besides, I do not care for canyons. "

"You still fear, then, to look down from walls? You--"

And this decided her. On another occasion she had gone to the precipiceedge and faltered. She would master her dizziness for once and all; heshould not know from her any confession of a weakness which was purely ofthe imagination. 

The point to which he had alluded was an immense overhanging slab ofgranite stratum deep set in the mountain side. As they approached, athrill of lightness and uncertainty was setting her limbs a-quiver. Herelbow was touching his, her will driving her feet forward desperately. Suddenly she was gazing down, down, down, into black depths whichseemed calling irresistibly and melting her power of muscular volition, while he with another step was on the very edge, leaning over andsmiling. She dropped back convulsively. He was all happy absorption inthe face of that abyss. How easy for him to topple over and go hurtlinginto the chasm!

"Don't!" she gasped, and blindly tugged at his arm to draw him back. 

As he looked around in surprise and inquiry, she withdrew her hand in areaction against her familiarity, yet did not lower it, holding it outwith fingers spread in expression of her horror. Serenely he regardedher for a moment in her confusion and distress, and then, smiling, whilethe still light of confidence was in his eyes, he locked his arm in hers. Before she could protest or resist he had drawn her to his side. 

"It is just as safe as looking off the roof of a porch on to a flowergarden, " he said. 

And why she knew not, but the fact had come as something definite andsettled: she was no longer dizzy or uncertain. Calmly, in the triumph ofmind over fear, in the glory of a new sensation of power, she looked downinto that gulf of shadows--looked down for a thousand feet, where thenarrowing, sheer walls merged into darkness. 

From this pit to the blue above there was only infinite silence, with nomovement but his pulse-beat which she could feel in his wristdistinctly. He had her fast, a pawn of one of his impulses. A shiver ofrevolt ran through her. He had taken this liberty because she had shownweakness. And she was not weak. She had come to the precipice to provethat she was not. 

"Thank you. My little tremor of horror has passed, " she told him. "I canstand without help, now. "

He released his hold and she stood quite free of him, a glance flashingher independence. Smilingly she looked down and smilingly andtriumphantly back at him. 

"You need not keep your arm up in that fashion ready to assist me. Itis tiring, " she said, with a touch of her old fire of banter over thebarrier. "I am all right, now. I don't know what gave me that giddyturn--probably sitting still so long and looking out at the blaze ofthe desert. "

He swept her with a look of admiration; and their eyes meeting, shelooked back into the abyss. 

"I wish I had such courage, " he said with sudden, tense earnestness;"courage to master my revulsion against shadows. "

"Perhaps it will come like an inspiration, " she answereduncomprehendingly. 

Then both were silent until she spoke of a stunted little pine three orfour hundred feet down, in the crotch of an outcropping. Its sinkingroots had split a rock, over which the other roots sprawled in gnarlypersistence. Some passing bird had dropped the seed which had found a bedin a pocket of dust from the erosions of time. So it had grown and set uphousekeeping in its isolation, even as the community of Little Rivers hadin a desert basin beside a water-course. 

"The little pine has courage--the courage of the dwarf, " she said. "It isworth more than a whole forest of its majestic cousins in Maine. Howgreen it is--greener than they!"

"But they rise straight to heaven in their majesty!" he returned, to makecontroversy. 

"Yes, out of the ease of their rich beds!"

"In a crowd and waiting for the axe!"

"And this one, in its isolation, creating something where there wasnothing! Every one of its needles is counted in its cost of birth out ofthe stubborn soil! And waiting all its life down there for the reward ofa look and a word of praise!"

"But, " he went on, in the delight of hearing her voice in rebuttal, "thebig pines give us the masts of ships and they build houses and furnishthe kindling for the hardwood logs of the hearth!"

"The little pine makes no pretensions. It has done more. It has given ussomething without which houses are empty: It has given us a thought!"

"True!" he exclaimed soberly, yielding. And now all the lively signals ofthe impulse of action played on his face. "For your glance and your wordof praise it shall pay you tribute!" he cried. "I am going down to bringyou one of its clusters of spines. "

"But, Jack, it is a dangerous climb--it is late! No! no!"

"No climb at all. It is easy if I work my way around by that ledgeyonder. I see stepping-places all the way. "

How like him! While she thought only of the pine, he had been thinkinghow to make a descent; how to conquer some physical difficulty. Alreadyhe had started despite her protest. 

"I don't want to rob the little pine!" she called, testily. 

"I'll bring a needle, then!"

"Even every needle is precious!"

"I'll bring a dead one, then!"

There was no combatting him, she knew, when he was headstrong; and whenhe was particularly headstrong he would laugh in his soft way. He waslaughing now as he took off his spurs and tossed them aside. 

"No climbing in these cart-wheels, and I shall have to roll up my chaps!"

She went back to the precipice edge to prove to him, to prove to herself, that she could stand there alone, without the moral support of anyone ather side, and found that she could. She had mastered her weakness. It wasas if a new force had been born in her. She felt its stiffening in everyfibre as she saw him pass around the ledge and start down toward thelittle pine; felt it as something which could build barriers and mountthem with an invulnerable guard. 

How would he get past that steep shoulder? The worst obstacle confrontedhim at the very beginning of the descent. He was hugging a rock face, feeling his way, with nothing but a few inches of a projecting seambetween him and the darkness far below. His foot slipped, his body turnedhalf around, and she had a second of the horror that she had felt whenwaiting for the sound of Leddy's shot in Bill Lang's store. She saw hisoutspread hands clutching the seam above; watched for them to let go. Butthey held; the foot groped and got its footing again, and he worked hisway out on a shelf. 

He was safe and she dropped on her knees weakly, still looking down athim. It was the old story of their relations. Was this man ever to besubjecting her to spasms of fear on his account? And there he was beamingup at her reassuringly, while she felt the blood which had gone from herface return in a hot flood. It brought with it anger in place of fear. 

"I don't want it! I don't want it!" she cried down. 

"And I want to get it for you! I want to get it for you--for you!" Hisvoice was a tumult of emotion in the abandon of passionate declaration. So long had she held him back that now when the flood came it had thepower of conserved strength bursting a dam in wild havoc. "There isnothing I would not like to do for you, Mary!" he cried. "I'd like topull that pine up for you, even if it bled and suffered! I'd like to goon doing things for you forever!"

There was not even a movement of her lips in answer. It seemed to hernow that there on the precipice edge, while he held her arm in his, the iridescent house of glass had fallen about them in a confused, dazzling shower of wreckage. He had found an opening. He had brokenthrough the barrier. 

Half unconscious of his progress, of the chasm itself, she waited in adaze and came out of it to see him sweeping his hat upward from besidethe pine before he reached as far as he could among the branches and, with what seemed to her the refinement of effrontery and disregard of herwishes, broke off a tawny young branch. He waved it to her--this garlandof conquest won out of the jaws of danger, which he was ready to throw ather feet from the lists. 

"No, no, no!" she said, half aloud. 

She saw him start back with his sure steps, his shoulders swinging withthe lithe, adaptable movement of his body; and every step was drawing himnearer to a meeting which would be like no other between them. Soon hewould be crunching the glass of the house under that confident tread; inthe ecstasy of a new part he would be before the opening he had broken inthe barrier with the jauntiness of one who expected admission. Hispulse-beat under the touch of her fingers at the precipice edge, hisartery-beat in the _arroyo_, was hammering in her temples, hammering outa decision which, when it came, brought her to her feet. 

Now the shadows were deep; all the glory of the sunset in the EternalPainter's chaotic last moments of his day's work overspread the westernsky, and from the furnace in which he dipped his brush came a blade ofrich, blazing gold through the pass and lay across the trail. Itenveloped her as, half running, mindless of her footing, slipping as shewent, she hurried toward the other side of Galeria. 

When Jack Wingfield came up over the ledge, a pine tassel in his hand, his languor of other days transformed into high-strung, triumphantintensity, the sparkle of a splendid hope in his eyes, only Firio wasthere to welcome him. 

"Señorita Ewold said she no could wait, " Firio explained. "It was verylate, she said. "

Jack stopped as if struck and his features became a lifeless mask, aslifeless as the walls of the canyon. He looked down at the trophy of hisclimb and ran his fingers over the needles slowly, again and again, inabstraction. 

"I understand!" he said, half to himself; and then aloud: "Firio, we willnot go into town to-night. We will camp on the other side by the river. "

"_Sí_! I shot enough quail this afternoon for dinner. "

But Jack did not have much appetite, and after dinner he did not amuseFirio with inventions of his fancy. He lay long awake, his head on hisclasped hands, looking at the stars. 

XX

A PUZZLED AMBASSADOR

A faint aureole of light crept up back of the pass. 

"Dawn at last!" Jack breathed, in relief. "Firio! Firio! Up with you!"

"Oh-yuh!" yawned Firio. "_Sí, sí_!" he said, rising numbly to his feetand rubbing his eyes with his fists, while he tried to comprehend anastonishing reversal of custom. Usually he awakened his camp-mate; butthis morning his camp-mate had awakened him. A half shadow in thesemi-darkness, Jack was already throwing the saddle over P. D. 's back. 

"We will get away at once, " he said. 

Firio knew that something strange had come over Señor Jack after he hadmet Señorita Ewold on the pass, and now he was convinced that this thinghad been working in Señor Jack's mind all night. 

"Coffee before we start?" he inquired ingratiatingly. 

"Coffee at the ranch, " Jack answered. 

In their expeditious preparations for departure he hummed no snatches ofsong as a paean of stretching muscles and the expansion of his being withthe full tide of the conscious life of day; and this, too, was contraryto custom. 

Before it was fairly light they were on the road, with Jack urging P. D. Forward at a trot. The silence was soft with the shimmer of dawn; allglistening and still the roofs and trees of Little Rivers took form. Themoist sweetness of its gardens perfumed the fresh morning air in greetingto the easy traveller, while the makers of gardens were yet asleep. 

It was the same hour that Mary had hurried forth after her wakeful nightto stop the duel in the _arroyo_. As Jack approached the Ewold home hehad a glimpse of something white, a woman's gown he thought, thatdisappeared behind the vines. He concluded that Mary must have risenearly to watch the sunrise, and drew rein opposite the porch; but throughthe lace-work of the vines he saw that it was empty. Yet he was positivethat he had seen her and that she must have seen him coming. She wasmissing the very glorious moment which she had risen to see. A rim ofmolten gold was showing in the defile and all the summits of the rangewere topped with flowing fire. 

"Mary!" he called. 

There was no answer. Had he been mistaken? Had mental suggestion playedhim a trick? Had his eyes personified a wish when they saw a figure onthe steps?

"Mary!" he called again, and his voice was loud enough for her to haveheard if she were awake and near. Still there was no answer. 

The pass had now become a flaming vortex which bathed him in itsfar-spreading radiance. But he had lost interest in sunrises. A lastbackward, hungry glance over his shoulder as he started gave him aglimpse through the open door of the living-room, and he saw Mary leaningagainst the table looking down at her hands, which were half clasped inher lap, as if she were waiting for him to get out of the way. 

Thus he understood that he had ended their comradeship when he had brokenthrough the barrier on the previous afternoon, and the only thing thatcould bring it back was the birth of a feeling in her greater thancomradeship. His shoulders fell together, the reins loosened, while P. D. , masterless if not riderless, proceeded homeward. 

"Hello, Jack!"

It was the greeting of Bob Worther, the inspector of ditches, who was theonly man abroad at that hour. Jack looked up with an effort to be genialand found Bob closely studying his features in a stare. 

"What's the matter, Bob?" he asked. "Has my complexion turned green overnight or my nose slipped around to my ear?"

"I was trying to make out if you do look like him!" Bob declared. 

"Like whom? What the deuce is the mystery?"

"What--why, of course you're the most interested party and the onlyLittle Riversite that don't know about it, seh!"

After all, there was some compensation for early rising. Bob expandedwith the privilege of being the first to break the news. 

"If you'd come yesterday you'd have seen him. He went by the noon train, "he said, and proceeded with the story of Prather. 

Jack had never heard of the man before and was obviously uninterested. Hedid not seem to care if a dozen doubles came to town. 

"Oh, yes, there's another thing concerning you, " Bob continued. "I was sointerested in telling you about Prather that I near forgot it. Aswell-looking fellow--says he's a doctor and he's got New York writtenall over him--came in yesterday particularly to see you. "

Though it was a saying in Little Rivers that nobody ever found Jack at aloss, he started perceptibly now. His fingers worked nervously on thereins and he bit his lips in irritation. 

"He was asking a lot of questions about you, " Bob added. 

By this time Jack had summoned back his smile. He did not seem to mind ifa dozen doctors came to town at the same time as a dozen doubles. 

"Did you tell him that I had a cough--kuh-er?" he asked, casually. 

"Why, no! I said you could thrash your weight in wildcats and he says, 'Well, he'll have to, yet!' and then shut up as if he'd overspokehimself--and I judge that he ain't the kind that does that often. Butsay, Jack, " Bob demanded, in the alarm of local partisanship whichapprehends that it may unwittingly have served an outside interest, "didyou want us to dope it out that you were an invalid? We ain't beengetting you in wrong, I hope?"

"Not a bit!" answered Jack with a reassuring slap on Bob's shoulder. "Washis name Bennington?"

"Yes, that's it. "

"Well, " said Jack thoughtfully and with a return of his annoyance, "hewill find me at home when he calls. " And P. D. Knew that the reins werestill held in listless hands as he turned down the side street toward thenew ranch. 

Firio was feeling like an astrologer who had lost faith in his crystalball. An interrogation had taken the place of his confident "_Sí, sí_"of desert understanding of the mind of his patron. Jack had broken campwith the precipitancy of one who was eager to be quit of the trail andback at the ranch; yet he gave his young trees only a passing glancebefore entering the house. He had not wanted coffee on the road, yetcoffee served with the crisp odor of bacon accompanying its aroma, afterhis bath and return to ranch clothes, found no appetite. He was as a manwhose mind cannot hold fast to anything that he is doing. Firio, restless, worried, his eyes flicking covert glances, was frequently inand out of the living-room on one excuse or another. 

"What work to-day?" he asked, as he cleared away the breakfast dishes. "What has Señor Jack planned for us to do?"

"The work to-day? The work to-day?" Jack repeated absently. "First themail. " He nodded toward a pile on the table. 

"And I shall make ready to stay a long time?" Firio insinuated softly. 

"No!" Jack answered to space. 

The pyramid of mail might have been a week's batch for the Doge himself. At the bottom were a number of books and above them magazines which Jackhad subscribed for when he found that they were not on the Doge's list. There was only one letter as a first-class postage symbol of the exile'sintimacy with the outside world, and out of this tumbled a check and ablank receipt to be filled in. He tore off the wrappers of the magazinesas a means of some sort of physical occupation and rolled them intoballs, which he cast at the waste-basket; but neither the contents of themagazines nor those of the newspapers seemed to interest him. Hisaspect was that of one waiting in a lobby to keep an appointment. 

When he heard steps on the porch he sang out cheerily, "Come in!" but, contrary to the habit of Little Rivers hospitality, he did not hasten tomeet his caller, and any keenness of anticipation which he may have feltwas well masked. 

There entered a man of middle age, with close-cropped gray beard, clad insoft flannels, the trousers bottoms turned up in New York fashion fornegligee business suits for that spring. To the simple interior of awestern ranch house he brought the atmosphere of complex civilization asa thing ineradicably bred into his being. It was evident, too, that hehad been used to having his arrival in any room a moment of importancewhich summoned the rapt attention of everybody, whether nurses, fellowphysicians, or the members of the patient's family. But this time thatwas lacking. The young man leaning against the table was not visiblyimpressed. 

"Hello, doctor!" said Jack, as unconcernedly as he would have passed thetime of day with Jim Galway in the street. 

"Hello, Jack!" said the doctor. 

Jack went just half-way across the room to shake hands. Then he droppedback to his easy position, with the table as a rest, after he had set achair for the visitor. 

"How do you like Little Rivers?" Jack asked. 

"I have been here only thirty-six hours, " answered the doctor, avoiding adirect answer. He was pulling off his silk summer gloves, making theoperation a trifle elaborate, one which seemed to require muchattention. "I came pretty near mistaking another man for you, but hismole patch saved me. I didn't think you could have grown one out here. Wonderfully like you! Have you met him?"

He glanced up as he asked this question, which seemed the first to occurto him as a warming-up topic of conversation before he came to thebusiness in hand. 

"No. I have just heard of him, " Jack answered. 

The doctor smiled at his gloves, which he now folded and put in hispocket. Don't the lecturers to young medical students say, "Divert yourpatient's mind to some topic other than himself as you get your firstimpression"? Now Dr. Bennington drew forward in his chair, rested thetips of the long fingers of a soft, capable hand on the edge of thetable, and looked up to Jack in professional candor, sweeping him withthe knowing eye of the modern confessor of the secrets of all manner ofmankind. With the other hand he drew a stethoscope from his sidecoat-pocket. 

"Well, Jack, you can guess what brought me all the way from NewYork--just five minutes' work!" and he gave the symbol of examination aflourish in emphasis. 

"I don't think I have forgotten the etiquette of the patient onsuch occasions, " Jack returned. "It is an easy function in thisArizona climate. "

He drew his shirt up from a compact loin and lean middle, revealing thearch of his deep chest, the flesh of which was healthy pink under neckand face plated with Indian tan. The doctor's eyes lighted with the blissof a critic used to searching for flaws at sight of a masterpiece. Whilehe conducted the initial plottings with the rubber cup which carriedsounds to one of the most expensive senses of hearing in America, Jackwas gazing out of the window, as if his mind were far away across thecactus-spotted levels. 

"Breathe deep!" commanded the doctor. 

Jack's nostrils quivered with the indrawing of a great gust of air andhis diaphragm swelled until his ribs were like taut bowstrings. 

"And you were the pasty-faced weakling that left my office five yearsago--and you, you husky giant, have brought me two thousand miles to seeif you were really convalescent!"

"I hope the trip will do you good!" said Jack, sweetly. 

"But it is great news that I take back, great news!" said the doctor, ashe put the stethoscope in his pocket. 

"Yes?" returned Jack, slipping his head through his shirt. "You don'tfind even a speck?"

"Not a speck! No sign of the lesion! There is no reason why you shouldnot have gone home long ago. "

"No?" Jack was fastening his string tie and doing this with something ofthe urban nicety with which the doctor had folded his gloves. That tiewas one of the few inheritances from complex civilization which still hadJack's favor. 

"What have you found to do all these years?"

Jack was surprised at the question. 

"I have just wandered about and read and thought, " he explained. 

"Without developing any sense of responsibility?" demanded the doctor inexasperation. 

"I have tried to be good to my horses, and of late I have taken toranching. There is a lot of responsibility in that and care, too. Takethe scale, for instance!"

"A confounded little ranch out in this God-forsaken place, that a Swedeimmigrant might run!"

"No, the Swedes aren't particularly good at irrigation, though betterthan the Dutch. You see, the Hollanders are used to having so muchwater that--"

Jack was leaning idly against the table again. The fashionablepractitioner, accustomed to having his words accepted at their cost pricein gold, broke in hotly:

"It is past all understanding! You, the heir to twenty millions!"

"Is it twenty now?" Jack asked softly and sadly. 

"Nearer thirty, probably! And shirking your duty! Shirking and forwhat--for what?"

Jack faced around. The doctor, meeting a calm eye that was quizzicallychallenging, paused abruptly, feeling that in some way he had been caughtat a professional disadvantage in his outburst of emotion. 

"Don't you like Little Rivers?" asked Jack. 

"I should be bored to death!" the doctor admitted, honestly. 

"Well, you see this air never healed a lesion for you! You neveruttered a prayer to it for strength with every breath! And, doctor, "Jack hesitated, while his lips were half open, showing his even teethslightly apart in the manner of a break in a story to the childrenwhere he expected them to be very attentive to what was coming, "youcan take a piece of tissue and analyze it, yes, a piece of brain tissueand find all the blood-vessels, but not what a man was thinking, canyou? Until you can take a precipitate of his thoughts--the verythoughts he is unconscious of himself--and put them under a microscope, why, there must be a lot of guesswork about the source of allunconventional human actions. "

Jack laughed over his invasion of psychology; and when he laughed in acertain way the impulse to join him was strong, as Mary first found onthe pass. So the doctor laughed, partly in relief, perhaps, that thisuncertain element which he was finding in Jack had not yet provedexplosive. 

"That would make a capital excuse for a student flunking inexaminations!" he said. 

"It might be a worthy one--not that I say it ought to pass him. "

"Now, Jack, " the doctor began afresh, the reassuring force of hispersonality again in play. 

He took a step and raised his hands as if he would put them on Jack'sshoulders. One could imagine him driving hypochondria out of many apatient's mind by thus making his own vigorous optimism flow down fromhis fingertips, while he looked into the patient's eye. But his handsremained in the air, though Jack had been only smiling at him. This wasnot the way to handle this patient, something told his trained, sensitiveinstinct in time, and he let his hands fall in semblance of a gesture ofprotest, gave a shrug and came directly to the point very genuinely. 

"Well, Jack--your father!"

"Yes. " And Jack's face was still and blank, while shadows played overit in a war among themselves. "He did not even tell me you werecoming, " he added. 

"Perhaps he feared that it would give you time to develop a cough or youwould start overland to Chihuahua so I should miss you. Jack, he needsyou! All that fortune waits for you!"

"Now that I am strong, yes! He did not come out to see me even duringthe first year when I had not the health to go to him, nor did he thinkto come with you. "

"He--he is a very busy man!" explained the doctor, in ready championship. And yet he looked away from Jack, and when he looked back it was with anappeal to conscience rather than to filial affection. "Is it right toremain, however much you like this desert life? Have you any excuse?"

"Yes, an overwhelming one!" exclaimed Jack in a voice that washigh-pitched and determined, while his eyes burned and no trace of humorremained on lips that were as firm as the outline of his chin. "Yes, onethat thrills me from head to foot with the steady ardor of the soldierwho makes a siege!"

"I--I--you are beyond me! Then you will stay? You are not coming home?"

"Yes, " Jack answered, in another mood, but one equally rigid. "I amcoming at once. That was all settled last night under the stars. I havefound the courage!"

"The courage to go to twenty millions!" gasped the doctor. "But--good!You will go! That is enough! Why shouldn't we take the same train back?"he went on enthusiastically. "I shall be coming through here in less thana week. You see, I am so near California that I simply had to steal a fewdays with my sister, who can't come East on account of her health. I havebeen so tied down to practice that I have not seen her for fifteen years. That will give you time to arrange your affairs. How about it?"

"It would be delightful, but--" Jack was hesitating. "No, I will refuse. You see, I rode horseback when I entered this valley for the first timeand I should like to ride out in the way I came. Just sentiment!"

"Jack!" exclaimed the doctor. 

He was casting about how to express his suspicion when something electricchecked him--a current that began in Jack's measured glance. Jack was notmentioning that his word was being questioned, but something still andeffective that came from far away out on the untrod desert was in theroom. It fell on the nerves of the ambassador from the court of complexcivilization like a sudden hush on a city's traffic. Jack broke thesilence by asking, in a tone of lively hospitality:

"You will join me at luncheon?"

"I should like to, " answered the doctor, "but I can catch a train on theother trunk line that will give me a few more hours with my sister. Andwhat shall I wire your father? Have you any suggestion?"

"Why, that he will be able to judge for himself in a few days how nearcured I am. "

"You will wire him the date of your arrival?"

"Yes. "

"Jack, " said the doctor at the door, "that remark of yours about theanalysis of brain tissue and of thought put a truth very happily. Comeand see me and let me know how you get on. Good-by!"

He took his departure thoughtfully, rather than with a sense oftriumph over the success of a two-thousand-mile mission in the name oftwenty millions. 

XXI

"GOOD-BY, LITTLE RIVERS!"

It was the thing thrilling him with the ardor of a soldier preparing fora siege that sent Jack to the Ewolds' later in the morning. He had comedetermined to finish the speech that he had called up to Mary from thecanyon. As he crossed the cement bridge, Ignacio appeared on the path andtook his position there obdurately, instead of standing to one side witha nod, as usual, to let the caller pass. 

"Señorita Ewold is not at home!" he announced, before Jack had spoken. 

"Not even in the garden?"

"No, señor. "

"But she will be back soon?"

"I do not think so. "

Ignacio's face was as blank as a wall, but knowingly, authoritativelyblank. His brown eyes glistened with cold assurance. He seemed to havebecome the interpreter of a message in keeping with Mary's flight fromthe pass and her withdrawal from the porch when she had seen Jackapproaching. Here was a new barrier which did not permit even banteracross the crest. She must know that he was going, for the news of hisapproaching departure had already spread through the town. She had chosennot to see him again, even for a farewell. 

For a little time he stood in thought, while Ignacio remained steadfaston the path, watchful, perhaps, for the devil in Señor Don't Care toappear. Suddenly Jack's features glowed with action; he took a step as ifhe would sweep by Ignacio on into the garden. But the impulse instantlypassed. He stopped, his face drawn as it had been when he fell limpagainst the hedge stricken by the horror of his seeming brutality toPedro Nogales, and turned away into the street with a mask of smiles forthe greetings and regrets of the friends whom he met. 

Worth twenty millions or twenty cents, he was still Jack to LittleRivers; still the knight who had come over the range to vanquish PeteLeddy; still a fellow-rancher in the full freemasonry of callousedhands; still the joyous teller of stories. The thought of losing him settendrils in the ranchers' hearts twitching in sympathy with tendrils inhis own, which he found rooted very deep now that he must tear them out. 

That afternoon at the appointed hour for his departure every man, woman, and child had assembled at the end of the main street, where it brokeinto the desert trail. The principal found an excuse for dismissingschool an hour earlier than usual. That is, everyone was present exceptMary. The Doge came, if a little late, to fulfil his function as chosenspokesman for all in bidding Jack Godspeed on his journey. 

"Señor Don't Care, you are a part of the history of Little Rivers!" hesaid, airily. "You have brought us something which we lacked in oursingularly peaceful beginning. Without romance, sir, no community iscomplete. I have found you a felicitous disputant whom I shall miss; foryou leave me to provide the arguments on both sides of a subject on thesame evening. Our people have found you a neighbor of infinite resourcesof humor and cheer. We wish you a pleasant trail. We wish you warmsunshine when the weather is chill and shade when the weather is hot, andthat you shall ever travel with a singing heart, while old age neverovertakes the fancy of youth. "

Every one of the familiar faces grouped around the fine, cultured oldface of the Doge expressed the thoughts to which he had given form. 

"May your arguments be as thick as fireflies, O Doge!" Jack answered, "everyone bearing a torch to illumine the outer darkness of ignorance!May every happy thought I have for Little Rivers spring up in adate-tree wonderful! Then, before the year is out, you will have aforest of date-trees stretching from foothills to foothills, across thewhole valley. "

"And one more about the giant with the little voice and the dwarf withthe big voice and the cat with the stripes down her back!" cried BelvySmith, spokeswoman for the children. "Are they just going on foreverhaving adventures and us never knowing about them?"

"No. I have been holding back the last story, " Jack said. "Both the giantand the dwarf were getting old, as you all know, and they were prettybadly battered up from their continual warfare. Why, the scar which thegiant got on his forehead in their last battle was so big that if thedwarf had had it there would have been no top left to his head. After thecat had lost that precious black tip to her tail she became more and morethoughtful. She made up her mind to retire and reform and have apermanent home. And you know what a gift she had for planning out thingsand how clever she was about getting her own way. Now she sat in a hedgecorner thinking and thinking and looking at the stubby end of her tail, and suddenly she cried, 'Eureka!' And what do you think she did? She wentto a paint shop and had her left ear painted yellow and her right earpainted green. So, now you can see her any day sunning herself on thesteps of the cottage where the giant and the dwarf live in peace. Whenever they have an inclination to quarrel she jumps between them andwiggles the yellow ear at the giant and the green ear at the dwarf, whichfusses them both so that they promise to be good and rush off to get hera saucer of milk. "

"A green ear and a yellow ear! What a funny looking cat she must be!"exclaimed Belvy. 

"So she says to herself between purrs, " concluded Jack. "But she is aphilosopher and knows that she would look still funnier if she had losther ears as Jag Ear has. Good-by, children! Good-by, everybody! Good-by, Little Rivers!"

Jack gave P. D. A signal and the crowd broke into a cheer, which waspunctuated by the music of Jag Ear's bells as his burrohood got inmotion. The Doge, who had brought his horse, mounted. 

"I will ride a little distance with you, " he said. 

He appeared like a man who had a great deal on his mind and yet was at aloss for words. There was the unprecedented situation of silence betweenthe two exponents of persiflage in Little Rivers. 

"I--" he began, and paused as if the subject were too big for him and itwere better not to begin at all. Then he drew rein. 

"Luck, Jack!" he said, simply, and there was something like pityin his tone. 

"And Mary--you will say good-by to her and thank her!" said Jack. 

"I think you may meet her, " answered the Doge. "She went away earlytaking her luncheon, before she knew that you were going. "

So Ignacio had been acting on his own authority! The thrill of the newssinging in Jack's veins was too overwhelming for him to notice thechallenge and apprehension in the Doge's glance. The Doge saw the glow ofa thousand happy, eager thoughts in Jack's face. He hesitated again onthe brink of speech, before, with a toss of his leonine head as if hewere veritably leaving fate's affairs to fate, he turned to go; and Jackmechanically touched P. D. 's rein, while he gazed toward the pass. P. D. Had not gone many steps when Jack heard the same sonorous call that hadgreeted him that first night when he stopped before the door of theEwolds; the call of a great, infectious fellowship between men:

"Luck, Sir Chaps! I defy you to wear your spurs up the Avenue! Give mylove to that new Campanile in Babylon, the Metropolitan tower! Get it inthe mist! Get it under the sun! Kiss your hand to golden Diana, huntressof Manhattan's winds! Say ahoy to old Farragut! And on gray days have alook for me at the new Sorollas in the Museum! Luck, Sir Chaps!"

"Good crops and a generous mail, O Doge!"

Jack rode fast, in the gladness of a hope this side of the pass and inthe face of shadows on the other side which he did not attempt to define. To Firio he seemed to have grown taller and older. 

XXII

"LUCK, JACK, LUCK!"

Apprehensively he watched the end of the ribbon running under P. D. 'shoofs for the sight of a horsewoman breaking free of the foothills. Themomentary fear which rode with him was that Mary might be returningearlier than usual. If they met on the road--why, the road was withoutimagination and, in keeping with her new attitude toward him, she mightpass him by with a nod. But at the top of the pass imagination would besupreme. There they had first met; there they had found their firstthought in common in the ozone which had meant life to them both. 

He did not look up at the sky changes. As he climbed the winding pathworn by moccasined feet before the Persians marched to Thermopylae, hismind was too occupied making pictures of its own in glowing anticipationto have any interest in outside pictures. This path was narrow. Here, atleast, she must pause; and she must listen. Every turn which showedanother empty stretch ahead sent his spirits soaring. Then he saw a ponywith an empty side-saddle on the shelf. A few steps more and he saw Mary. 

She was seated with the defile at her back, her hands clasped over herknee. In this position, as in every position which she naturally took, she had a pliant and personal grace. The welter of light of the low sunwas ablaze in her face. Her profile had a luminous wistfulness. Herlashes were half closed, at once retaining the vision of the panorama ather feet as a thing of atmospheric enjoyment and shutting it out from theintimacy of her thoughts. And more enveloping than the light was thesilence which held her in a spell as still as the rocks themselves, waiting on time's dispensation where time was nothing. Yet the softmovement of her bosom with her even breaths triumphed in a life supremeand palpitant over all that dead world. 

Thus he drank her in before the crunch of a stone under his heel warnedher of his presence and set her breaths going and coming in quick gustsas she wheeled around, half rising and then dropping back to a positionas still as before, with a trace of new dignity in her grace, while herstarkness of inquiry gradually changed to stoicism. 

"Mary, I came upon you very suddenly, " he said. 

"Yes"--a bare, echoing monosyllable. 

He stepped to one side to let Firio and his little cavalcade pass. Allthe while she continued to look at him through the screen of herhalf-closed lashes in a way that set her repose and charm apart assomething precious and cold and baffling. Now he realized that he hadmade a breach in the barrier of their old relations only to find himselfin a garden whose flowers fell to ashes at his touch. He saw the lightthat enveloped her as an armor far less vulnerable than any wall, and thesplendor of her was growing in his eyes. 

Jag Ear's bells with their warm and merry notes became a faint tinklethat was lost in the depths of the defile. The two were alone on the spotwhere the Eternal Painter had introduced them so simply as Jack andMary, and where he, as the easy traveller, had listened to her plead forhis own life. It was his turn to plead. She was not to be won by fightingLeddys or tearing up pine-trees by their roots. That armor was without ajoint; a lance would bend like so much tin against its plates, and yetthere must be some alchemy that would make it melt as a mist before thesun. It was tenanted by a being all sentiency, which saw him through hervisor as a passer-by in a gallery. But one in armor does not fly frompassers-by as she had flown while he was climbing up the canyon wall withhis pine-tree branch. 

"I have learned now to look over any kind of a precipice without gettingdizzy, " she announced, quietly. 

He was not the Jack who had come over the ledge in the energy of hispassion yesterday to find her gone. He had turned gentle and was smilingwith craved permission for a respite from her evident severity as hedropped to a half-lying posture near her. Overhead, the Eternal Painterwas throwing in the smoky purple of a false thunderhead, sweeping it awaywith the promise of a downpour, rolling in piles of silver clouds anddrawing them out into filmy fingers melting into a luminous blue. 

"One can never tire of this, " he said, tentatively. 

"To me it is all!" she answered, in an absorption with the scene thatmade him as inconsequential as the rocks around her. 

"And you never long for cities, with their swift currents and busyeddies?" he asked. 

"Cities are life, the life of humanity, and I am human. I--" Theunfinished sentence sank into the silence of things inexpressible orwhich it was purposeless to express. 

Her voice suggested the tinkle of Jag Ear's bells floating away intospace. If a precipitate were taken from her forehead, in keeping withJack's suggestion to Dr. Bennington, it would have been mercury, which isso tangible to the eye and intangible to the touch. Press it and itbreaks into little globules, only to be shaken together in a coherentwhole. If there is joy or pain in the breaking, either one must beglittering and immeasurable. 

"But Little Rivers is best, " she added after a time, speaking not to him, but devoutly to the oasis of green. 

In the crystal air Little Rivers seemed so near that one could touch theroofs of the houses with the fingertips of an extended arm, and yet sodiminutive in the spacious bosom of the plateau that it might be set inthe palm of the hand. 

Jack was as one afraid of his own power of speech. A misplaced word mightsend her away as oblivious of him as a globule of mercury rolling freefrom the grasp. Here was a Mary unfathomed of all his hazards of study, undreamed of in all his flights of fancy. 

"It is my last view, " he began. "I have said all my good-bys in town. Iam going. "

Covertly, fearfully, he watched the effect of the news. At least nowshe would look around at him. He would no longer have to talk to aprofile and to the golden mist of the horizon about the greatest thingof his life. But there was no sign of surprise; not even an inclinationof her head. 

"Yes, " she told the horizon; and after a little silence added: "The timehas come to play another part?"

She asked the question of the horizon, without any trace of the oldbanter over the wall. She asked it in confirmation of a commonplace. 

"I know that you have always thought of me as playing a part. But I amnot my own master. I must go. I--"

"Back to your millions!" She finished the sentence for him. 

"Then you--you knew! You knew!" But his exclamation of astonishment didnot move her to a glance in his direction or even a tremor. 

"Yes, " she went on. "Father told me about your millions last night. Hehas known from the first who you were. "

"And he told no one else in Little Rivers? He never mentioned it to me oreven to you before!"

"Why should he when you did not mention it yourself? His omission wasnatural delicacy, in keeping with your own attitude. Isn't it part of thecustom of Little Rivers that pasts melt into the desert? There is nostandard except the conduct of the present!"

And all this speech was in a monotone of quiet explanation. 

"He did not even tell you until last night! Until after our meeting onthe other side of the pass! It is strange! strange!" he repeated in theinsistence of wonder. 

He saw the lashes part a little, then quiver and close as she liftedher gaze from the horizon rim to the vortex of the sun. Then shesmiled wearily. 

"He likes a joke, " she said. "Probably he enjoyed his knowledge of yoursecret and wanted to see if I would guess the truth before you werethrough playing your part. "

"But the part was not a part!" he said, with the emphasis of firecreeping along a fuse. "It was real. I do not want to leave LittleRivers!"

"Not in your present enthusiasm, " she returned with a warning inflectionof literalness, when he would have welcomed satire, anger, or anyreprisal of words as something live and warm; something on which his mindcould lay definite hold. 

In her impersonal calm she was subjecting him to an exquisite torture. Hewas a man flayed past all endurance, flayed by a love that fed on therevelation of a mystery in her being superbly in control. The riot of allthe colors of the sky spoke from his eyes as he sprang to his feet. Hebecame as intense as in the supreme moment in the _arroyo_; as recklessas when he walked across the store toward a gun-muzzle. Only hers werethis time the set, still features. His were lighted with all the strengthof him and all the faith of him. 

"A part!" he cried. "Yes, a part--a sovereign and true part which I shallever play! I was going that day we first met, going before the legate ofthe millions came to me. Why did I stay? Because I could not go when Isaw that you wanted to turn me out of the garden!"

His quivering words were spoken to a profile of bronze, over whichflickered a smile as she answered with a prompting and disinterestedanalysis. 

"You said it was to make callouses on your hands. But that must have beenpersiflage. The truth is that you imagined a challenger. You wanted towin a victory!" she answered. 

"It was for you that I calloused my hands!"

"Time will make them soft!"

She was half teasing now, but teasing through the visor, not over thewall. 

"And if I sought victory I saw that I was being beaten while I made aprofession of you, not of gardening! Yes, of you! I could confess it toall the world and its ridicule!"

"Jack, you are dramatic!"

If she would only once look at him! If he could only speak into her eyes!If her breaths did not come and go so regularly!

"Why did I take to the trail after Pedro Nogales struck at me with hisknife? Because I saw the look on your face when you saw that I had brokenhis arm. I had not meant to break his arm--yet I know that I might havedone worse but for you! I did not mean to kill Leddy--yet there wassomething in me which might have killed him but for you!"

"I am glad to have prevented murder!" she answered almost harshly. 

A shadow of horror, as if in recollection of the scene in the _arroyo_and beside the hedge, passed over her face. 

"Yes, I understand! I understand!" he said. "And you must hear why thisterrible impulse rose in me. "

"I know. "

"You know? You know?" he repeated. 

"About the millions, " she corrected herself, hastily. "Go on, Jack, ifyou wish!" Urgency crept into her tone, the urgency of wishing to havedone with a scene which she was bearing with the fortitude oftightened nerves. 

"It was the millions that sent me out here with a message, when I didnot much care about anything, and their message was: 'We do not want tosee you again if you are to be forever a weakling. Get strong, for ourpower is to the strong! Get strong, or do not come back!'"

"Yes?"

For the first time since he had begun his story she looked fairly at him. It was as if the armor had melted with sympathy and pity and she, in thepride of the poverty of Little Rivers, was armed with a Samaritankindliness. For a second only he saw her thus, before she looked away tothe horizon and he saw that she was again in armor. 

"And I craved strength! It was my one way to make good. I rode thesolitudes, following the seasons, getting strength. I rejoiced in the tanof my arm and the movement of my own muscles. I learned to love the feelof a rifle-stock against my shoulder, the touch of the trigger to myfinger's end. I would shoot at the cactus in the moonlight--oh, that isdifficult, shooting by moonlight!--and I gloried in my increasingaccuracy--I, the weakling of libraries and galleries and sunny verandasof tourist resorts! Afraid at first of a precipice's edge, I came toenjoy looking over into abysses and in spending a whole day climbing downinto their depths, while Firio waited in camp. And at times I would cryout: 'Millions, I am strong! I am not afraid of you! I am not afraid ofanything!' In the days when I knew I could never be acceptable as theirmaster I knew I was in no danger of ever having to face them. When I hadgrown strong, less than ever did I want to face them. I know not why, butI saw shadows; I looked into another kind of depths--mentaldepths--which held a message that I feared. So I procrastinated, stayingon in the air which had given me red blood. But that was cowardly, andthat day I came over the pass I was making my last ride in the kingdom ofirresponsibility. I was going home!

"When you asked me not to face Leddy I simply had to refuse. I had justas soon as not that Leddy would shoot at me, because I wanted to see ifhe would. Yes, I was strong. I had conquered. And if Leddy hit me, why, Idid not have to go back to battle with the shadows--the obsession ofshadows which had grown in my mind as my strength grew. When I wassmiling in Leddy's muzzle, as they say I did, I was just smilingexultantly at the millions that had called me a weakling, and saying, like some boaster, 'Could you do this, millions?' I--I--well, Mary, I--Ihave told you what I never was quite able to tell myself before. "

"Thank you, Jack!" she answered, and all the particles of sunlight thatbathed her seemed to reflect her quiet gladness as something detached, permeating, and transcendent. 

"When Leddy challenged me I wanted to fight, " he went on. "I wanted tosee how cool I, the weakling whom the millions scorned, could be inbattle. After Leddy's shot in the _arroyo_ I found that strength haddiscovered something else in me--something that had lain dormant inboyhood and had not awakened to any consciousness of itself in the fiveyears on the desert--something of which all my boyhood training made meno less afraid than of the shadows, born of the blood, born of the verystrength I had won. It seemed to run counter to books and gardens andpeace itself--a lawless, devil-like creature! Yes, I gloried in the factthat I could kill Leddy. It was an intoxication to hold a steady bead onhim. And you saw and felt that in me--yes, I tell you everything as a manmust when he comes to a woman offering himself, his all, with his angels, his devils, and his dreams!"

He paused trembling, as before a judge. She turned quickly, with asudden, winsome vivacity, the glow of a great satisfaction in her eyesand smiling a comradeship which made her old attitude over the wall athing of dross and yet far more intimate. Her hand went out to meet his. 

"Jack, we have had good times together, " she said. "We were nevermawkish; we were just good citizens of Little Rivers, weren't we? And, Jack, every mortal of us is partly what he is born and the rest is whathe can do to bend inheritance to his will. But we can never quitetransform our inheritance and if we stifle it, some day it will breakloose. The first thing is to face what seems born in us, and you havemade a good beginning. "

She gave his hands a nervous, earnest clasp and withdrew hers as sherose. So they stood facing each other, she in the panoply of good will, he with his heart on his sleeve. The swiftly changing pictures of theEternal Painter in his evening orgy seemed to fill the air with the musicof a symphony in its last measures, and her very breaths and smiles to bekeeping time with its irresistible movement toward the finale. 

"I must be starting back, Jack, " she said. 

"And, Mary, I must learn how to master the millions. Oh, I have not thecourage of the little dwarf pine in the canyon! Mary, Mary, I callousedmy hands for you! I want to master the millions for you! I would give youthe freedom of Little Rivers and all the cities of the world!"

"No, Jack! This is my side of the pass. I shall be very happy here. "

"Then I will stay in Little Rivers! I will leave the millions to theshadows! I will stay on ranch-making, fortune-making. Mary, I love you! Ilove you!"

There was no staying the flame of his feeling. He seized her hands; hedrew her to him. But her hands were cold; they were shivering. 

"Jack! No, no! It is not in the blood!" she cried in the face of somemocking phantom, her calmness gone and her words rocking with the tumultof emotion. 

"In the blood, Mary? What do you mean? What do you know that I don'tknow? Do you know those shadows that I cannot understand better thanI?" he pleaded; and he was thinking of the Doge's look of pity andchallenge and of the meeting long ago in Florence as the hazy filamentsof a mystery. 

"No, I should not have said that. What do I know? Little--nothing thatwill help! I know what is in me, as I know what is in you. I am afraid ofmyself--afraid of you!"

"Mary, I will fight all the shadows!" He drew her close to himresistlessly in his might. 

"Jack, you will not use your strength against me! Jack!"

He saw her eyes in a mist of pain and reproach as he released her. Andnow she threw back her head; she was smiling in the philosophy of gardennonsense as she cried:

"Good-by, Jack! Luck against the dinosaur! Don't press him too hardwhen he is turning a sharp corner. Remember he has a long reach withhis old paleozoic tail. Luck!" with a laugh through her tears; a laughwith tremulous cheer in it and yet with the ring of a key in the lockof a gate. 

Unsteadily he bent over and taking her hands in his pressed hislips to them. 

"Yes, luck!" he repeated, and half staggering turned toward the defile. 

"Luck!" she called after him when he was out of sight. "Luck!" she calledto the silence of the pass. 

Three days with the trail and the Eternal Painter mocking him, when thesinging of Spanish verses that go click with the beat of horse-hoofs inthe sand sounded hollow as the refrain of vain memories, and from thesteps of a Pullman he had a final glimpse of Firio's mournful face, withits dark eyes shining in the light of the station lamp. Firio had in hishand a paper, a sort of will and testament given him at the last minute, which made him master in fee simple of the ranch where he had beenservant, with the provision that the Doge of Little Rivers might storehis overflow of books there forever. 

PART II

HE FINDS HIMSELF

XXIII

LABELLED AND SHIPPED

Behold Jack clad in the habiliments of conventional civilization takenfrom the stock of ready-made suitings in an El Paso store! They were ofthe Moscowitz and Guggenheim type, the very latest and nattiest, asadvertised in popular prints. The dealer said that no gentleman could bewell dressed without them. He wanted to complete the transformation witha cream-colored Fedora or a brown derby. 

"I'll wait on the thirty-third degree a little longer, " said Jack, fondling the flat-brimmed cowpuncher model of affectionate predilection. Swinging on a hook on the sleeper with the sway of the train, its companywas soothing to him all the way across the continent. 

The time was March, that season of the northern year when winter growingstale has a gritty, sticky taste and the relief of spring seems yet faraway. After the desert air the steam heat was stifling and nauseating. Jack's head was a barrel about to burst its hoops; his skin drying like amummy's; his muscles in a starchy misery from lack of exercise. He feltboxed up, an express package labelled and shipped. When he crawled intohis berth at night it was with a sense of giving himself up toasphyxiation at the whim of strange gods. 

If you have ever come back to town after six months in the woods, sixmonths far from the hysteria of tittering electric bells, the brassyhonk-honk of automobiles, the clang of surface cars and the screech oftheir wheels on the rails, multiply your period of absence by ten, add acertain amount of desert temperament, and you will vaguely understand howthe red corpuscles were raising rebellion in Jack's artery walls on themorning of his journey's end. From the ferryboat on the dull-green bosomof the river he first renewed his memory of the spectral and forbiddingabysses and pinnacles of New York. Here time is everything; here man hasdone his mightiest in contriving masses to imitate the architecturalchaos of genesis. A mantle of chill, smoky mist formed the dome ofheaven, in which a pale, suffused, yellowish spot alone bespoke theexistence of a sun in the universe. 

In keeping with his promise to Dr. Bennington he had wired to his father, naming his train; and in a few minutes Wingfield, Sr. And Wingfield, Jr. Would meet for the first time in five years. Jack was conscious of afaster beating of his heart and a feeling of awesome expectancy as thecrowd debouched from the ferryboat. At the exit to the street a biglimousine was waiting. The gilt initials on the door left no doubt forwhom it had been sent. But there was no one to meet him, no one after hislong absence except a chauffeur and a footman, who glanced at Jacksharply. After the exchange of a corroborative nod between them thefootman advanced. 

"If you please, Mr. Wingfield, " he said, taking Jack's suit case. 

"What would Jim Galway think of me now!" thought Jack. He put his headinside the car cautiously. "Another box!" he thought, this time aloud. 

"You have the check for it, sir?" asked the footman, thinking that Jackwas using the English of the mother island for trunk. 

"No. That's all my baggage. "

In the tapering, cut-glass vase between the two front window-panels ofthe "box" was a rose--a symbol of the luxury of the twenty millions, evidently put there regularly every morning by direction of their master. Its freshness and color appealed to Jack. He took it out and pressed itto his nostrils. 

"Just needs the morning sun and the dew to be perfect, " he said to theamazed attendants; "and I will walk if you will take the suit case tothe house. "

He kept the rose, which he twirled in his fingers as he sauntered acrosstown, now pausing at curb corners to glance back in thoughtful survey, now looking aloft at the peaks of Broadway which lay beyond the foothillsof the river-front avenues. 

"All to me what the desert is to other folks!" he mused; "desert, withoutany cacti or mesquite! All the trails cross one another in a maze. Aboxed-up desert--boxes and boxes piled on top of one another! Everybodyin harness and attached by an invisible, unbreakable, inelastic leash toa box, whither he bears his honey or goes to nurse his broken wings!--soit seems to me and very headachy!"

At Madison Square he was at the base of the range itself; and halting onthe corner of Twenty-third Street and the Avenue he was a statue as aloofas the statue of Farragut from his surroundings. Salt sea spray everwhispers in the atmosphere around the old sailor. How St. Gaudenscreated it and keeps it there in the heart of New York is his secret. Possibly the sculptor put some of his soul into it as young MichaelAngelo did into his young David. 

It is a great thing to put some of your soul into a thing, whether it isdriving a nail or moulding a piece of clay into life. There are men whopause before the old Admiral and see the cutwater of men-of-war's bowsand hear the singing of the signal halyards as they rise with the commandto close in. Perhaps the Eternal Painter had put a little of his soulinto the heart of Jack; for some busy marchers of the Avenue trail asthey glanced at him saw the free desert and heard hoof-beats in the sand. Others seeing a tanned Westerner kissing his hand to Diana of MadisonSquare Garden probably thought him mad. Next, performing anothersentimental errand for the Doge of Little Rivers, his gaze rose along thecolumn of the Metropolitan tower. Its heights were half shrouded in mist, through which glowed the gold of the lantern. 

"Oh, bully! bully!" he thought. "The only sun in sight a manufacturedone, shining on top of a manufactured mountain! It is a big businessbuilding a mountain; only, when God Almighty scattered so many ready-madeones about, why take the trouble?" he concluded. "Or so it seems to me, "he added, sadly, in due appreciation of the utterly reactionary mood of aman who has been boxed up for a week. 

Now he turned toward a quarter which he had, thus far, kept out of thecompass of observation. He looked up the jagged range of Broadway where, over a terra-cotta pile, floated a crimson flag with "John Wingfield" inbig, white letters. 

"My mountain! My box! My millions!" he breathed half audibly. 

How the people whom he passed, their faces speaking city keenness ofambition, must envy his position! How little reason they had to envy him, he thought, as he walked around the great building and saw his nameglaring at him in gilt letters over the plate-glass windows and on allthe delivery wagons, open-mouthed for the packages being wheeled outunder the long glass awning. 

"A whole block now! Yes, the doctor was right. It must be thirty insteadof twenty millions!" he concluded, as his vision swept the straight-line, window-checkered mass of the twelve stories. "And I do wish we had atower! If one could go up on top of a tower and look out over the rangenow and then and breathe deep, it would help. "

When he entered the main door he paused in a maze, gazing at the acreageof counters manned by clerks and the aisles swarming with shoppers underthe glare of the big, electric globes, and listening to the babble ofshrill talk, the calls of the elevator boys, the coughing of thepneumatic tubes and the clang of the elevator doors. It was all like somedevilishly complicated dream from which he would never awake. He musthave a little time in order to orient himself before he could thinkrationally. The roar of the train still obsessed him; the air in thestore seemed more stifling than that of the sleeper. 

So he decided that, rather than be shot up into The Presence by theelevator, he would gradually scale the heights. Ascending stairway afterstairway, he ranged back and forth over the floors, a stranger in hisown wonderland. When he reached the eleventh floor, with only one more tothe offices, the whole atmosphere seemed suddenly to turn rare withexpectancy; a rustle to run through all the goods on the counters; thevery Paris gowns among which he was standing to be called to martialattention. 

"The boss!" he heard one of the model girls say. 

Turning to follow her nod toward the stairway, Jack saw, two-thirds ofthe way up the broad flight, a man past middle age, in dark gray suit andneutral tie, rubbing his palms together as he surveyed a stratum of hisprincipality. The sight of him to Jack was like the touch of a myriadelectric needles that pricked sharply, without exhilaration. 

"The boss is likely to run up that way any time of the day, " said themodel girl to a customer; "and what he don't see don't count!"

"Not much older; not much changed!" thought Jack; and his realization ofthe disinterestedness of his observation tipped the needles with acid. 

In the sharpness of the master's button-counting survey there was swiftfinality; and his impressions completed, analyzed, docketed forreference, he ran on up the flight with light step, still rubbing thepalms of his hands in the unctuously well-contained and appreciativesense of his power. To Jack he was a fascinating, grand, distant figure, this of his own father, yet mortally near. 

If the model girl had had the same keenness of observation for what isborne in the face as for what is worn on the back, she could not havefailed to note the strong family resemblance between the young manstanding near her and the man who had paused on the stairway. Thisglimpse of his father's mastery of every detail of that organizationwhich he had built, this glimpse of cool, self-centered authority, onlyreminded Jack of his own ignorance and flightiness in view of all thatwould be expected of him. He knew less than one of the cash girls abouthow to run the store. A duel with Leddy was a simple matter beside thisbattle he had to wage. 

He mounted the last flight of stairs into an area of glass-paneled doors, behind which the creative business of the great concern was conducted. Out of one marked "Private, " closing it softly and stepping softly, camea round-shouldered, stooping man of middle age, with the apprehensive andpalliating manner of a long-service private secretary who has many thingsto remember and many persons to appease with explanations. It was evidentthat Peter Mortimer had just come from The Presence. At sight of Jack hedrew back in a surprise that broke into a beaming delight which playedover his tired and wrinkled features in ecstasy. 

"Jack! Jack! You did it! You did it!" he cried. 

"Peter!" Jack seized the secretary's hands and swung them back and forth. 

"You've got a grip of iron! And tanned--my, how you're tanned! You didit, Jack, you did it! It hardly seems credible, when I think of the lasttime I saw you. "

It was then that the secretary had seen a Jack with his eyes moist; aJack pasty-faced, hollow-cheeked; and, in what was a revolutionaryoutburst for a unit in the offices, Peter Mortimer had put his arm aroundthe boy in a cry for the success of the Odyssey for health which theheir was about to begin. And Mortimer's words were sweet, while the wordsof the farewell from the other side of the glass-paneled door marked"Private" were acrid with the disappointed hopes of the speaker. 

"You have always been a weakling, Jack, and I have had little to sayabout your rearing. Go out to the desert and stay--stay till you arestrong!" declared the voice of strength, as if glad to be freed of thesight of weakness in its own image. 

"Father did not come to meet me?" Jack observed questioningly nowto Mortimer. 

"He was very busy--he did not feel certain about the nature of yourtelegram--he--" and Mortimer's impulses withdrew into the shell of theprofessional private secretary. 

"I wired that he should see for himself if I were well. So he shall!"said Jack, turning toward the door. 

"Yes--that will be all right--yes, there is no one with him!"

Mortimer, in the very instinct of long practice, was about to go in toannounce the visitor, but paused. As Jack entered, whatever else may havebeen in his eyes, there was no moisture. 

XXIV

IN THE CITADEL OF THE MILLIONS

John Wingfield, Sr. Sat at a mahogany table without a single drawer, inthe centre of a large room with bare, green-tinted walls. His oculist hadsaid that green was the best color for the eyes. Beside the greenblotting-pad in front of him was a pile of papers. These would either bedisposed of in the course of the day or, if any waited on the morrow'sdecision, would be taken away by Peter Mortimer overnight. When he roseto go home it was always with a clear desk; a habit, a belief of hissingularly well-ordered mind in the mastery of the teeming detail thatthrobbed under the thin soles of his soft kid shoes. On the other side ofthe pad was the telephone, and beyond it the supreme implements of hiswill, a row of pearl-topped push-buttons. 

The story of John Wingfield, Sr. 's rise and career, as the lieutenants ofthe offices and the battalions of the shopping floors knew it, was notthe story, perhaps, as Dr. Bennington or Peter Mortimer knew it; but, then, doctors and private secretaries are supposed to hold their secrets. There was little out of the commonplace in the world's accepted version. You may hear its like from the moneyed host at his dinner table in NewYork or as he shows you over the acres of his country estate, enthusingwith a personal narrative of conquest which is to him unique. JohnWingfield, Sr. Makes history for us in the type of woman whom hemarried and the type of son she bore him. 

He was the son of a New England country clergyman, to whom working hisway through college in order to practise a profession made no appeal. Birth and boyhood in poverty had taught him, from want of money, thepower of money. He sought the centre of the market-place. At sixteen hewas a clerk, marked by his industry not less than by his engagingmanners, on six dollars a week in the little store that was the site ofhis present triumph. Of course he became a partner and then owner. It washis frequent remark, when he turned reminiscent, that if he could onlyget as good clerks as he was in his day he would soon have a monopoly ofsupplying New York and its environs with all it ate and wore and neededto furnish its houses; which raises the point that possibly such anequality of high standards in efficiency might make all clerks employers. 

The steady flame of his egoism was fanned with his Successes. Withoutreal intimates or friends, he had an effective magnetism in making othersdo his bidding. It had hardly occurred to him that his discovery of theprinciple of never doing anything yourself that you can win others to dofor you and never failing, when you have a minute to spare, to do a thingyourself when you can do it better than any assistant, was already apractice with leaders in trade and industry before the Pharaohs. 

Life had been to him a ladder which he ascended without any glances toright or left or at the rung that he had left behind. The adaptableprocesses of his mind kept pace with his rise. He made himself at homein each higher stratum of atmosphere. His marriage, delayed until he wasforty and already a man of power, was still another upward step. AliceJamison brought him capital and position. The world was puzzled why sheshould have accepted him; but this stroke of success he now considered asthe vital error of a career which, otherwise, had been flawlesslyplanned. Yet he could flatter his egoism with the thought that it wasless a fault of judgment than of the uncertainty of feminine temperament, which could not be measured by logic. 

New York saw little of Mrs. Wingfield after Jack's birth. Her friendsknew her as a creature all life and light before her marriage; theyrealized that the life and light had passed out of her soon after the boycame; and thenceforth they saw and heard little of her. She had givenherself up to the insistent possessorship and company of her son. Thosewho met her when travelling reported how frail she was and howconstrained. 

Jack was fourteen when his mother died. He was brought home and sent toschool in America; and two-years later Dr. Bennington announced that theslender youngster, who had been so completely estranged from the affairsof the store, must matriculate in the ozone of high altitudes instead ofin college, if his life were to be saved. Whether Jack were riding overthe _mesas_ of Arizona or playing in a villa garden in Florence, JohnWingfield, Sr. 's outlook on life was the same. It was the obsession ofself in his affairs. After the eclipse of his egoism the deluge. The verythought that anyone should succeed him was a shock reminding him ofgrowing age in the midst of the full possession of his faculties, whilehe felt no diminution of his ambition. 

"I am getting better, " came the occasional message from that strangerson. And the father kept on playing the tune of accruing millions on thepush-buttons. His decision to send Dr. Bennington to Arizona camesuddenly, just after he had turned sixty-three. He had had an attack ofgrip at the same time that his attention had been acutely called to thedemoralization of another great business institution whose head had diedwithout issue, leaving his affairs in the hands of trustees. 

Two days of confinement in his room with a high pulse had broughtreflection and the development of atavism. What if the institution builtas a monument to himself should also pass! What if the name of Wingfield, his name, should no longer float twelve stories high over his building!He foresaw the promise of companionship of a restless and ghastlyapparition in the future. 

But he recovered rapidly from his illness and his mental processes wereas keen and prehensile as ever. Checking off one against the other, withcustomary shrewdness, he had a number of doctors go over him, and allagreed that he was good for twenty years yet. Twenty years! Why, Jackwould be middle-aged by that time! Twenty years was the differencebetween forty-three and sixty-three. Since he was forty-three he hadquintupled his fortune. He would at least double it again. He was notold; he was young; he was an exceptional man who had taken good care ofhimself. The threescore and ten heresy could not apply to him. 

Bennington's telegram irritated him with its lack of precision. Fifteenhundred dollars and expenses to send an expert to Arizona and inreturn this unbusinesslike report: "You will see Jack for yourself. Heis coming. "

In the full enjoyment of health, observing every nice rule forlongevity, his slumber sweet, his appetite good, John Wingfield, Sr. Had less interest in John Wingfield, Jr. Than he had when his boneswere aching with the grip. Jack's telegram from Chicago announcing thetrain by which he would arrive aroused an old resentment, which datedfar back to Jack's childhood and to a frail woman who had been proofagainst her husband's will. 

Did this home-coming mean a son who could learn the business; a strong, shrewd, cool-headed son? A son who could be such an adjutant as only onewho is of your own flesh and blood can be in the full pursuit of the samefamily interest as yourself? If Jack were well, would not Bennington havesaid so? Would he not have emphasized it? This was human nature as JohnWingfield, Sr. Knew it; human nature which never missed a chance toingratiate itself by announcing success in the service of a man of power. 

The spirit of his farewell message to Jack, which said that strengthmight return but bade weakness to remain away, and the injured pride ofseeing a presentment of wounded egoism in the features of a sickly boy, which had kept him from going to Arizona, were again dominant. Yet thatmorning he had a pressing sense of distraction. Even Mortimer noticed itas something unusual and amazing. He kept reverting to Jack's historybetween flashes of apprehension and he was angry with himself over hisinability to concentrate his mind. Concentration was his god. He couldturn from lace-buyer to floor-walker with the quickness of the swing ofan electric switch. Concentrate and he was oblivious to everything butthe subject in hand. He was in one of the moments of apprehension, halfstaring at the buttons on the desk rather than at the papers, when heheard the door open without warning and looked up to see a lean, sturdyheight filling the doorway and the light from the window full on abronzed and serene face. 

More than ever was Jack like David come over the hills in his incarnationof sleeping energy. Instead of a sling he carried the rose. Into theabode of the nicely governed rules of longevity came the atmosphere ofsome invasive spirit that would make the stake of life the foam on thecrest of a charge in a splendid moment; the spirit of Señor Don't Carepausing inquiringly, almost apologetically, as some soldier in dustykhaki might if he had marched into a study unawares. 

Jack was waiting, waiting and smiling, for his father to speak. In aswift survey, his features transfixed at first with astonishment, thenglowing with pride, the father half rose from his chair, as if in animpulse to embrace the prodigal. But he paused. He felt that somethingunder his control was getting out of his control. He felt that he hadbeen tricked. The boy must have been well for a long time. Yes! But hewas well! That was the vital point. He was well, and magnificent inhis vigor. 

The father made another movement; and still Jack was waiting, inquiringyet not advancing. And John Wingfield, Sr. Wished that he had gone tothe station; he wished that he had paid a visit to Arizona. This thoughtworking in his mind supplied Jack's attitude with an aspect which madethe father hesitate and then drop back into his chair, confused anduncertain for the first time in his own office. 

"Well, Jack, you--you surely do look cured!" he said awkwardly. "You see, I--I was a little surprised to see you at the office. I sent thelimousine for you, thinking you would want to go straight to the houseand wash off the dust of travel. Didn't you connect?"

"Yes, thank you, father--and when you didn't meet me--"

"I--I was very busy. I meant to, but something interrupted--I--" Thefather stopped, confounded by his own hesitation. 

"Of course, " said Jack. He spoke deferentially, understandingly. "I knowhow busy you always are. "

Yet the tone was such to John Wingfield, Sr. 's ears that he eyed Jackcautiously, sharply, in the expectancy that almost any kind ofundisciplined force might break loose from this muscular giant whom hewas trying to reconcile with the Jack whom he had last seen. 

"I thought I'd stretch my legs, so I came over to the store to see how ithad grown, " said Jack. "I don't interrupt--for a moment?"

He sat down on the chair opposite his father's and laid his fadedcowpuncher hat and the rose on the desk. They looked odd in the companyof the pushbuttons and the pile of papers in that neutral-toned roomwhich was chilling in its monotony of color. And though Jack was almostboyishly penitent, in the manner of one who comes before parentalauthority after he has been in mischief, still John Wingfield, Sr. Could not escape the dead weight of an impression that he was speaking toa stranger and not to his own flesh and blood. He wished now that he hadshown affection on Jack's entrance. He had a desire to grip the brownhand that was on the edge of the desk fingering the rose stem; but thelateness of the demonstration, its futility in making up for his previousneglect, and some subtle influence radiating from Jack's person, restrained him. It was apparent that Jack might sit on in silenceindefinitely; in a desert silence. 

"Well, Jack, I hear you had a ranch, " said the father, with a fainteffort at jocularity. 

"Yes, and a great crop of alfalfa, " answered Jack, happily. 

"And it seems that all the time you were away you have never used yourallowance, so it has just been piling up for you. "

"I didn't need it. I had quite sufficient from the income of mymother's estate. "

"Yes--your mother--I had forgotten!"

"Naturally, I preferred to use that, when I was of so little service toyou unless I got strong, as you said, " Jack said, very quietly. 

Now came another silence, the silence of luminous, unsounded depthsconcealing that in the mind which has never been spoken or even takenform. Jack's garden of words had dried up, as his ranch would dry up forwant of water. He rose to go, groping for something that should expressproper contrition for wasted years, but it refused to come. He picked upthe rose and the hat, while the father regarded him with stony wonderwhich said: "Are you mine, or are you not? What is the nature of thisnew strength? On what will it turn?"

For Jack's features had set with a strange firmness and his eyes, lookinginto his father's, had a steady light. It seemed as if he might stalk outof the office forever, and nothing could stop him. But suddenly heflashed his smile; he had looked about searching for a talisman and foundit in the rose, which set his garden of words abloom again. 

"This room is so bare it must be lonely for you, " he said. "Wouldn't itbe a good idea to cheer it up a bit? To have this rose in a vase on yourtable where you could see it, instead of riding about in an emptyautomobile box?"

"Why, there is a whole cold storage booth full of them down on the firstfloor!" said the father. 

"Yes, I saw them in their icy prison under the electric light bulbs. Thebeads of water on them were like tears of longing to get out for the joyof their swan song under a woman's smiles or beside a sick bed, " saidJack, in the glow of real enthusiasm. 

"Good line for the ad writer!" his father exclaimed, instinctively. "Youalways did have fanciful ideas, Jack. "

"Yes, I suppose I have!" he said, with some surprise and verythoughtfully. "I suppose that I was born with them and never weededthem out. "

"No doubt!" and the father frowned. 

Surveying the broad shoulders before him, he was thinking how nothing butaimlessness and fantasies and everything out of harmony with the careerto come had been encouraged in the son. But he saw soberness coming intoJack's eyes and with it the pressure of a certain resoluteness ofpurpose. And now Jack spoke again, a trifle sadly, as if guessing hisfather's thoughts. 

"It will be a case of weeding for me in the future, won't it?" he askedwanly, as he rose. "I am full of foolish ideas that are just bound to runaway with me. "

"Jack! Jack!" John Wingfield, Sr. Put his hands out to the shouldersof his son and gripped them strongly, and for a second let his ownweight half rest on that sturdy column which he sensed under the grip. His pale face, the paleness of the type that never tans, flushed. "Jack, come!" he said. 

He permitted himself something like real dramatic feeling as he signalledhis son to follow him out of the office and led the way to a corner ofone of the balconies where, under the light from the glass roof of thegreat central court, he could see down the tiers of floors to the jewelrycounter which sparkled at the bottom of the well. 

"Look! look!" he exclaimed, rubbing his palms together with a peculiarcrisp sound. "All selling my goods! All built from the little store whereI began as a clerk!"

"It's--it's immense!" gasped Jack; and he felt a dizziness and confusionin gazing at this kind of an abyss. 

"And it's only beginning! It's to go on growing and growing! You see whyI wanted you to be strong, Jack; why it would not do to be weak if youhad all this responsibility. "

This was a form of apology for his farewell to Jack, but the message wasthe same: He had not wanted a son who should be of his life and heart andever his in faults and illnesses. This was the recognizable one of theshadows between them now recalled. He had wanted a fresh physical machineinto which he could blow the breath of his own masterful being and instilthe cunning of his experience. He saw in this straight, clean-limbedyouth at his side the hope of Jack's babyhood fulfilled, in theprojection of his own ego as a living thing after he himself was gone. 

"And it is to go on growing and growing, in my name and your name--JohnWingfield!"

Jack was swallowing spasmodically; he moistened his lips; he grasped thebalcony railing so tight that his knuckles were white knobs on the bronzeback of his hand. The father in his enthusiasm hardly noticed this. 

"What couldn't I have done, " he added, "if I had had all this to beginwith! All that you will have to begin with!"

Jack managed a smile, rather thin and wavering. 

"Yes, I am going to try my best. "

"All I ask! You have me for a teacher and I know one or two littlethings!" said the father, fairly grinning in the transmission of hisjoke. "Now, you must be short on clothes, " he added; "so you can getsomething ready-made downstairs while you have some making atThompson's. "

"Don't you buy your clothes, your best clothes, I mean, in your ownstore?" Jack asked. It was his first question in getting acquainted withhis future property. 

"No. We cater to a little bigger class of trade--one of the many twistsof the business, " was the answer. "And now we'll meet at dinner, shallwe, and have a good long talk, " he concluded, closing the interview andturning to the door, his mind snapping back to the matter he was about totake up when he had been interrupted with more eagerness than ever, nowthat his egoism thrilled with a still greater purpose. 

"I--I left my hat on your desk, " Jack explained, as he followed hisfather into the office. 

"Well, you don't want to be carrying packages about, " said JohnWingfield, Sr. "That is hardly the fashion in New York, though JohnWingfield's son can make it so if he wants to. I'll have thatflat-brimmed western one sent up to the house and you can fit out withanother when you go downstairs for clothes. That is, I suppose you willwant to keep this as a memento, eh?" and he held out the cowpuncher, sweeping it with a sardonic glance. 

"No, " Jack answered decisively, out of the impulse that came with thesight of the veteran companion that had shielded him from the sun onthe trail. It was good to have any kind of an impulse after hisgiddiness on the balcony at sight of all the phantasmagoria of detailthat he must master. 

If he were to be equal to this future there must be an end of temptation. He must shake himself free of the last clinging bit of chrysalis of theold life. His amazed father saw the child of the desert, where conventionis made by your fancy and the supply of water in your canteen, go to thewindow and raise the sash. Leaning out, he let the hat drop intoBroadway, with his eyes just over the line of the ledge while he watchedit fall, dipping and gliding, to the feet of a messenger boy, who pickedit up, waved it gleefully aloft before putting it over his cap, and withmock strides of grandeur went his way. 

"That gave him a lot of pleasure--and a remarkably quick system fordelivering goods, wasn't it?" said Jack, cheerfully. 

"Yes, I should say so!" assented his father, returning to his seat. "Dinner at seven!" he called before the door closed; and as his fingersought one of the push-buttons it rested for a moment on the metal edgeof the socket, his head bowed, while an indefinable emotion, mixed ofprophecy and recollection, must have fluttered through the routinechannels of his vigorous mind. 

XXV

"BUT WITH YOU, 'YES, SIR'"

As Jack came out of the office, Mortimer appeared from an adjoining roomin furtive, mouselike curiosity. 

"Not much damage done!" said Jack, in happy relief from the ordeal. "I amwithout a hat, but I have the rose. " He held it up before Mortimer'sworn, kindly face that had been so genuine in welcome. "Yes, I must havekept it to decorate you, Peter!"

Ineffectually, in timorous confusion, the old secretary protested whileJack fastened it in his buttonhole. 

"And you are going to help me, aren't you, Peter?" Jack went on, seriously. "You are going to hold up a finger of warning when I get offthe course. I am to be practical, matter-of-fact; there's to be an end toall fantastic ideas. "

An end to all fantastic ideas! But it was hardly according to the gospelof the matter-of-fact to take Burleigh, the fitter, out to luncheon. Jackmight excuse himself on the ground that he had not yet begun hisapprenticeship and had several hours of freedom before his first lessonat dinner. This ecstasy of a recess, perhaps, made him lay aside thederby, which the clerk said was very becoming, and choose a softerhead-covering with a bit of feather in the band, which the clerk, withpositive enthusiasm, said was still more becoming. At all events, it waseasy on his temples, while the derby was stiff and binding and conduciveto a certain depression of spirits. 

Burleigh, the fitter, was almost as old as Mortimer. He rose to theexceptional situation, his eyes lighting as he surveyed the form to beclothed with a professional gratification unsurpassed by that of Dr. Bennington in plotting Jack's chest with a stethoscope. 

"Yes, sir, we will have that dinner-jacket ready to-night, sir, dependupon it--and couldn't I show you something in cheviots?"

Jack broke another precedent. A Wingfield, he decided to patronizethe Wingfield store, because he saw how supremely happy every ordermade Burleigh. 

"You can do it as well as Thompson's?" he asked. 

"With you, yes, sir--though Thompson is a great expert on roundshoulders. But with you, yes, sir!"

When the business of measuring was over, while Burleigh peered triumphantover the pile of cloths from which the masterpieces were to be fashioned, Jack said that he had a ripping appetite and he did not see why he andBurleigh should not appease their hunger in company. Burleigh gasped;then he grinned in abandoned delight and slipped off his shiny coat andlittle tailor's apron that bristled with pins. 

They went to a restaurant of reputation, which Jack said was in keepingwith the occasion when a man changed his habits from Arizona simplicityto urban multiplicity of courses. And what did Burleigh like? Burleighadmitted that if he were a plutocrat he would have caviar at least once aday; and caviar appeared in a little glass cup set in the midst ofcracked ice, flanked by crisp toast. After caviar came other things toBurleigh's taste. He was having such an awesomely grand feast that hewas tongue-tied; but Jack could never eat in silence until he hadforgotten how to tell stories. So he told Burleigh stories of the trailand of life in Little Rivers in a way that reflected the desert sunshinein Burleigh's eyes. Burleigh thought that he would like to live in LittleRivers. Almost anyone might after hearing Jack's description, in the joyof its call to himself. 

"Now, if you would trust me, " said Burleigh, when they left therestaurant, "I should like to send out for some cloths not in stock for acouple of suits. And couldn't I make you up three or four fancywaistcoats, with a little color in them--the right color to go with thecloth? You can carry a little color--decidedly, yes. "

"Yes, I rather like color, " said Jack, succumbing to temptation, thoughhe felt that the heir to great responsibilities ought to dress in themost neutral of tones. 

"And I should like to select the ties to go with the suits and a fewshirts, just to carry out my scheme--a kind of professional triumph forme, you see. May I?"

"Go ahead!" said Jack. 

"And you can depend on your evening suit to be up in time. But I am goingto rush a little broader braid on those ready-made trousers--you cancarry that, too, " Burleigh concluded. 

When they parted Jack turned into Fifth Avenue. Before he had gone ablock the bulky eminence of a Fifth Avenue stage awakened hisimagination. How could anybody think of confinement in a taxicab when hemight ride in the elephant's howdah of that top platform, enjoying mortalsuperiority over surrounding humanity? Jack hung the howdah with silkenstreamers and set a mahout's turban on the head of the man on the seat infront of him, while the glistening semi-oval tops of the limousinesfloating in the mist of the rising grade from Madison Square toForty-second Street, swarmed and halted in a kind of blind, cramped _pasde quatre_ from cross street to cross street, amid the breaking surge ofpedestrians. 

"Such a throbbing of machine motion, " he thought, "that I don't seehow anybody can have an emotion of his own without bumping intosomebody else's. "

It was a scene of another age and world to him, puzzling, overpowering, dismal, mocking him with a sense of loneliness that he had never felt onthe desert. Could he ever catch up with this procession which had all thetime been moving on in the five years of his absence? Could he learn totalk and think in the regulated manner of the traffic rules ofconvention? The few chums of his brief home school-days were long awayfrom the fellowship of academies; they had settled in their grooves, withestablished intimacies. If he found his own flock he could claimadmission to the fold only with the golden key of his millions, ratherthan by the password of kindred understanding. 

The tripping, finely-clad women, human flower of all the maelstrom ofurban toil, in their detachment seemed only to bring up a visualizedpicture of Mary. What would he not like to do for her! He wished that hecould pick up the Waldorf and set it on the other side of the street asa proof of the overmastering desire that possessed him whenever she wasin his mind. 

And the Doge! He was the wisest man in the world. With a nod ofwell-considered and easy generosity Jack presented him with the newPublic Library. And then all the people on the sidewalks vanished andthe buildings melted away into sunswept levels, and the Avenue was atrail down which Mary came on her pony in the resplendent sufficiency ofhis dreams. 

"Great heavens!" he warned himself. "And I am to take my first lesson inrunning the business this evening! What perfect lunacy comes frommistaking the top of a Fifth Avenue stage for a howdah!"

XXVI

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

How thankful he was that the old brick corner mansion in Madison Avenue, with age alone to recommend its architecture of the seventies--let itstand for what it was--had not been replaced by one of stone freshlypolished each year! The butler who opened the door was new and stifferthan the one of the old days; but he saw that the broad hall, with thestairs running across the rear in their second flight, was little morechanged than the exterior. 

Five years since he had left that hall! He was in the thrall ofanticipation incident to seeing old associations with the eyes ofmanhood. The butler made to take his hat, but Jack, oblivious of theattention, went on to the doorway of the drawing-room, his look centeringon a portrait that faced the door. In this place of honor he saw aGainsborough. He uttered a note of pained surprise. 

"There used to be another portrait here. Where is it?" he demanded. 

The butler, who had heard that the son of the house was an invalid, hadnot recovered from his astonishment at the appearance of health of thereturned prodigal. 

"Upstairs, sir, " he answered. "When Mr. Wingfield got this prize lastyear, sir--"

Though the butler had spoken hardly a dozen words, he became consciousof something atmospheric that made him stop in the confusion of onewho finds that he has been garrulous with an explanation that doesnot explain. 

"Please take this upstairs and bring back the other, " said Jack. 

"Yes, sir. You will be going to your room, sir, and while--" The butlerhad a feeling of a troublesome future between two masters. 

"Now, please!" said Jack, settling into a chair to wait. 

The Gainsborough countess, with her sweeping plumes, her rich, fleshy, soft tones, her charming affectation, which gave you, after the artinterest, no more human interest in her than in a draped model, wascarried upstairs and back came the picture that it had displaced. Theframe still bore at the bottom the title "Portrait of a Lady, " underwhich it had been exhibited at the Salon many years ago. It was by ayoung artist, young then, named Sargent. He had the courage of hismethod, this youngster, no less than Hals, who also worked his wonderswith little paint when this suited his genius best. The gauze of the gownwhere it blended with the background at the edge of the line of arm wasso thin, seemingly made by a single brush-stroke, that it almost showedthe canvas. 

A purpose in that gauze: The thinness of transparency of character! Theeyes of the portrait alone seemed deep. They were lambent and dark, looking straight ahead inquiringly, yet in the knowledge that no answerto the Great Riddle could change the course of her steps in the blindalley of a life whose tenement walls were lighted with her radiance. Youcould see through the gown, through the flesh of that frail figure, solacking in sensuousness yet so glowing with a quiet fire, to the soulitself. She seemed of such a delicate, chaste fragility that she could beshattered by a single harsh touch. There would be no outcry except thetinkle of the fragments. The feelings of anyone who witnessed thebreaking and heard the tinkle would be a criterion of his place in thewide margin between nerveless barbarism and sensitive gentility. 

"I give! I give! I give!" was her message. 

For a long time, he had no measure of it, Jack sat studying the portrait, set clear in many scenes of memory in review. It had been a face aschangeful as the travels, ever full of quick lights and quick shadows. Hehad had flashes of it as it was in the portrait in its very triumph ofresignation. He had known it laughing with stories of fancy which shetold him; sympathetic in tutorial illumination as she gave him lessonsand brought out the meaning of a line of poetry or a painting; beset bythe restlessness which meant another period of travel; intense as fireitself, gripping his hands in hers in a defiance of possession; in moodswhen both its sadness and its playfulness said, "I don't care!" andagain, fleeing from his presence to hide her tears. 

It was with the new sight of man's maturity and soberness that he now sawhis mother, feeling the intangible and indestructible feminine majesty ofher; feeling her fragility which had brought forth her living soul in itsbeauty and impressionableness as a link with the cause of his Odyssey;believing that she was rejoicing in his strength and understandinggloriously that it had only brought him nearer to her. 

After he had been to his room to dress he returned to the same chair andsettled into the same reverie that was sounding depths of his being thathe had never suspected. He was mutely asking her help, asking the supportof her frail, feminine courage for his masculine courage in the battlebefore him; and little tremors of nervous determination were runningthrough him, when he heard his father's footstep and became conscious ofhis father's presence in the doorway. 

There was a moment, not of hesitation but of completing a thought, beforehe looked up and rose to his feet. In that moment, John Wingfield, Sr. Had his own shock over the change in the room. The muscles of his facetwitched in irritation, as if his wife's very frailty were bafflinginvulnerability. Straightening his features into a mask, his eyes stillspoke his emotion in a kind of stare of resentment at the picture. 

Then he saw his son's shoulders rising above his own and looked intohis son's eyes to see them smiling. Long isolated by his power fromclashes of will under the roof of his store or his house, the fatherhad a sense of the rippling flash of steel blades. A word might start ahavoc of whirling, burning sentences, confusing and stifling as adesert sandstorm; or it might bring a single killing flash out ofgathering clouds. 

Thus the two were facing each other in a silence oppressive to both, which neither knew how to break, when relief came in the butler'sannouncement of dinner. Indeed, by such small, objective interruptions dodynamic inner impulses hang that this little thing may have suppressedthe lightnings. 

The father was the first to speak. He hoped that a first day in New Yorkhad brought Jack a good appetite; certainly, he could see that the storehad given him a wonderful fit for a rush order. 

XXVII

BY RIGHT OF ANCESTRY

There were to be no stories of Little Rivers at dinner; no questionsasked about desert life. This chapter of Jack's career was a past rung ofthe ladder to John Wingfield, Sr. Who was ever looking up to the rungsabove. The magnetism and charm with which he won men to his service nowturned to the immediate problem of his son, whom he was to refashionaccording to his ideas. 

"Are you ready to settle down?" he asked, half fearful lest that scene inthe drawing-room might have wrought a change of purpose. 

In answer he was seeing another Jack; a Jack relaxed, amiable, even amenable. 

"If you have the patience, " said Jack. "You know, father, I haven't acash-register mind. I'm starting out on a new trail and I am likely to golame at times. But I mean to be game. "

He looked very frankly and earnestly into his father's eyes. 

"Wild oats sown! My boy, after all!" thought the father. "Respected hismother! Well, didn't I respect mine? Of course--and let him! It is goodprinciples. It is right. He has health; that is better than schooling. "

In place of the shock of the son's will against his, he was feeling it asa force which might yet act in unison with his. He expanded with thepride of the fortune-builder. He told how a city within a city is createdand run; of tentacles of investment and enterprise stretching beyond thestore in illimitable ambition; how the ball of success, once it was setrolling, gathered bulk of its own momentum and ever needed closerwatching to keep it clear of obstacles. 

"And I am to stand on top like a gymnast on a sphere or be rolled under, "thought Jack. "And I'll have cloth of gold breeches and a balancing poletipped with jewels; but--but--"

"A good listener, and that is a lot!" thought the father, happily. 

Jack had interrupted neither with questions nor vagaries. He was gravelyattentive, marveling over this story of a man's labor and triumph. 

"And the way to learn the business is not from talks by me, " said hisfather, finally. "You cannot begin at the top. "

"No! no!" said Jack, aghast. "The top would be quite too insecure, toodizzy to start with. "

"Right!" the father exclaimed, decidedly. "You must learn each departmentof itself, and then how it works in with the others. It will be drudgery, but it is best--right at the bottom!"

"Yes, father, where there is no danger of a fall. "

"You will be put on an apprentice salary of ten dollars a week. "

"And I'll try to earn it. "

"Of course, you understand that the ten is a charge against the store. That's business. But as for a private allowance, you are John Wingfield'sson and--"

"I think I have enough of my own for the present, " Jack put in. 

"As you wish. But if you need more, say the word. And you shall name thedepartment where you are to begin. Did you get any idea of which you'dchoose from looking the store over to-day?"

"That's very considerate of you!" Jack answered. He was relieved andpleased and made his choice quickly, though he mentioned it half timidlyas if he feared that it might be ridiculous, so uncertain was he aboutthe rules of apprenticeship. 

"You see I have been used to the open air and I'd like a little time inwhich to acclimatize myself in New York. Now, all those big wagons thatbring the goods in and the little wagons that take them out--there is anout-of-door aspect to the delivery service. Is that an important branchto learn?"

"Very--getting the goods to the customer--very!"

"Then I'll start with that and sort of a roving commission to look overthe other departments. "

"Good! We will consider it settled. And, Jack, every man's labor that youcan save and retain efficiency--that is the trick! Organization andideas, that's what makes the employer and so makes success. Why, Jack, ifyou could cut down the working costs in the delivery department orimprove the service at the present cost, why--" John Wingfield, Sr. Rubbed the palms of his hands together delightedly. 

Everything was going finely--so far. He added that proviso of _so far_instinctively. 

"Besides, Jack, " he went on, changing to another subject that was equallyvital to his ego, "this name of Wingfield is something to work for. I wasthe son of a poor New England clergyman, but there is family back of it;good blood, good blood! I was not the first John Wingfield and you shallnot be the last!"

He rose from the table, bidding the servant to bring the coffee to thedrawing-room. With the same light, quick step that he ascended theflights in the store, he led the way downstairs, his face alive with thedramatic anticipation that it had worn when he took Jack out of theoffice to look down from the balcony of the court. 

"Ah, we have something besides the store, Jack!" he was saying, in thevery exultation of the pride of possession, as he went to the oppositeside of the mantel from the mother's portrait and turned on the reflectorover a picture. 

Jack saw a buccaneer under the brush of the gold and the shadows ofSpain; a robust, ready figure on fighting edge, who seemed to say, "Afteryou, sir; and, then, pardon me, but it's your finish, sir!"

"It's a Velasquez!" Jack exclaimed. 

"And you knew that at a glance!" said his father. 

"Why, yes!"

"Not many Velasquezes in America, " said the father, thinking, incidentally, that his son would not have to pay the dealers a heavy tollfor an art education, while he revelled in a surprise that he wasevidently holding back. 

"Or many better Velasquezes than this, anywhere, " added Jack. "Whatmastery! What a gift from heaven that was vouchsafed to a human being topaint like that!"

He was in a spell, held no less by the painter's art than by the subject. 

"Absolutely a certified Velasquez, bought from the estate of CountGalting, " continued his father. "I paid a cool two hundred and fiftythousand for it. And that isn't all, Jack, that isn't all that you aregoing to drudge for as an apprentice in the delivery department. I knowwhat I am talking about. I wasn't fooled by any of the genealogists whomanufacture ancestors. I had it all looked up by four experts, checkingone off against another. "

"Yes, " answered Jack, absently. He had hardly heard his father's words. In fervent scrutiny he was leaning forward, his weight on the ball of thefoot, the attitude of the man in the picture. 

"And who do you think he is--who?" pursued John Wingfield, Sr. 

"A man who fought face to face with the enemy; a man whom men followed!Velasquez caught all that!" answered Jack. 

"That old fellow was a great man in his day--a great Englishman--and hisname was John Wingfield! He was your ancestor and mine!"

After a quick breath of awakening comprehension Jack took a step nearerthe portrait, all his faculties in the throe of beaming inquiry of SeñorDon't Care and desert freedom, in the self-same, alert readiness of poseas the figure he was facing. 

"They say I resemble him!" The father repeated that phrase which he hadused in benignant satisfaction to many a guest, but now seeing withgreedy eyes a likeness between his son and the ancestor deeper than mereresemblance of feature, he added: "But you--you, Jack, you're the deadspit of him!"

"Yes, " said Jack, as if he either were not surprised or were tooengrossed to be interested. To the buccaneer's "After you, sir; and, then, your finish, sir!" he seemed to be saying, in the fully-livedspirit of imagination: "A good epitaph, sir! I'll see that it is writtenon your tombstone!"

The father, singularly affected by the mutual and enjoyed challenge thathe was witnessing, half expected to see a sword leap out of the scabbardof the canvas and another from Jack's side. 

"If he had lived in our day, " said the father, "he would have builthimself a great place; he would have been the head of a greatinstitution, just as I am. "

"Two centuries is a long way to fetch a comparison, " answered Jack, hazily, out of a corner of his brain still reserved for conversation, while all the rest of it was centered elsewhere. "He might have been acow-puncher, a revolutionist, or an aviator. Certainly, he would neverhave been a camp-follower. "

"At all events, a man of power. It's in the blood!"

"It's in the blood!" Jack repeated, with a sort of staring, lingeringemphasis. He was hearing Mary's protest on the pass; her final, mysterious reason for sending him away; her "It's not in the blood!"There could be no connection between this and the ancestor; yet, in thestirred depths of his nature, probing the inheritance in his veins, herhurt cry had come echoing to his ears. 

"Why, I would have paid double the price rather than not have got thatpicture!" the father went on. "There is a good deal of talk about familytrees in this town and a strong tendency in some quarters for secondgenerations of wealth to feel a little superiority over the firstgeneration. Here I come along with an ancestor eight generations back, painted by Velasquez. I tell you it was something of a sensation when Iexhibited him in the store!"

"You--you--" and Jack glanced at his father perplexedly; "you exhibitedhim in the store!" he said. 

"Why, yes, as a great Velasquez I had just bought. I didn't advertise himas my ancestor, of course. Still, the fact got around; yes, the fact gotaround, Jack. "

While Jack studied the picture, his father studied Jack, whose face andwhose manner of blissful challenge to all comers in the unconcern of easyfatality and ready blade seemed to grow more and more like that of thefirst John Wingfield. At length, Jack passed over to the other side ofthe mantel and turned on the reflector over the portrait of his mother;and, in turn, standing silently before her all his militancy was gone andin its place came the dreamy softness with which he would watch theEternal Painter cloud-rolling on the horizon. And he was like her not infeatures, not in the color of hair or eyes, but in a peculiarsensitiveness, distinguished no less by a fatalism of its own kind thanwas the cheery aggressiveness of the buccaneer. 

"Yes, father, " he said, "that old ruffian forebear of ours could swearand could kill. But he had the virtue of truth. He could not act or livea lie. And I guess something else--how supremely gentle he could bebefore a woman like her. Velasquez brought out a joyous devil and Sargentbrought out a soul!"

John Wingfield, Sr. , who stood by the grate, was drumming nervously onthe mantel. The drumming ceased. The fingers rested rigid and white onthe dark wood. Alive to another manifestation of the lurking force inhis son, he hastened to change the subject. 

"I had almost forgotten that you always had a taste for art, Jack. "

"Yes, from her;" which was hardly changing the subject. 

"As for the first John Wingfield, you may be sure that I wanted to knoweverything there was to know about the old fellow, " said the father. "SoI set a lot of bookworms looking up the archives of the English andSpanish governments and digging around in the libraries after material. Then I had it all put together in proper shape by a literary sharp. "

"You have that!" cried Jack. "You have the framework from which you canbuild the whole story of him--the story of how he fought and howVelasquez came to paint him? Oh, I want to read it!" With an unexploredland between gilt-tooled covers under his arm he went upstairs early, inthe transport of wanderlust that had sent him away over the sand fromLittle Rivers. _Sí, sí_, Firio, outward bound, camp under the stars! IfSeñor Don't Care's desert journeys were over--and he had no thought butthat they were--there was no ban on travelling in fancy over sea trailsin the ancestor's company. 

Jack was with the buccaneer when he boarded the enemy at the head of hismen; with him before the Board of Admiralty when, a young captain oftwenty-two, he refused to lie to save his skin; with him when, in answerto the scolding of Elizabeth, then an old woman, he said: "It is gloriousfor one who fought so hard for Your Majesty to have the recognition evenof Your Majesty's chiding in answer to the protest of the Spanishambassador, " which won Elizabeth's reversal of the Admiralty's decision;with him when, in a later change of fortune, he went to the court ofSpain for once on a mission which required a sheathed blade; with himwhen the dark eye of Velasquez, who painted men and women of his timewhile his colleagues were painting Madonnas, glowed with a discoverer'sjoy at sight of this fair-haired type of the enemy, whom he led away tohis studio. 

More than once was there mention of the fact that this terrible fighterwas gentle with women and fonder of the company of children than ofstatesmen or courtiers. He had married the daughter of a great merchant, a delicate type of beauty; the last to fascinate a buccaneer, accordingto the gossips of the time. Rumor had it that he had taken her for thewherewithal to pay the enormous debts contracted in his latest exploit. To disprove this he went to sea in a temper with a frigate and came backladen with the treasure of half a dozen galleons, to find that his wifehad died at the birth of a son. He promised himself to settle down forgood; but the fog of London choked lungs used to soft airs; he heard thecall of the sun and was away again to seek adventure in the broilingreaches of the Caribbean. A man of restless, wild spirit, breathinginconsistencies incomprehensible to the conventions of Whitehall! And hisson had turned a Cromwellian, who, in poverty, sought refuge in Americawhen Charles II. Came to the throne; and from him, in the vicissitudes offive generations, the poor clergyman was descended. 

Thus ran the tale in its completeness. The end of the ancestor's careerhad been in keeping with its character and course. He had been sparedthe slow decay of faculties in armchair reminiscence. He had gone down inhis ship without striking his colors, fighting the Spaniards one tothree. When Jack closed the cover on the last page tenderly and inenraptured understanding, it was past midnight. 

The spaciousness of the sea under clouds of battle smoke had melted intothe spaciousness of the desert under the Eternal Painter's canopy. Thenfour walls of a bedroom in Madison Avenue materialized, shutting out thehorizon; a carpet in place of sand formed the floor; and in place of ablanket roll was a canopied bed upon which a servant had laid out a suitof pajamas. In the impulse of a desire to look into the face of the firstJohn Wingfield in the light of all he now knew, Jack went downstairs, andin the silence of the house drank in the portrait again. 

"You splendid old devil, you!" he breathed, understandingly. "How shouldyou like to start out delivering goods with me in the morning?"

XXVIII

JACK GETS A RAISE

The next morning Jack went down town with his father in the limousine. About an hour later, after he had been introduced to the head of thedelivery division, he was on his way up town beside a driver of one ofthe wagons on the Harlem route. He was in the uniform of the Wingfieldlight cavalry, having obtained a cap with embroidered initials on thefront. The driver was like to burst from inward mirth, and Jack wasregarding the prospect with veritable juvenile zest. 

At dinner that evening John Wingfield, Jr. Narrated his experiences ofthe day to John Wingfield, Sr. With the simplicity and verisimilitudethat always make for both realism and true comedy. 

"But, Jack, you took me too literally! It is hardly in keeping with yourposition! You--"

"Why, I thought that the only way to know the whole business was toplay every part. Didn't you ever deliver packages in person in yourearly days?"

"I can't say that I did!" the father admitted wryly. 

"Then it seems to me that you missed one of the most entertaining andinstructive features, " Jack continued. "You cannot imagine the majesticfeminine disdain with which you may be informed that a five-cent bar ofsoap should be delivered at the back door instead of the front door. Themost indignant example was a red-haired woman who was doing her own workin a flat. She fairly blazed. She wanted to know if I didn't know whatdumb-waiters were for. "

"And what did you say?" the father asked wearily; for the ninth JohnWingfield had a limited sense of humor. 

"Oh, I try, however irritating the circumstances, to be most courtly, forthe honor of the store, " said Jack. "I told her that I was very sorry andI would speak to you in person about the mistake. "

"You mean that you admitted who you were?"

"Oh, no! The red-haired woman laughed and took the package in at thefront door, " Jack responded. Anybody in Little Rivers would haveunderstood just how he looked and smiled and why it was that thered-haired woman laughed. 

"Jack--now, really, Jack, this is not quite dignified!" expostulated thefather. "What do you think your ancestor would say to it?"

"I suspect that he would have made an even more ingratiating bow to thelady than I could, " said Jack, thoughtfully. "They had the grand mannerbetter developed in his day than in ours. "

In the ensuing weeks John Wingfield, Sr. Dwelt in a kind of infernalwonder about his son. He was cheered when some friend of his world whohad met Jack in the garb of his caste, as fitted by Burleigh, would say:"Fine, strapping son you have there, Wingfield!" He was abashed anddumfounded when Jack announced that he had taken Mamie Devore, who soldculinary utensils in the basement, out to luncheon with her "steadycompany, " Joe Mathewson, driver of one of the warehouse trucks. 

"They were a little awed at first, " Jack explained, "but they soonbecame natural. I don't know anything pleasanter than making people feelperfectly natural, do you? You see, Joe and Mamie are very real, father, and most businesslike; an ambitious, upstanding pair. They're going tohave two thousand dollars saved before they marry. 

"'I don't believe that a woman ought to work out after she's married, 'was the way Joe put it. And Mamie, with her eyes fairly devouring him, snapped back: 'No, she'd have enough to do looking after you, you bigold bluff!'

"Mamie is a wiry little thing and Joe is a heavyweight, with a handalmost as big as a baseball mit. That's partly why their practicalromance is so fascinating. Why, it's wonderful the stories that areplaying themselves out in that big store, father! Well, you see Joe is ona stint--two thousand before he gets Mamie. He had been making money onthe side nights in boxing bouts. But Mamie stopped the fighting. She saidshe was not going to have a husband with the tip of his nose driven upbetween his eyes like a bull-dog's. And what do you imagine they aregoing to do with the two thousand? Buy a farm! Isn't that corking!"

John Wingfield, Sr. Shrugged his shoulders, but did not express hisfeelings with any remark. It seemed to him that Jack must have been bornwithout a sense of proportion. 

With the breaking of spring, when gardens were beginning to sprout, Jackbroadened his study to the trails of Westchester, Long Island, and NewJersey, coursed by the big automobile vans of the suburban delivery. Tothe people of the store, whose streets he traversed at will inunremitting wonder over its varied activities, he had brought somethingof the same sensation that he had to an Arizona town. He came to know theemployees by name, even as he had his neighbors in Little Rivers. Henodded to the clerks as he passed down an aisle. They watched for hiscoming and brightened with his approach and met his smile with theirsmiles. In their idle moments he would stop and talk of the desert. 

Although he was learning to like the store as a community of human beingsits business was as the works of a watch, when all he knew was how totell the time by the face. But he tried hard to learn; tried until hishead was dizzy with a whirl of dissociated facts, which he knew ought tobe associated, and under the call of his utter restlessness woulddisappear altogether for two or three days. 

"Relieving the pressure! It's a safety-valve so I shan't blow up, " heexplained to his father, sadly. 

"Take your time, " said John Wingfield, Sr. , having in mind a recent talkwith Dr. Bennington. 

Jack listened faithfully to his father's clear-cut lessons. He askedquestions which only made his father sigh; for they had little to do withthe economy of working costs. All his suggestions were extravagant; theywould contribute to the joy of the employees, but not to profit. Andother questions made his father frown in devising answers which were inthe nature of explanations. Born of his rambling and humanly observantrelations with every department, they led into the very heart of thingsin that mighty organization. There were times when it was hard for himto control his indignation. There were trails leading to the room withthe glass-paneled door marked "Private" which he half feared to pursue. 

Thus, between father and son remained that indefinable chasm of thoughtand habit which filial duty or politeness could not bridge. No stories ofthe desert were ever told at home, though it was so easy to tell them toBurleigh or Mathewson, those contrasts in a pale fitter of clothes and aherculean rustler of dry-goods boxes. But echoes of the tales came to thefather through his assistants. He had the feeling of some stranger spiritin his own likeness moving there in the streets of his city under thetalisman of a consanguinity that was nominal. One day he put an inquiryto the general manager concretely, though in a way to avoid theappearance of asking another's opinion about his own son. 

"He has your gift of winning men to him. There is no denying hispopularity with the force, " said the general manager, who was a diplomat. 

The same question was put to Peter Mortimer. 

"We all love him. I think a lot of people in the store would march out tothe desert after him, " said Mortimer, with real rejoicing in his candorand courage. Indeed, of late he had been developing cheer as well ascourage, imbibing both, perhaps, from the roses in the vase on hisemployer's desk. Jack had ordered a fresh bunch put there every day; andwhen employees were sick packages of grapes and bunches of flowers cameto them, in Little Rivers fashion, with J. W. On the card, as if they hadcome from the head of the firm himself. 

"Maybe Jack will soften the old man a little, " ran a whisper frombasement to roof. For the battalions called him "Jack, " rather than "Mr. Wingfield, " just as Little Rivers had. 

"The boy's good nature isn't making him too familiar with the employees?"was a second question which the father had asked both the general managerand Mortimer. 

"No. That is the surprising thing--the gift of being friendly withoutbeing familiar, " answered the manager. 

"He's got a kind of self-respect that induces respect in others, "said Peter. 

John Wingfield, Sr. Was the proprietor of the store, but the human worldof the store began to feel a kind of proprietorship in Jack, while itsguardian interest in helping him in his mistakes was common enough to bea conspiracy. 

And the callouses were gone from his hands. There was no longer adividing line between tan and white on his forehead. No outward symbol ofthe desert clung to his person except the moments of the far vision ofdistances in his eyes. Superficially, on the Avenue he would have beentaken for one of his caste. 

But tossing a cowpuncher hat out of a window into Broadway was easierthan tossing a thing out of mind. He sat up nights to write to Mary. Letter after letter he poured out as a diary of his experiences in hisnew world, letters breathing a pupil's hope of learning and all thatpupil's sorry vagaries. No answer ever came, not even to the mostappealing ones about his most adventurous conflicts with the dinosaur. He felt the chagrin of the army of unpublished novelists who lay theirhearts bare on the stone slab of the dissectors in a publisher'soffice. He might as well have thrown all he wrote into thewaste-basket so far as any result was concerned; yet he kept onwriting as if it were his glorious duty to report to her as hissuperior. But he found a more responsive correspondent in Jim Galway;and this was the letter he received:

"DEAR JACK:

"The whole valley is not yet sprouting with dates as you said it wouldfrom your thinking of us. Maybe we didn't use the right seed. Your ranchis still called Jack's ranch, and Firio is doing his best and about thebest I ever knew in an Indian. But as you always said, Indians are mostlyhuman, like the rest of us, barring a sort of born twist in theirintellect for which they aren't responsible. You see, Jack, a lot of yoursayings still live with us, though you are gone. 

"Well, Firio keeps your P. D. Exercised and won't let anybody but himselfride him. He says you will need him. For you can't budge the stubbornlittle cuss. He declares you're coming back. When we tell him you'reworth twenty millions and he's plumb full of primitive foolishness andgeneral ignorance of the outside world, he says, '_Sí_, he will comeback!' like some heathen oracle that's strong on repetition and weak onvocabulary. 

"Of course you know about the new addition to our citizenship, JohnPrather, that double of yours that you didn't happen to meet. And Imight mention that by this time, after we've seen so much of him, weagree with the Doge that he doesn't look a bit like you. Well, he'smaking a fine ranch across the road from you, but hiring all his workdone, which ain't exactly according to Little Rivers custom, as youwill remember. The Doge sets a lot by him, though I can't see howthere's much in common between them. This fellow's not full of all thatkind of scholastic persiflage that you are, Jack. He's so all-firedpractical his joints would crack if he wasn't so oily; and he's up toold man Lefferts' pretty often. 

"He goes to Phoenix a good deal. When I was there the other day I heardhe was circulating around among the politicians in his quiet way, and Isaw him and Pete Leddy hobnobbing together. I didn't like that. But whenI told the Doge of it he said he guessed there wasn't much realhobnobbing. The Doge is certainly strong for Prather. Another thing Iheard was that, after all, old man Lefferts' two partners aren't dead, and Prather's been hunting them up. 

"Come to think of it, I didn't tell you that Pete Leddy and some of thegang have been back in town. Of course we have every confidence in theDoge, he's been so fair to this community. Still, some of us can't helphaving our private suspicions, considering what a lot we have at stake. And four or five of us was talking the other night, when suddenly we allagreed how you'd shine in any trouble, and if there was going to beany--not that there is--we wished you were here. 

"Well, Jack, the pass hasn't changed and the sunsets are just as grand asever and the air just as free. The pass won't have changed and thesunsets will be doing business at the old stand when the antiquaries aredigging up the remote civilization of Little Rivers and putting it in ahigh scale because they ran across a pot of Mrs. Galway's jam in theruins--the same hifalutin compliment being your own when you werenursing your wound, as you will remember. 

"Here's wishing you luck from the whole town, way out here in nowhere. 

"As ever yours, "James R. Galway. 

"P. S. Belvy Smith wants to know if you won't write just one story. I toldher you were too busy for such nonsense now. But she refuses to believeit. She says being busy doesn't matter to you. She says the stories justpop out. So I transmit her request. J. R. G. "

"P. D. Waiting!" breathed Jack. "No changing Firio! He is like the pass. Iwonder how Wrath of God and Jag Ear are!"

He wrote a story for Belvy. He wrote to Firio in resolute assertion thathe would never require the services of P. D. Again, when he knew thatFirio, despite the protests, would still keep P. D. Fit for the trail. Hewrote to Jim Galway how immersed he was in his new career, but that hemight come for a while--for a little while, with emphasis--if ever Jimwired that he was needed. 

"That was a good holiday--a regular week-end debauch away from the shop!"he thought, when the letters were finished. 

Soon after this came an event which, for the first time, gave JohnWingfield, Sr. A revelation of the side of his son that had won LittleRivers and the interest of the rank and file of the store. Among Jack'smany suggestions, in his aim to carry out his father's talk about thecreative business sense the first night they were together, had been onefor a suburban clubbing delivery system. It had been dismissed asfantastic, but Jack had asked that it be given a trial and his father hadconsented. Its basis was a certain confidence in human nature. Jack andhis father had dined together the evening after the master of thepush-buttons had gone through the final reports of the experiment. 

"Well, Jack, I am going to raise your salary to a hundred a week, " thefather announced. 

"On the ground that if you pay me more I might make myself worth more?"Jack asked respectfully. 

"No, as a matter of business. Whenever any man makes two dollars for thestore, he gets one dollar and I keep the other. That is the basis of mysuccess--others earning money for me. Your club scheme is a go. As theaccountant works it out, it has brought a profit of two hundred a week. "

"Then I have done something worth while, really?" Jack asked, eagerly, but half sceptical of such good fortune. 

"Yes. You have created a value. You have used your powers of observationand your brain. That's the thing that makes a few men employers while themultitude remains employees. "

"Father! Then I am not quite hopeless?"

"Hopeless! My son hopeless! No, no! I didn't expect you to learn thebusiness in a week, or a month, or even a year. Time! time!"

Nor did John Wingfield, Sr. Wish his son to develop too rapidly. Nowthat he was so sure of beating threescore and ten, while retaining thefull possession of his faculties, if he followed the rules of longevity, he would not have welcomed a son who could spring into the saddle atonce. He wanted to ride alone. He who had never shared his power withanyone! He who had never admitted anyone into even a few shares ofcompany partnership in his concern! Time! time! The boy would never fallheir to undivided responsibility before he was forty. John Wingfield, Sr. Was pleased with himself; pleased over a good sign; and he could notdeny that he was pleased at the sudden change in Jack. For he saw Jack'seyes sparkling into his own; sparkling with comradeship and spontaneousgratification. Was the boy to be his in thought and purpose, after all?Yes, of course; yes, inevitably, with the approach of maturity. Graduallythe flightiness of his upbringing would wear off down to the steel, thehard-tempered, paternal steel. 

"You can scarcely realize what a fight it has been for me until you knowthe life I led out in Arizona, getting strong for you and the store, "Jack began. 

"Strong for me! For the store! Yes, Jack!" There was an emphasis on thesubjective personal pronoun--for _him_; for the store!

The father's face beamed a serene delight. This Jack accepted as theexpression of sympathy and understanding which he had craved. It was tohim an inspiration of fellowship that set the well of his inner being inoverflow and the force of his personality, which the father had feltuncannily before the mother's picture, became something persuasive in itsradiance rather than something held in leash as a threatening andvolcanic element. Now he could talk as freely and happily of the desertto his father as to Burleigh and Mathewson. He told of the long rides;of Firio and Wrath of God. He made the tinkle of Jag Ear's bells heard inthe silence of the dining-room as it was heard in the silences of thetrail. He mentioned how he was afraid to come back after he was strong. 

"Afraid?" queried his father. 

"Yes. But I was coming--coming when, at the top of the pass, I saw LittleRivers for the first time. "

He sketched his meeting with Mary Ewold; the story of the town and thestory of Jasper Ewold as he knew it, now glancing at his father, nowseeming to see nothing except visualization of the pictures of his story. The father, looking at the table-cloth, at times playing with hiscoffee-spoon, made no comment. 

"And that first night I saw that Jasper Ewold had met me somewherebefore. But--" he went on after going back to the incident of the villain his childhood--"that hardly explained. How could he remember the faceof a grown man from the face of a boy? Jasper Ewold! Do you recall everhaving met him? He must have known my mother. Perhaps he knew you, thoughwhy he should not have told me I don't know. "

"Yes, yes--Jasper Ewold, " said the father. "I knew him in his youngerdays. His was an old family up in Burbridge, the New England town where Icame from. Too much college, too much travel, as I remember, characterized Jasper Ewold. No settled point of view; and I judge fromwhat you say that he must have run through his patrimony. One of the upsand downs of the world, Jack. And he never mentioned that he had met me?"

"No. "

"Probably a part of that desert notion of freemasonry in keeping pasts asecret. But why did you stay on after you had recovered from your wound?"he asked penetratingly, though he was looking again at the bottom of hiscoffee-cup. 

"For a reason that comes to a man but once in his life!" Jack answered. 

Had the father looked up--it was a habit of his in listening to anyreport to lower his eyes, his face a mask--he might have seen Jack'sface in the supremacy of emotion, as it was when he had called up toMary from the canyon and when he had pleaded with her on the pass. ButJohn Wingfield, Sr. Could not mistake the message of a voice vibratingwith all the force of a being let free living over the scene. With theshadows settling over his eyes, Jack came to her answer and to thefinality of her cry:

"It's not in the blood!"

The only sound was a slight tinkle of a spoon against the coffee-cup. Looking at his father he saw a nervous flutter in his cheeks, his lipshard set, his brow drawn down; and the rigidity of the profile was suchthat Jack was struck by the shiver of a thought that it must have beenlike his own as others said it was when he had gripped Pedro Nogales'sarm. But this passed quickly, leaving, however, in its trail anexpression of shock and displeasure. 

"So it was the girl, that kept you--you were in love!" John Wingfield, Sr. Exclaimed, tensely. 

"Yes, I was--I am! You have it, father, the unchangeable all of it! Iface a wall of mystery. 'It's not in the blood!' she said, as if it weresome bar sinister. What could she have meant?"

In the fever of baffled intensity crying for light and help, he wassharing the secret that had beset him relentlessly and giving his fatherthe supreme confidence of his heart. Leaning across the table he graspedhis father's hand, which lay still and unresponsive and singularly coldfor a second. Then John Wingfield, Sr. Raised his other hand and pattedthe back of Jack's hesitantly, as if uncertain how to deal with thislatest situation that had developed out of his son's old life. Finally helooked up good-temperedly, deprecatingly. 

"Well, well, Jack, I almost forgot that you are young. It's quite a badcase!" he said. 

"But what did she mean? Can you guess? I have thought of it so much thatit has meant a thousand wild things!" Jack persisted desperately. 

"Come! come!" the father rallied him. "Time, time!"

He gripped the hand that was gripping his and swung it free of the tablewith a kindly shake. All the effective charm of his personality which henever wasted, the charm that could develop out of the mask to gain an endwhen the period of listening was over, was in play. 

"She excited the opposition of the strength in you, " he said. "You askwhat did she mean? It is hard to tell what a woman means, but I judgethat she meant that it was not in her blood to marry a fellow who wentabout fighting duels and breaking arms. She would like a more peacefulsort; and, yes, anything that came into her mind leaped out and you weremystified by her strange exclamation!"

"Perhaps. I suppose that may be it. It was just myself, just my devil!"Jack assented limply. 

"Time! time! All this will pass. "

Jack could not answer that commonplace with one of his own, that it wouldnot pass; he could only return the pressure when his father, rising andcoming around the table, slipped his arm about the son in a demonstrationof affection which was like opening the gate to a new epoch in theirrelations. 

"And you would have killed Leddy! You could have broken that Mexican intwo! I should like to have seen that! So would the ancestor!" said thefather, giving Jack a hug. 

"Yes, but, father, that was the horror of it!"

"Not the power to do it--no! I mean, Jack, that in this world it is wellto be strong. "

"And you think that I am no longer a weakling?" Jack asked strangely;"that I carried out your instructions when you sent me away?"

"Oh, Jack, you remember my farewell remark? It was made in irritation andsuffering. That hurt me. It hurt my pride and all that my work standsfor. It hurt me as much as it hurt you. But if it was a whip, why, then, it served a purpose, as I wanted it to. "

"Yes, it was a whip!" said Jack, mechanically. 

"Then all ends well--all quits! And, Jack, " he swung Jack, who wasunresisting but unresponsive, around facing him, "if you ever have anydoubts or any questions to ask bring them to me, won't you?"

"Yes. "

"And, Jack, a hundred a week to-morrow! You're all right, Jack!" And hegave Jack a slap on the back as they left the dining-room. 

XXIX

A MEETING ON THE AVENUE TRAIL

Light sang in the veins and thoughts of a city. Light cleansed thestreets of vapors. Light, the light of the sunshine of late May, made afar different New York from the New York under a blanket of March mist ofthe day of Jack's arrival. The lantern of the Metropolitan tower was allblazing gold; Diana's scarf trailed behind her in the shimmering abandonof her _honi soit qui mal y pense_ chases on Olympus; Admiral Farragutgrew urbane, sailing on a smooth sea with victory won; General Sherman inhis over-brightness, guided by his guardian lady, still gallantly pursuedthe tone of time in the direction of the old City Hall and Trinity; andthe marble façade of the new library seemed no less at home than under anAgean sky. An ecstasy, blinding eyes to blemishes, set critical facultiesto rejoicing over perfections. They graciously overlooked the blotch ofred brick hiding the body of St. Patrick's on the way up town ingratitude for twin spires against the sky. 

Enveloping radiance gilded the sharp lines of skyscrapers and swept awaythe shadows in the chasms between them. It pointed the bows of busy tugswith sprays of diamonds falling on the molten surface of rivers and bays. It called up paeans of childish trebles from tenement alleys; slippedinto the sickrooms of private houses, delaying the advent of crape onthe door; and played across the rows of beds in the public wards ofhospitals in the primal democracy of the gift of ozone to the earth. 

The milky glass roof of the central court of the Wingfield store acted asa screen to the omnipotent visitor, but he set unfiltered patches ofdelight in the aisles and on the counters near the walls. Mamie Devoreand Burleigh and Peter Mortimer and many other clerks and employees askedif this were like a desert day and Jack said that it was. He longed to befree of all roofs and feel the geniality of the hearth-fire of theplanetary system penetrating through his coat, his skin, his flesh, intohis very being. Why not close the store and make a holiday for everybody?he asked himself; only to be amazed, on second thought, at such apreposterous suggestion from a hundred-dollar-a-week author of createdprofits in the business. He was almost on the point of acting on anotherimpulse, which was that he and his father break away into the country ina touring car, not knowing where they were going to stop until hungerovertook an inn. This, too, he dismissed as a milder form of the samedemoralizing order of heresy, bound to be disturbing to the new filialrelations springing from the night when he had told his desert story overthe coffee, which, contrary to the conventional idea of an exchange ofconfidences clearing the mind of a burden, had only provoked morerestlessness. 

At least, he would fare forth for a while on the broad asphalt trail thatbegins under the arch of the little park and runs to the entrance of thegreat park. Even as the desert has its spell of overawing stillness in anuninhabited land, so this trail had its spell of congested humanmovement in the heart of habitations. A broad, luminous blade lay acrossthe west side of the street and left the other in shade; and all theworld that loved sunshine and had no errands on the east side kept to thewest side. There was a communism of inspiration abroad. It was aconqueror's triumph just to be alive and feel the pulse-beat of thethrong. The very over-developed sensitiveness of city nerves becamesomething to be thankful for in providing the capacity for keenerenjoyment as compensation for the capacity for keener pain. 

Womankind was in spring plumage. The mere consciousness of the value oflight to their costumes, no less than the elixir in their nostrils, gavevivacity to their features. As usual, Jack was seeing them only to seeMary. The creation of no _couturier_ could bear rivalry with the garb inwhich his imagination clothed her. He found himself suddenly engrossed ina particular exhibit of fashion's parade a little distance ahead andgoing in the same direction as himself, a young woman in a simplicity ofgown to which her carriage gave the final touch of art. Her steps had along-limbed freedom and lightness, with which his own steps ran in arhythm to the music of some past association. The thrall of a likeness, which more and more possessed him, made him hasten to draw near for amore satisfying glimpse. 

The young woman turned her head to glance into a shop-window and thenthere could be no mistaking that cheek and chin and the peculiar relationof the long lashes to the brow. It was the profile whose imprint hadbecome indelible on his mind when he had come round an elbow of rock onGaleria. The Jack of wild, tumultuous pleading who had parted from MaryEwold on the pass became a Jack elate with the glad, swimming joy of Maysunshine at seeing and speaking to her again. 

"Mary! Mary!" he cried. "My, but you've become a grand swell!" hebreathed delectably, with a fuller vision of her. 

"Jack!"

There was a nervous twitching of her lips. He saw her eyes at first in ablaze of surprise and wonder; then change to the baffling sparkle, hidingtheir depths, of the slivers of glass on the old barrier. His smile andhers in unspoken understanding said that two comrades of another trailhad met on the Avenue trail. There had not been any Leddy; there had notbeen any scene on the pass. They were back to the conditions of theprotocol he had established when they started out from the porch of theEwold bungalow in the airiest possible mood to look at a parcel of land. 

"And you also have become a grand swell!" she said. "Did you expect thatI should be in a gray riding-habit? Certainly I didn't expect to see youin chaps and spurs. "

It was brittle business; but with a common resource in play they managedit well. And there they were walking together, noted by passers-by fortheir youth and beaming oblivion to everything but themselves. 

"How long have you been here?" Jack asked. 

"Two weeks, " she answered. 

Two weeks in the same town and this his first glimpse of her! What a mazeNew York was! What a desert waste of two weeks!

"Yes. Our decision to come was rather abrupt, " she explained. "A suddencall to travel came to father; came to him like an inspiration that hecould not resist. And how happily he has entered into the spirit of thecity again! It has made him young. "

"And it has been quite like martyrdom for you!" Jack put in, teasingly. 

"Terrible! Sackcloth and ashes!"

"I see you are wearing the sackcloth. "

She laughed outright, with a downward glance at her gown, at once inguilt and appreciation. 

"Another whim of father's. "

"The Doge a scapegoat for fashion!"

"Not a scapegoat--a partisan! He insisted on going to one of the bestplaces. Could I resist? I wanted to see how I felt, how I appeared. "

"The veritable curiosity of a Japanese woman getting her firstforeign gown!"

"Thank you! That is another excuse. "

"And it certainly looks very well, " Jack declared. 

"Do you think so?" Mary flushed slightly. She could not help beingpleased. "After six years, could I drop back into the old chrysalisnaturally, without awkwardness? Did I still know how to wear a finegown?"--and the gift for it, as anyone could see, was born in her assurely as certain gifts were born in Jack. "But, " she added, severely, "Ihave only two--just two! And the cost of them! It will take the wholeorange crop!"

Just two, when she ought to have twenty! When he would have liked to putall the Paris models in the store in a wagon and, himself driving, deliver them at her door!

"Having succumbed to temptation, I enjoy it out of sheer respect tothe orange crop, " Mary said; "and yes, because I like beautifulgowns; wickedly, truly like them! And I like the Avenue, just as Ilike the desert. "

And all that she liked he could give her! And all that he could give shehad stubbornly refused!

The liveliness of her expression, the many shades of meaning that shecould set capering with a glance, were now as the personal reflection ofthe day and the scene. Their gait was a sauntering one. They went as faras the Park and started back, as if all the time of the desert weretheirs. They stopped to look into the windows of shops of every kind, from antiques to millinery. When he saw a hat which he declared, afterdeliberate, critical appraisement, would surely become her, she askedboldly if it were better than the one she wore. 

"I mean an extra hat; that one more hat would have the good fortune ofbecoming you!"

"Almost a real contribution to the literature of compliments!" sheanswered, unruffled. 

He thought, too, that she ought to have a certain necklace in ajeweler's window. 

"To wear over my riding-habit or when I am digging in the flower beds?"she inquired. 

When they passed a display of luxuries for masculine adornment, she founda further retort in suggesting that he ought to have a certain giddyfancy waistcoat. He complimented her on her taste, bought the waistcoatand, going to the rear of the shop, returned wearing it with amomentarily appreciated show of jaunty swagger. 

"Why be on the Avenue and not buy?" he queried, enthusing with a newidea. 

Jim Galway should have a cowpuncher hat as a present. The style of bandwas a subject of discussion calling on their discriminative views ofJim's personal tastes. This led to thoughts of others in Little Riverswho would appreciate gifts, and to the purchase of toys for the children, a positive revel. When they were through it was well past noon and theywere in the region of the restaurants. The sun in majestic altitude sweptthe breadth of the Avenue. 

"Shall we lunch--yes, and in the Best Swell Place?" he asked, as if itwere a matter-of-course part of the programme, while inwardly he wasstirred with the fear of her refusal. He felt that any minute she mightleave him, with no alternative but another farewell. She hesitated amoment seriously, then accepted blithely and naturally. 

"Yes, the Best Swell Place--let's! Who isn't entitled to the Best SwellPlace occasionally?"

After an argument in comparison of famous names, they were convinced thatthey had really chosen the Best Swell Place by the fact of a vacant tableat a window looking out over a box hedge. Jack told the waiter that theassemblage was not an autocracy, but a parliament which, with a fullquorum present, would enjoy in discursive appreciation selections fromthe broad range of a bill of fare. 

A luncheon for two narrows a walk on the Avenue, where you are part of acrowd, into restricted intimacy. He was feeling the intoxication of herinscrutability, catching gleams of the wealth that lay beyond it, acrossthe limited breadth of a table-cloth. He forgot about the unspokenconditions in a sally which was like putting his hand on top of thebarrier for an impetuous leap across. 

"I wrote you stacks of letters, " he said, "and you never sent me onelittle line; not even 'Yours received and contents noted!'"

In a flash all intimacy vanished. She might have been at the other end ofthe dining-room in somebody else's party nodding to him as to anacquaintance. Her answer was delayed about as long as it takes to lift anarrow from a quiver and notch it in a bowstring. 

"A novel may be very interesting, but that does not mean that I write tothe author!"

He imagined her going through the meal in polite silence or in measuredcommonplaces, turning the happy parliament into a frigid Gothic ceremony. Why had he not kept in mind that sufficient to the hour is the pleasureof it? Famished for her companionship, a foolhardy impulse of temptationhad risked its loss. The waiter set something before them and softlywithdrew. Jack signaled the unspoken humility of being a disciplinedsoldier at attention on his side of the barrier and Mary signaled atrifle superior but good-natured acceptance of his apology and promise ofbetter conduct. 

They were back to the truce of nonsense, apostrophizing the cooking ofthe Best Swell Place, setting exclamations to their glimpses of peoplepassing in the street. For they had never wanted for words when talkingacross the barrier; there was paucity of conversation only when hethreatened an invasion. 

While a New Yorker meeting a former New Yorker on the desert might havelittle to tell not already chronicled in the press, a Little Riversitemeeting a former Little Riversite in New York had a family budget ofnews. How high were Jack's hedges? How were the Doge's date-trees? Howwas this and that person coming on? Listening to all the details, Jackfelt homesickness creeping over him, and he clung fondly to every one ofthe swiftly-passing moments. By no reference and by no inference had shesuggested that there was ever any likelihood of his meeting or hearingfrom her again. A thread of old relations had been spun only to besnapped. She was, indeed, as a visitation developed out of the sunshineof the Avenue, into which she would dissolve. 

"I was to meet father at a bookstore at three, " she said, finally, as she rose. 

"Inevitably he would be there or in a gallery, " said Jack. 

"He has done the galleries. This is the day for buying books--stillmore books! I suppose he is spending the orange crop again. If you keepon spending the same orange crop, just where do you arrive in the mazeof finance?"

"I should not like to say without consulting the head book-keeper or, atleast, Peter Mortimer!"

They were coming out of the door of the Best Swell Place, now. A word andshe would be going in one direction and he in another. How easily shemight speak that word, with an electric and final glance of good-will!

"But I must say howdy do to the Doge!" he urged. "I should like tosee him buying books. What a prodigal debauch of learning! I cannotmiss that!"

"It is not far, " she said, prolonging Paradise for him. 

A few blocks below Forty-second Street they turned into a cross streetwhich was the same that led to the Wingfield house; and halfway toMadison Avenue they entered a bookstore. The light from low windowsspreading across the counters blended with the light from high windows atthe back, and here, on a platform at the head of the stairs, before a bigtable sat the Doge, in the majesty of a great patron of literature, witha clerk standing by in deftly-urging attentiveness. Mary and Jack pausedat the foot of the stairs watching him. Gently he was fingering an oldoctavo; fingering it as one would who was between the hyperionic desireof possession and a fear that a bank account owed its solvency to keepingthe amounts of deposits somewhere in proportion to the amount ofwithdrawals. 

"No, sir! No more, you tempter!" he declared. "No more, you unctuousambassador from the court of Gutenberg! Why, this one would take enoughalfalfa at the present price a ton to bury your store under a haycock ashigh as the Roman Pantheon!"

The Doge rose and picked up his broad-brimmed hat, prepared to fly fromdanger. He would not expose himself a moment longer to the wiles ofthat clerk. 

"I'll wait for my daughter down there in the safe and economical environsof the popular novels fresh from the press!" he said. 

Turning to descend the stairs he saw the waiting pair. He stopped stockstill and threw up his hand in a gesture of astonishment. His glancehovered back and forth between Jack's face and Mary's, and then metJack's look with something of the same challenge and confidence of hisfarewell on the road out of Little Rivers, and in an outburst of genialraillery he began the conversation where he had left off with the finalcall of his personal good wishes and his salutations to certain landmarksof New York. 

"Well, well, Sir Chaps! I saw Sorolla in his new style; very differentfrom the academics of the young Sorolla. He has found his mission and lethimself go. No wonder people flocked to his exhibitions on misty days!The trouble with our artists is that they are afraid to let themselvesgo, afraid to be popular. They think technique is the thing, when it isonly the tool. Why, confound it all! all the great masters were popularin their day--Venetian, Florentine, Flemish! Confound it, yes! And notone Velasquez"--evidently he was talking partly to get his bearings afterhis shock at seeing Jack--"no, not one Velasquez in the Metropolitan! Igo home without seeing a Velasquez. They have the Catherine LorillardWolfe collection, thousands of square yards of it, and yes, cheer up!Thank heaven, they have some great Americans, Inness and Martin and Homerand our exile Whistler, who annexed Japan, and our Sargent, born inFlorence. And I did see the Metropolitan tower. I take off my hat, mybroad-brimmed hat, wishing that it were as big as a carter's umbrella, tothat tower. I hate to think it an accident of chaos like the GrandCanyon. I rather like to think of it as majestic promise. "

The Doge had talked so fast that he was almost out of breath. He wasready to yield the floor to Jack. 

"I kissed my hand to Diana for you!" said Jack. "And what do you think?The lady in answer shook out her scarf and something white and smallfluttered down. I picked it up. It was a note. "

"Did you open that note?" asked the Doge in haughty suspicion. 

"Naturally. "

"Wasn't it marked personal for me?"--this in fine simulation ofindignation. 

"Without address!"

"I am chagrined and surprised at Diana, " said the Doge ruefully. "It'sthe effect of city association. As a matter of course, she ought to havegiven it to Mercury, or at least to one of the Centaurs, considering allthe horseshows that have been held under her skipping toes! Well, whatdid she say? Being a woman of action she was brief. What did she say?"

"It was in the nature of a general personal complaint. Her costume is inneed of repair; it is flaking disgracefully. She said that if you had notforsaken your love of the plastic for love of the graphic arts you wouldlong ago have stolen a little gold off the Eternal Painter's palette, just to clothe her decently for the sake of her own self-respect--thetown having set her so high that its sense of propriety was quite safe. "

"I stand convicted of neglect, " said the Doge, coming down to the floorof the store. "I will shoot her a bundle of gold leaf from the top of thepass on a ray of evening sunshine. "

There, he gave Jack a pat on the shoulder; a hasty, playful, almostaffectionate demonstration, and broke off with a shout of:

"Persiflage, sir, persiflage!"

"It is manna to me!" declared Jack, in the fulness and sweetness of thesensation of the atmosphere of Little Rivers reproduced in New York. 

"And not a Velasquez in the Metropolitan!" mused the Doge, bustling alongthe aisle hurriedly. "Well, Mary, we have errands to do. There is no timeto spare. "

They were at the door, Jack in wistful insistence, hungry for theircompanionship, and the Doge and Mary in common hesitancy for a phrasebefore parting from him. He was ahead of the phrase. 

"But there is a Velasquez, one of the greatest of Velasquezes, just a fewsteps from here! It would take only a minute to see it. "

"A Velasquez a few steps from here!" cried the Doge. "Where? Be exact, before I let my hopes rise too high. "

"The subject is an ancestor of mine. My father has it. "

Jack had looked in the direction of the Wingfield house on the MadisonAvenue corner as he spoke, and the Doge had followed his glance. Theeagerness passed from the Doge's face, but not its intensity. That wastransmuted into something staring and hard. 

"A very great Velasquez!" Jack repeated. 

"My _amour propre_!" the Doge said, in whispered abstraction, using theFrench which so exactly expresses the rightness of an inner feeling thatwill not let one do a thing however much he may wish to. Then a wave ofconfusion passed over his face, evidently at the echo of his thoughts inthe form of words come unwittingly from his lips. He tried to retrievehis exclamation in an effort at the forensic: "The _amour propre_ of anyAmerican is hurt by the thought that he must go to a private gallery tosee a Velasquez in the greatest city of the land!"

But it was a lame explanation. Clearly, some old antipathy had beenaroused in Jasper Ewold; and it made him hesitate to enter the big redbrick house on the corner. 

"And we have a wonderful Sargent, too, a Sargent of my mother!" Jackproceeded. 

"Yes, yes!" said the Doge, and eagerness returned; a strange, movingeagerness that seemed to come from the same depths as the exclamationthat had arrested his acceptance of the invitation at the outset. It heldthe monosyllables like drops of water trembling before they fell. 

"I should like you to see them both, " said Jack. 

"Yes, " said the Doge, the word an echo rather than consent. 

"There is no one at home at this hour; you will have all the time you canspare for the pictures. "

In the ascendency of his ardor to retain the joy of their company and inthe perplexity of mystery injected afresh into his relations with Mary, Jack was hardly conscious that his urging was only another way of sayingthat his father was absent. And Mary had not thrown her influence eitherfor or against going. She was watching her father, curiously andpenetratingly, as if trying to understand the source of the emotion thathe was seeking to control. 

"Why, in that case, " exclaimed the Doge, "why, you see, " he went on toexplain, "we desert folk, though we are used to galleries, are a littlediffident about meeting people who live in big mansions. I mean, peoplewho have not had the desert training that you have had, Sir Chaps. If itis only a matter of looking at a picture without any socialresponsibilities, and that picture a Velasquez, why, we must take thetime, mustn't we, Mary?"

"Yes, " Mary assented. 

With Mary on one side of him and Jack on the other, the Doge was walkingheavily and slowly. 

"At what period of Velasquez's career?" he asked, vacantly. 

"When he was young and the subject was middle-aged, a Northerner, withfair hair and lean muscles under a skin bronzed by the tropics, and theunquenchable fire of youth in his eyes. "

"That ought to be a good Velasquez, " said the Doge. 

At the bottom step of the flight up to the entrance to the house hehesitated. He appeared to be very old and very tired. His face had gonequite pale. The lids hung heavily over his eyes. Jack dropped back inalarm to assist him; but his color quickly returned and the old challengewas in his glance as it met Jack's. 

"Now for your Velasquez!" he exclaimed, with calm vigor. 

Once in the hall, Jack stood to one side of the door of the drawing-roomto let the Doge enter first. As the old man crossed the threshold hishands were clasped behind him; his shoulders had fallen together, not inweariness now, but in a kind of dazed, studious expectancy; and he facedthe "Portrait of a Lady. "

"This is the Sargent, " he said slowly, his lips barely opening inmechanical and absent comment. "A good Sargent!"

He was as still as the picture in his bowed and earnest gaze into hereyes, except for an occasional nervous movement of the fingers. All thesurroundings seemed to melt into a neutral background for the two; therewas nothing else in the room but the scholar in his age and the "Portraitof a Lady" in her youth. Jack saw the Doge's face, its many linesexpressive as through a mist of time, its hills and valleys in the sunand the shadow of emotions as variable as the mother's in life, speakingpersonal resentment and wrong, admiration and tenderness, grievousinquiry and philosophy, while the only answer was the radiant, "I give! Igive!" Finally, the Doge tightened the clasp of his hands, with a quiverof his frame, as he turned toward Jack. 

"Yes, a really great Sargent--a Sargent of supreme inspiration!" he said. "Now for your Velasquez!"

Before the portrait of the first John Wingfield, Jasper Ewold's head andshoulders recovered their sturdiness of outline and his features lightedwith the veritable touch of the brush of genius itself. He was theconnoisseur who understands, whose joy of possession is in the verytingling depths of born instinct, rich with training and ripened by time. It was superior to any bought title of ownership. In the presence of asupreme standard, every shade of discriminative criticism and appraisalbecame threads woven into a fabric of rapture. 

"Mary, " he said, his voice having the mellowness of age in its deepappreciation, "Mary, wherever you saw this--skied or put in a corneramong a thousand other pictures, in a warehouse, a Quaker meetinghouse, anywhere, whatever its surroundings--should you feel its compellingpower? Should you pause, incapable of analysis, in a spell of tribute?"

"Yes, I don't think I am quite so insensible as not to realize thegreatness of this portrait, or that of the Sargent, either, " sheanswered. 

"Good! I am glad, Mary, very glad. You do me credit!"

Now he turned from the artist to the subject. He divined the kind of manthe first John Wingfield was; divined it almost as written in thechronicle which Jack kept in his room in hallowed fraternity. Only hebore hard on the unremitting, callous, impulsive aggressiveness of afierce past age, with its survival of the fittest swordsmen andbuccaneers, which had no heroes for him except the painters, poets, andthinkers it gave to posterity. 

"Fire-eating old devil! And the best thing he ever did, the best luck heever had, was attracting the attention of a young artist. It'simmortality just to be painted by Velasquez; the only immortality many afamous man of the time will ever know!"

He looked away from the picture to Jack's face keenly and back at thepicture and back at Jack and back at the picture once more. 

"Yes, yes!" he mused, corroboratively; and Jack realized that at the sametime Mary had been making the same comparison. 

"Very like!" she said, with that impersonal exactness which to him wasalways the most exasperating of her phases. 

Then the Doge returned to the Sargent. He was standing nearer thepicture, but in the same position as before, while Jack and Mary waitedsilently on his pleasure; and all three were as motionless as thefurniture, had it not been for the nervous twitching of the Doge'sfingers. He seemed unconscious of the passing of time; a man in a maze ofabsorption with his thoughts. Jack was strangely affected. His brain wasmarking time at the double-quick of fruitless energy. He felt theatmosphere of the room surcharged with the hostility of the unknown. Hewas gathering a multitude of impressions which only contributed morechaos to chaos. His sensibilities abnormally alive to every sound, heheard the outside door opened with a latch-key; he heard steps in thehall, and saw his father's figure in the doorway of the drawing-room. 

John Wingfield, Sr. Appeared with a smile that was gone in a flash. His face went stark and gray as stone under a frown from the Doge toJack; and with an exclamation of the half-articulate "Oh!" ofconfusion, he withdrew. 

Jack looked around to see the Doge half turned in the direction of thedoor, gripping the back of a chair to steady himself, while Mary wasregarding this sudden change in him in answer to the stricken change inthe intruder with some of Jack's own paralysis of wonder. The Doge wasthe first to speak. He fairly rocked the chair as he jerked his hand freeof its support, while he shook with a palsy which was not that of fear, for there was raging color in his cheeks. The physical power of his greatfigure was revealed. For the first time Jack was able to think of him ascapable of towering militancy. His anger gradually yielded to thepressure of will and the situation. At length he said faintly, with akind of abyssmal courtesy:

"Thank you, Sir Chaps! Now I shall not go back to the desert withouthaving seen a Velasquez. Thank you! And we must be going. "

Jack had an impulse, worthy of the tempestuous buccaneer of the picture, to call to his father to come down; and then to bar the front door untilhis burning questions were heard. The still light in Mary's eyes wouldhave checked him, if not his own proper second thought and the fear ofprecipitating an ungovernable crisis. There had been shadows, realshadows, he was thinking wildly; they were not born of desert imaginings;and out of the quandary of his anguish came only the desire not to partfrom the Doge and Mary in this fashion! No, not until in some wayequilibrium of mind was restored. 

Though he knew that they did not expect or want his company, he wentout into the street with them. He would go as far as their hotel, heremarked, in the bravery of simulated ease. The three were walking inthe same relative positions that they had before, with the Doge's bulkhiding Mary from Jack's sight. The Doge set a rapid pace, as if underthe impetus of a desire to escape from the neighborhood of theWingfield house. 

"Well, Sir Chaps, " he said, after a while, "it will be a long time beforethe provincials come to New York again. Why, in this New York you canspend a patrimony in two weeks"--this with an affected amusement at hisown extravagance--"and I've pretty nearly done it. So we fly fromtemptation. Yes, Mary, we will take the morning train. "

"The morning train!" Mary exclaimed; and her surprise left no doubt thather father's decision was new to her. Was it due to an exchange ofglances between a stark face and a face crimson with indignation whichJack had already connected with the working out of his own destiny?

"Yes, that is better than spending our orange crop again!" she hastenedto add, with reassuring humor. "I'm fairly homesick for our oasis. "

"We've had our fill of the big city, " said the Doge, feelingly, "and weare away to our little city of peace where we turned our pasts under withthe first furrows in the virgin soil. "

Then silence. The truce of nonsense was dead. Persiflage was dead. Jackwas as a mute stranger keeping at their side unasked, while the onlyglimpse he had of Mary was the edge of her hat and her fingertips on herfather's sleeve. Silence, which he felt was as hard for them as for him, lasted until they were at the entrance to the quiet little hotel on across-town street where the Ewolds were staying; and having the firstglimpse of Mary's eyes since they had started, he found nothingfathomable in them except unmistakable relief that the walk was over. 

"Thank you for showing me the Velasquez, " said the Doge. 

"Thank you, Jack, " Mary added. 

Both spoke in a manner that signaled to him the end of all things, but anend which he could not accept. 

"I--I--oh, there are a thousand questions I--" he broke out, desperately. 

The muscles of his face tightened. Unconsciously he had leaned forwardtoward the Doge in his intensity, and his attitude had become that of theWingfield of the portrait. A lower note of command ran through themisery of his tone. 

Jasper Ewold stared at him in a second of scrutiny, at once burninglyanalytic and reflective. Then he flushed as he had at sight of the figurein the drawing-room doorway. His look plainly said: "How much longer doyou mean to harass me?" as if Jack's features were now no less the imageof a hard and bitter memory than those of John Wingfield, Sr. Jack drewback hurt and dumb, in face of this anger turned on himself. At length, the Doge mustered his rallying smile, which was that of a man who carriesinto his declining years a burden of disappointments which he fears may, in his bad moments, get the better of his personal system of philosophy. 

"Come, Mary!" he said, drawing his arm through hers. He became, in anevident effort, a grand, old-fashioned gentleman, making a bow offarewell. "Come, Mary, it's an early train and we have our packingyet to do. "

This time it was, indeed, dismissal; such a dismissal with polite urgencyas a venerable cabinet minister might give an importunate caller who isslow to go. He and Mary started into the hotel. But he halted in thedoorway to say over his shoulder, with something of his old-time cheer, which had the same element of pity as his leave-taking on the trailoutside of Little Rivers:

"Luck, Sir Chaps!"

"Luck!" Mary called in the same strained tone that she had called to Jackwhen he went over the pass on his way to New York, the tone that was likethe click of a key in the lock of a gate. 

XXX

WITH THE PHANTOMS

As Jack left the hotel entrance he was walking in the treadmill mechanicsof a prisoner pacing a cell, without note of his surroundings, except ofdim, moving figures with which he must avoid collision. The phantoms ofhis boyhood, bulky and stiflingly near, had a monstrous reality, yet theghostly intangibility that mocked his sword-thrusts of tortured inquiry. At length his distraction centered on the fact that he and his fatherwere to dine alone that evening. 

They dined alone regularly every Wednesday, when Jack made a report ofhis progress and received a lesson in business. It was at the lastcouncil of this kind that John Wingfield, Sr. Had bidden his son tobring all questions and doubts to him. Now Jack hailed the weeklyfunction as having all the promise of relief of a surgeon's knife. Fullyand candidly he would unburden himself of every question beating in hisbrain and every doubt assailing his spirit. 

By the time that he was mounting the steps of the house his growingimpatience could no longer bear even the delay of waiting on dinner. Whenhe entered the hall he was the driven creature of an impelling desirethat must be satisfied immediately. 

"Will you ask my father if he will see me at once?" he said to thebutler. 

"Mr. Wingfield left word that he had to go into the country for thenight, " answered the butler. "I am sorry, sir, " he added confusedly, inview of the blank disappointment with which the information was received. 

In dreary state Jack dined by himself in the big dining-room, leaving thefood almost untouched. At intervals he was roused to a sense of hispresence at table by the servant's question if he should bring anothercourse. Without waiting for the last one, he went downstairs to thedrawing-room, and standing near the "Portrait of a Lady, " again pouredout his questions, receiving the old answer of "I give! I give!" whichmeant, he knew, that she had given all of herself to him. Saying aftersaying of hers raced through his mind without throwing light on themystery, which had the uncanniness of a conspiracy against him. 

And after his mother, Mary had influenced him more than any other person. She had brought life to the seeds which his mother had planted in hisnature. That new life could not die, but without her it could notflourish. Her cry of "It's not in the blood!" again came echoing to hisears. What had she meant? The question sent him to the Ewolds' hotel; itsent this note up to her room:

"MARY:

"In behalf of old desert comradeship, if I were in trouble wouldn't youhelp me all you could? If I were in darkness and you could give me light, would you refuse? Won't you see me for a few moments, if I promise tokeep to my side of the barrier which you have raised between us? I willwait here in the lobby a long time, hoping that you will. 

"JACK. "

"All the light I have to give. I also am in darkness, " came the answer ina nervous, impulsive hand across a sheet of paper; and soon Mary herselfappeared from the elevator, not in the fashion of the Avenue, but insimple gray coat and skirt, such as she wore at home. She greeted him ina startled, half-fearful manner, as if her presence were due to theimpulsion of duty rather than choice. 

"Shall we walk?" she asked, turning toward the door in the welcome ofmovement as a steadying influence in her evident emotion. 

There they were in the old rhythm of step of Little Rivers companionshipon a cross-town street. He saw that the costly hat that he had selectedfor her in the display of a shop-window after all was not the equal ofthe plain model with a fetching turn to the brim and a single militantfeather, which she wore that evening. The light feather boa around herneck on account of the cool night air seemed particularly becoming. Hewas near, very near, her, so near that their elbows touched; but thenearness was like that of a picture out of a frame which has come to lifeand may step back into cold canvas at any moment. Oh, it was hard, in themight of his love for her, not to forget everything else and cry outanother declaration, as he had from the canyon! But her face was verystill. She was waiting for him to begin, while her fingers were playingnervously with the tip of her boa. 

"I must be frank, very frank, " he said. 

"Yes, Jack, or why speak at all?"

"From the night of my arrival in Little Rivers, when the Doge at oncerecognized who I was without telling me, I saw that, under his politenessand his kindness, he was hostile to my presence in Little Rivers. "

"Yes, I think that in a way he was, " she answered. 

"I was conscious that something out of the past was between him and me, and that it included you in a subtle influence that nothing could change. And this afternoon, while you were at the house and my father came to thedrawing-room door, I could not help noticing how the Doge was overcome. You noticed it, too?"

"Yes, I never saw my father in such anger before. It seemed to me thathe could have struck down that man in the doorway!" There was aperceptible shudder, but she did not look up, her glance remaining levelwith the flags. 

"And on the pass you said, 'It's not in the blood!'" he continued. "Yes, almost in terror you said it, as if it spelled an impassable gulf betweenus. Why? why? Mary, haven't I a right to know?"

As he broke off passionately with this appeal, which was as the focus ofall the fears that had tormented him, they were immediately under thelight of a street lamp. She turned her head toward him resolutely, in themustering of her forces for an ordeal. Her face was pale, but there wasan effort at the old smile of comradeship. 

"Yes, as I said, the little light that I have is yours, Jack, " she began. "But there is not much. It is, perhaps, more what I feel than what Iknow that has influenced me. All that my father has ever said about youand your father and your relations to us was the night after I returnedfrom the pass ahead of you, when you had descended into the canyon tofrighten me with the risk you were taking. "

"I did not mean to frighten you!" he interjected. "I only followedan impulse. "

"Yes, one of your impulses, Jack, " she remarked, comprehendingly. "Fatherand I have been so much together--indeed, we have never been apart--thatthere is more than filial sympathy of feeling between us. There issomething akin to telepathy. We often divine each other's thoughts. Ithink that he understood what had taken place between us on the pass;that you had brought on some sort of a crisis in our relations. It wasthen that he told me who you were, as you know. Then he talked of you andyour father--you still wish to hear?"

"Yes!"

"And you will listen in silence?"

"Yes!"

"I will grant your defence of your father, but you will not argue? I amgiving what you ask, in justice to myself; I am giving my reasons, myfeelings. "

"No, I will not argue. "

Their tones were so low that a passer-by would have hardly been consciousthat they were talking; but had the passer-by caught the pitch he mighthave hazarded many guesses, every one serious. 

"Then, I will try to make clear all that father said. You were the imageof your father--a smile and a square chin. The smile could charm and thechin could kill. He liked you for some things that seemed to spring fromanother source, as he called it; but these would vanish and in the endyou would be like your father, as he knew when he saw you break PedroNogales's arm. And you gloried in your strength; as you told me on thepass and as I saw for myself in the duel. And to you, father said, victory was the supreme guerdon of life. It ran triumphant andinextinguishable in your veins. "

"I--" he said, chokingly; but remembered his promise not to argue. 

"Any opposition, any refusal excited your will to overcome it in thesheer joy of the exercise of your strength. This had been your father'sstory in everything, even in his marriage. "

She paused. 

"There is nothing more? No further light on his old relations with myfather and mother?" he asked. 

"Only a single exclamation, 'It's not in the blood for you to believe inJack Wingfield, Mary!' And after that he turned silent and moody. Ipressed him for reasons. He answered that he had told me enough. I had tolive my own life; the rest I must decide for myself. I knew that I washurting him sorely. I was striking home into that past about which hewould never speak, though I know it still causes him many days ofsuffering. "

"But on the desert there is no past!" Jack exclaimed. 

"Yes, there is, Jack. There is your own heart. On the desert your past isnot shared with others. But to-night, after I received your note, I didtry, for the second time in my life, to share father's. I told him yourrequest; I spoke of the scene in your drawing-room; I asked him what itmeant. He answered that you must learn from one nearer you than he was, and that he never wanted to think of that scene again. "

It was she who had chosen the direction at the street corners. They werereturning now toward the hotel. The fingers which had been playing withthe boa had crumpled the end of it into a ball, which they were grippingso tightly that the knuckles were little white spots set in a blood-redbackground. She was suffering, but determined to leave nothing unsaid. 

"Jack, when I said 'It's not in the blood' I was more than repeating myfather's words. They expressed a truth for me. I meant not only rebellionagainst what was in you, but against the thing that was in me. Why, Jack, I do not even remember my own mother! I have only heard father speak ofher sadly when I was much younger. Of late years he has not mentionedher. He and the desert and the garden are all I have and all I know; andprobably, yes--probably I'm a strange sort of being. But what I am, I am;and to that I will be true. Father went to the desert to save my life;and broken-hearted, old, he is greater to me than the sum of any worldlysuccess. And, Jack, you forget--riding over the pass so grandly with yourimpulses, as if to want a thing is to get it--you--but we have had goodtimes together; and, as I said, you belong on one side of the pass and Ion the other. This and much else, which one cannot see or define, isbetween us. From the day you came, some forbidding influence seemed atwork in my father's life and mine; and when you had gone another man, with your features and your smile, came to Little Rivers; one that Iunderstand even less than you!"

Jack recalled the references to the new rancher by Bob Worther on the dayof his departure for the East and, later, in Jim Galway's letter. But hedid not speak. Something more compelling than his promise was keeping himsilent: her own apprehension, with its story of phantoms of her own. 

"And yesterday I saw your father's face, " she went on, "as it appeared inthe doorway for a second before he saw my father and was struck withfear, and how like yours it was--but more like John Prather's. And thehigh-sounding preachments about the poverty that might go with fine gownsbecame real to me. They were not banal at all. They were simple truth, free of rhetoric and pretence. I knew that my cry of 'It's not in theblood' was as true in me as any impulse of yours ever could be in you!"

To the end, under the dominance of her will, she had not faltered; andwith the end she looked up with a faint smile of stoicism and aninvincible flame in her eyes. Anything that he might be able to say wouldbe as flashing a blade in and out of a blaze. She had become superior tothe resources of barrier or armor, confident of a self whose richness herealized anew. He saw and felt the tempered fineness of her as somethingthat would mind neither siege nor prayer. 

"I am not afraid, " she said, "and I know that you are not. It is allright!" Then she added, with a desperate coolness, but still clasping theboa rigidly: "The hotel is only a block away, and to-morrow you will beback in the store and I shall soon be on my side of the pass. "

This was her right word for a situation when his temples were throbbing, harking back, with time's reversal of conditions, to a situation afterthe duel in the _arroyo_ was over and he had used the right word when hertemples were throbbing and her hands splashed. If retribution were herobject, she had repaid in nerve-twitch of torture for nerve-twitch oftorture. The picture that had been alive and out of its frame was back oncold canvas. Even the girl he had known across the barrier, even the girlin armor, seemed more kindly. But one can talk, even to a picture in aframe; at least, Jack could, with wistful persistence. 

"You don't mind if I tell you again--if I speak my one continuous thoughtaloud again?" he asked. "Mary, I love you! I love you in such a way thatI"--with a faint bravery of humor as he saw danger signals--"I wouldbuild mud-houses all day for you to knock to pieces!"

"Foolish business, Jack!" she answered. 

"Or drag a plow. "

"Very hard work!"

"Or set out to tunnel a mountain single-handed, with hammer and chisel. "

"I think you would find it dreadfully monotonous at the end of thefirst week. "

He had spoken his extravagances without winning a glance from her. Shehad answered with a precision that was more trying than silence. 

"_I_ shouldn't find it so if you were in the neighborhood to welcomeme when I knocked off for the day, " he declared. "You see, I can'thelp it. I can't help what is in me, just as surely as the breath oflife is in me. "

"Jack!" she flashed back, with arresting sharpness, but without lookingaround, while her step quickened perceptibly, "suppose I say that I amsorry and I, too, cannot help it; that I, too, have temperament, as wellas you;" her tone was almost harsh; "that even you cannot have everythingyou command; that for you to want a thing does not mean that I want it;that I cannot help the fact that I do not--"

With a quick interruption he stayed the end of the sentence, as if itwere a descending blade. 

"Don't say that!" he implored. "It is too much like taking a vow thatmight make you fearfully stubborn in order to live up to it. Perhaps thething will come some day. It's wonderful how such a thing does come. Yousee, I speak from experience, " he went on, in wan insistence, with theentrance to the hotel in sight. "Why, it is there before you realize it, like the morning sunshine in a room while you are yet asleep. And youopen your eyes and there is the joyous wonder, settling itself allthrough you and making itself at home forever. You know for the firsttime that you are alive. You know for the first time that you were borninto this world merely because one other person was born into it. "

"Very well said, " she conceded, in hasty approval, without vouchsafinghim a glance. "I begin to think you get more inspiration for complimentson this side of the pass than on the other, "--and they were at the hoteldoor. Precipitately she hastened through it, as if with her last displayof strength after the exhaustion of that walk. 

XXXI

PRATHER WOULD NOT WAIT

When he returned to the house, Jack found a letter that had come in thelate mail from Jim Galway:

"First off, that story you sent for Belvy, " Jim wrote. "We've heard itread and reread, and the more it's worn with reading the fresher it getsin our minds. As I size up the effect on the population, we folks in theforties and fifties got more fun out of it than anybody except the folksin the seventies and the five-to-twelve-year-olds. Some of the thirteenand fourteen-year-olds were inclined to think at first that it wasn'tquite grown up enough for them, until they saw what fashionableliterature it was becoming. Then their dignified maturity limbered up alittle. Jack, it certainly did us a world of good. It seemed as if youwere back home again. "

"Back home again!" Jack repeated, joyously; and then shook his head athimself in solemn warning. 

"And those of us that don't take our meat without salt sort of neededcheering up, " Jim went on. "Only a few days after I wrote you, the Dogeand Mary suddenly started for New York. Maybe he has looked you up. " (The"maybe" followed an "of course, " which had been scratched through. ) "Andmaybe if he has you know more about what is going on here than we do. Wepractically don't know anything; but I've sure got a feeling of thatuncertainty in the atmosphere that I used to have before a cyclone when Ilived in Kansas. This Prather, that so many thought at first looked likeyou, has also gone to New York. 

"He left only two days ago. Maybe you will run across him. I don't know, but it seems to me he's gone to get the powder for some kind of a blow-uphere. Jack, you know what would happen if we lost our water rights andyou know what I wrote you in my last letter. Leddy and Ropey Smith arehanging around all the time, and since the Doge went a whole lot offellows that don't belong to the honey-bee class have been turning up andputting up their tents out on the outskirts, like they expected somethingto happen. If things get worse and I've got something to go on and weneed you, I'm going to telegraph just as I said I would; because, Jack, though you're worth a lot of millions, someway we feel you're one of us. 

"Very truly yours for Little Rivers, "JAMES R. GALWAY. 

"P. S. --Belvy said to put in P. S. Because P. S. 's are always the mostimportant part of a letter. She wants to know if you won't writeanother story. "

"I will!" said Jack. "I will, immediately!"

He made it a long story. He took a deal of pains with it in the veryrelief of something to do when sleep was impossible and he must count themoments in wretched impatience until his interview with the one personwho could answer his questions. 

As he went down town in the morning the very freshness of the airinspired him with the hope that he should come out of his father's officewith every phantom reduced to a figment of imagination springing from theabnormality of his life-story; with a message that should allay Mary'sfears and soften her harshness toward him; with the certainty that thenext time he and his father sat together at dinner it would be in apermanent understanding, craved of affection. Mary might come to NewYork; the Doge might spend his declining years in leisurely patronage ofbookshops and galleries; and he would learn how to run the business, though his head split, as became a simple, normal son. 

These eddying thoughts on the surface of his mind, however, could notfree him of a consciousness of a deep, unsounded current that seemed tobe the irresistible, moving power of Mary's future, the store's, hisfathers, Jasper Ewold's and his own. With it he was going into a gorge, over a cataract, or out into pleasant valleys, he knew not which. He knewnothing except that there was no stopping the flood of the current whichhad its source in streams already flowing before he was born. When thelast question had been asked his future would be clear. Relief was ahead, and after relief would come the end of introspection and the beginning ofhis real career. 

But another question was waiting for him in the store. It was walking thestreets of his father's city in the freedom of a spectator who comes toobserve and not to buy. Crossing the first floor as he came to thecourt, Jack saw, with sudden distinctness among the many faces coming andgoing, a profile which, in its first association, developed on his visionas that of his own when he shaved in front of the ear in the morning. Hehad only a glimpse before it was turned away and its owner, a young manin a quiet gray suit, started up the stairs. 

Jack studied the young man's back half amusedly to see if this, too, werelike his own, and laughed at himself because he was sure that he wouldnot know his own back if it were preceding him in a promenade up theAvenue. In peculiar suspense he was hoping that the young man would pauseand look around, as his father always did and shoppers often did, in asurvey of the busy, moving picture of the whole floor. But the young manwent on to the top of the flight. There he proceeded along the railing ofthe court. His profile was again in view under a strong light, and Jackrealized that his first recognition of a resemblance was the recognitionof an indisputable fact. 

"Have I a double out West and another in New York?" he thought. "It givesa man a kind of secondhand feeling!"

Then he recalled Jim's letter saying that John Prather had gone to NewYork. Was this John Prather? He had no doubt that it was when the objectof his scrutiny, with full face in view, stopped and leaned over thebalcony just above the diamond counter. There was a mole patch on thecheek such as Jack remembered that the accounts of John Prather hadmentioned. 

"I am as much fussed as the giant was at the sight of yellow!"Jack mused. 

But for the mole patch the features were his own, as he knew them, though no one not given to more frequent personal councils with mirrorsthan Señor Don't Care of desert trails knows quite the lights and shadowsof his own countenance, which give it its character even more than doesits form. John Prather was regarding the jewelry display, where thediamonds were scintillating under the light from the milk glass roof, with a smile of amused contemplation. His expression was unpleasant toJack. It had a quality of satire and of covetousness as its owner leanedfarther over the rail and rubbed the palms of his hands together asgleefully as if the diamonds were about to fly into his pockets byenchantment. 

All the time Jack had stood motionless in fixed and amazed observation. He wondered that his stare had not drawn the other's attention. But JohnPrather seemed too preoccupied with the dazzle of wealth to besusceptible to any telepathic influence. 

"Great heavens! I am gaping at him as if he were climbing hand over handup the face of a sky-scraper!" Jack thought. It was time somethinghappened. Why should he get so wrought up over the fact that another manlooked like him? "I'll get acquainted!" he declared, shaking himself freeof his antipathy. "We are both from Little Rivers and that's a readyexcuse for introducing myself. "

As he started across the floor toward the stairs, Prather straightenedfrom his leaning posture. For an instant his glance seemed to rest onJack. Indeed, eye met eye for a flash; and then Prather moved away. Hisdecision to go might easily have been the electric result of Jack's owndecision to join him. Jack ran up the stairs. At the head of the flighthe saw, at half the distance across the floor, Prather's back entering anelevator on the down trip. He hurried forward, his desire to meet andspeak with the man whose influence Jim Galway and Mary feared nowoverwhelming. 

"Hello!" Jack sang out; and this to Prather's face after he had turnedaround in the elevator. 

In the second while the elevator man was swinging to the door, Jackand Prather were fairly looking at each other. Prather had seen thatJack wanted to speak to him, even if he had not heard the call. Hisanswer was a smile of mixed recognition and satire. He made agesture of appreciative understanding of the distinction in theirlikeness by touching the mole on his cheek with his finger, whichwas Jack's last glimpse of him before he was shot down into thelower regions of the store. 

"He did it neatly!" Jack gasped, with a sense of defeat and chagrin. "Andit is plain that he does not care to get acquainted. Perhaps he takes itfor granted that I am not friendly and foresaw that I would ask him a lotof questions about Little Rivers that he would not care to answer. " Atall events, the only way to accept the situation was lightly, his reasoninsisted. "Having heard about the likeness, possibly he came to the storeto have a look at me, and after seeing me felt that he had been libeled!"

But his feelings refused to follow his reason in an amused view. 

"I do not like John Prather!" he concluded, as he took the next elevatorto the top floor. "Yes, I liked Pete Leddy better at our first meeting. Ihad rather a man would swear at me than smile in that fashion. It ismuch more simple. "

The incident had had such a besetting and disagreeable effect that Jackwould have found it difficult to rid his mind of it if he had not had amore centering and pressing object in prospect in the citadel of thepush-buttons behind the glass marked "Private. "

John Wingfield, Sr. Looked up from his desk in covert watchfulness todetect his son's mood, and he was conscious of a quality of manner thatrecalled the returning exile's entry into the same room upon his arrivalfrom the West. 

"Well, Jack, " the father said, with marked cheeriness, "I hear you havebeen taking a holiday. It's all right, and you will find motoring beatspony riding. "

"In some ways, " Jack answered; and then he came a step nearer, his handresting on the edge of the desk, as he looked into his father's eyes withglowing candor. 

John Wingfield, Sr. 's eyes shifted to the pushbuttons and later to apaper on the desk, with which his fingers played gently. He realizedinstantly that something unusual was on Jack's mind. 

"Father, " Jack went on, "I want a long talk quite alone with you. When itis over I feel that we shall both know each other better; we can worktogether in a fuller understanding. "

"Yes, Jack, " answered the father, cautiously feeling his way with aswift upward glance, which fell again to the paper. "Well, what is itnow? Come on!"

"There are a lot of questions I want to ask--family questions. "

"Family questions?" The fingers paused in playing with the paper for aninstant and went on playing again. The soft hands were as white as thepaper. "Family questions, eh? Well, there isn't much to our family exceptyou and I and that old ancestor--and a long talk, you say?"

"Yes. I thought that probably this would be a good time; you could giveme an hour now. It might not take that long. "

Jack's voice was even and engaging and respectful. But it seemed to fillthe room with many echoing whispers. 

"I have a very busy day before me, " the father said, still withoutlooking up. He was talking to a little pad at one corner of the greenblotter which had a list of his appointments. "Your questions are not soimperative that they cannot wait?"

"Then shall it be at dinner?" Jack asked. 

"At dinner? No. I have an engagement for dinner. "

"Shall you be home early? Shall I wait up for you?" Jack persisted. 

"Yes, that's it! Say at nine. I'll make a point of it--in the library atnine!" John Wingfield, Sr. 's hand slipped away from the papers andpatted the back of Jack's hand. "And come on with your questions. I willanswer every one that I can. " He was looking up at Jack now, smilinglyand attractively in his frankness. "Every one that I can, from the firstJohn Wingfield right down to the present!"

But the hand that lay on Jack's was cold and its movement nervous andspasmodic. 

"Thank you, father. I knew you would. I haven't forgotten your wish thatI should bring all my doubts and questions to you, " said Jack, happily. And in an impulse which had the devoutness of a rising hope he took thatcold, soft hand in both of his and gave it a shake; and the feel of theson's grip, firm and warm, remained with John Wingfield, Sr. While hestared at the door through which Jack had passed out. When he had pulledhimself together he asked Mortimer to connect him with Dr. Bennington. 

"Doctor, I want a little talk with you to-night before nine, " he said. "Could you dine with me--not at the house--say at the club?Yes--excellent--and make it at seven. Yes. Good-by!"

XXXII

A CRISIS IN THE WINGFIELD LIBRARY

A library atmosphere was missing from the Wingfield library, with itsheavy panelling and rows of red and blue morocco backs. Rather thesuggestion was of a bastion of privacy, where a man of action might makehis plans or take counsel at leisure amid rich and mellow surroundings. Here, John Wingfield, Sr. Had gained points through post-prandialgeniality which he could never have won in the presence of the battery ofpush-buttons; here, his most successful conceptions had come to him;here, he had known the greatest moments of his life. He was right insaying that he loved his library; but he hardly loved it for its books. 

When he returned to the house shortly before nine from his session withDr. Bennington, it was with the knowledge that another great moment wasin prospect. He took a few turns up and down the room before he rang forthe butler to tell Jack that he had come in. Then he placed a chair nearthe desk, where its occupant would sit facing him. After he sat down hemoved the desk lamp, which was the only light in the room, so that itsrays fell on the back of the chair and left his own face in shadow--aprecaution which he had taken on many other occasions in adroitness ofstage management. He drew from the humidor drawer of his desk a box ofthe long cigars with blunt ends which need no encircling gilt band inpraise of their quality. 

As Jack entered, the father welcomed him with a warm, paternal smile. Andbe it remembered that John Wingfield, Sr. Could smile most pleasantly, and he knew the value of his smile. Jack answered the smile with one ofhis own, a little wan, a little subdued, yet enlivening under the glow ofhis father's evident happiness at seeing him. The father, who hadtransgressed the rules of longevity by taking a second cigar afterdinner, now pushed the box across the desk to his son. Jack said that hewould "roll one"; he did not care to smoke much. He produced a smallpackage of flake tobacco and a packet of rice paper and with a deftnessthat was like sleight of hand made a cigarette without spilling a singleflake. He had not always chosen the "makings" in place of private stockHavanas, but it seemed to suit his mood to-night. 

"That is one of the things you learned in the West, " the father observedaffably, to break the ice. 

"I can do them with one hand, " Jack answered. "But you are likely tohave an overflow--which is all right when you have the whole desert forthe litter. Besides, in a library it would have the effect of galleryplay, I fear. "

He was seated in a way that revealed all the supple lines of his figure. However relaxed his attitude before his father, it was always suggestiveof latent strength, appealing at once to paternal pride and paternaluncertainty as to what course the strength would take. His face under thelight of the lamp was boyish and singularly without trace of guile. 

The father struck a match and held it to light his son's cigarette;another habit of his which he had found flattering to men who werebrought into the library for conference. Jack took a puff slowly and, after a time, another puff, and then dropped the cigarette on the ashreceiver as much as to say that he had smoked enough. Something told JohnWingfield, Sr. That this was to be a long interview and in no wayhurried, as he saw the smile dying on the son's lips and misery cominginto the son's eyes. 

"These last two days have been pretty poignant for me, " Jack began, in asimple, outright fashion; "and only half an hour ago I got this. It washard to resist taking the first train West. " He drew a telegram from hispocket and handed it to his father. 

"We want you and though we don't suppose you can come, we simply had tolet you know. 

"JAMES R. GALWAY. "

"It is Greek to me, " said the father. "From your Little Riversfriends, I judge. "

"Yes. I suppose that we may as well begin with it, as it drove everythingelse out of my mind for the moment. "

John Wingfield, Sr. Swung around in his chair, with his face in theshadow. His attitude was that of a companionable listener who is preparedfor any kind of news. 

"As you will, Jack, " he said. "Everything that pertains to you is myinterest. Go ahead in your own way. "

"It concerns John Prather. I don't know that I have ever told you abouthim in my talks of Little Rivers. "

"John Prather?" The father reflectively sounded the name, the while hestudied the spiral of smoke rising from his cigar. "No, I don't think youhave mentioned him. "

It was Jack's purpose to take his father entirely into his confidence; toreveal his own mind so that there should be nothing of its perplexitieswhich his father did not understand. He might not choose a logicalsequence of thought or event, but in the end nothing should be leftuntold. Indeed, he had not studied how to begin his inquiries. That hehad left to take care of itself. His chief solicitude was to keep hismind open and free of bitterness whatever transpired, and it was evidentthat he was under a great strain. 

He told of the coming of John Prather to Little Rivers while he wasabsent; of the mention of the likeness by his fellow-ranchers; and of thefears entertained by Jim Galway and Mary. When he came to the scene inthe store that afternoon it was given in a transparent fulness of detail;while all his changing emotions, from his first glimpse of Prather'sprofile to the effort to speak with him and the ultimatum of Prather'ssatirical gesture, were reflected in his features. He was thestory-teller, putting his gift to an unpleasant task in illumination ofsober fact and not the uses of imagination; and his audience was hisfather's cheek and ear in the shadow. 

"Extraordinary!" John Wingfield, Sr. Exclaimed when Jack had finished, glancing around with a shrug. "Naturally, you were irritated. I like tothink that only two men have the Wingfield features--the features of theancestor--yes, only two: you and I!"

"It was more than irritation; it was something profound and disturbing, almost revolting!" Jack exclaimed, under the disagreeable spell of hisvivid recollection of the incident. "The resemblance to you was sostriking, father, especially in the profile!" Jack was leaning forward, the better to see his father's profile, dim in the half light. "Yes, recognizable instantly--the nose and the lines about the mouth! You havenever met anyone who has seen this man? You have never heard of him?" heasked, almost morbidly. 

John Wingfield, Sr. Broke into a laugh, which was deprecatory andmetallic. He looked fairly into Jack's eyes with a kind of inquiringamazement at the boy's overwrought intensity. 

"Why, no, Jack, " he said, reassuringly. "If I had I shouldn't haveforgotten it, you may be sure. And, well, Jack, there is no use of beingsensitive about it, though I understand your indignation--especiallyafter he flaunted the fact of the resemblance in such a manner andrefused to meet you. From what I have heard about that fight withLeddy--Dr. Bennington told me--I can appreciate why he did not care tomeet you. " He laughed, more genially this time, in the survey of hisson's broad shoulders. "I fear there is something of the old ancestor'sdevil in you when you get going!" he added. 

So his father had seen this, too--what Mary had seen--this thing born inhim with the coming of his strength!

"Yes, I suppose there is, " he admitted, ruefully. "Yes, I have reason toknow that there is. "

His face went moody. Any malice toward John Prather passed. He waspenitent for a feeling against a stranger that seemed akin to the dormantinstinct that had made him glory in holding a bead on Pete Leddy. 

"And I am glad of it!" said John Wingfield, Sr. , with a flash of strongeremotion than he had yet shown in the interview. 

"I am not. It makes me almost afraid of myself, " Jack answered. 

"Oh, I don't mean firing six-shooters--hardly! I mean backbone, " hehastened to add, almost ingratiatingly. "It is a thing to control, Jack, not to worry about. "

"Yes, to control!" said Jack, dismally. 

He was hearing Ignacio's cry of "The devil is out of Señor Don't Care!"and seeing for the thousandth time Mary's horrified face as he pressedPedro Nogales against the hedge. Now poise was all on the side of thefather, who glanced away from Jack at the glint of the library cases inthe semi-darkness in satisfaction. But only a moment did the son's absentmood last. He leaned forward quivering, free from his spell ofreflection, and his words came pelting like hail. He was at grip with thephantoms and nothing should loosen his hold till the truth was out. 

"Father, I could not fail to see the look on your face and the look onJasper Ewold's when you found him in the drawing-room!"

At the sudden reversal of his son's attitude, John Wingfield, Sr. Haddrawn back into the shadow, as, if in defensive instinct before the forcethat was beating in Jack's voice. 

"Yes, I was startled; yes, very startled! But, go on! Speak everythingthat you have in mind; for it is evident that you have much to say. Goon!" he repeated more calmly, and turned his face farther into theshadow, while he inclined his head toward Jack as if to hear better. Oneleg had drawn up under him and was pressing against the chair. 

Jack waited a moment to gather his thoughts. When he spoke hispassion was gone. 

"We have always been as strangers, father, " he began. "I have norecollection of you in childhood until that day you came as a stranger tothe house at Versailles. I was seven, then. My mother was away, as youwill recall. I remember that you did not kiss me or show any affection. You did not even say who you were. You looked me over, and I was veryfrail. I saw that I did not please you; and I did not like you. In mychildish perversity I would speak only French to you, which you did notunderstand. When my mother came home, do you remember her look? I do. Shewent white as chalk and trembled. I was frightened with the thought thatshe was going to die. It was a little while before she spoke and when shedid speak she was like stone. She asked you what you wanted, as if youwere an intruder. You said: 'I have been looking at the boy!' Yourexpression told me again that you were not pleased with me. Withoutanother word you departed. I can still hear your steps on the walk as youwent away; they were so very firm. "

"Yes, Jack, I can never forget. " The tone was that of a man racked. "Whatelse?" he asked. "Go on, Jack!"

"You know the life my mother and I led, study and play together. Andthat was the only time you saw me until I was fourteen. I was mortally inawe of you then and in awe of you the day I went West with your messageto get strong. But I got strong; yes, strong, father!"

"Yes, Jack, " said the father. "Yes, Jack, leave nothing unsaid--nothing!"

Now Jack swept back to the villa garden in Florence, the day of theDoge's call; and from there to the Doge's glance of recognition thatfirst night in Little Rivers; then to the scene in front of thebookstore, when the Doge hesitated about going to see the Velasquez. Hepictured the Doge's absorption over the mother's portrait; he repeatedMary's story on the previous evening. 

All the while the profile, so dimly outlined in the outer darkness beyondthe lamp's circle of light, to which he had been speaking, had notstirred. The father's cigar had gone out. It lay idly in his fingers, which rested on the arm of the chair, above a tiny pile of ashes on therug. But there was no other sign of emotion, except his half affirmativeinterjections, with a confessional's encouragement to empty the mind ofits every affliction. 

"Why were my mother and myself always in exile? What was this barrierbetween you and her? Why was it that I never saw you? Why this bitternessof Jasper Ewold against you? Why should that bitterness be turned againstme? I want to know, father, so that we can start afresh and right. I nolonger want to be in the dark, with its mystery, but in the light, whereI can grapple with the truth!"

There was no rancor, no crashing of sentences; only high tension in thefinality of an inquiry in which hope and fear rose together. 

"Yes, Jack!" exclaimed John Wingfield, Sr. , after a silence in which heseemed to be passing all that Jack had said in review. "I am glad youhave told me this; that you have come to the one to whom you should comein trouble. You have made it possible for me to speak of something that Inever found a way to speak about, myself. For, Jack, you truly have beena stranger to me and I to you, thanks to the chain of influences whichyou have mentioned. "

Very slowly John Wingfield, Sr. Had turned in his chair. Distress wasrising in his tone as he leaned toward Jack. His face under the rim oflight of the lamp had a new charm, which was not that of the indulgent orflattering or winning smile, or the masterful set of his chin on anobject. He seemed pallid and old, struggling against a phantom himself;almost pitiful, this man of strength, while his eyes looked into Jack'swith limpid candor. 

"Jack, I will tell you all I can, " he said. "I want to. It is duty. It isrelief. But first, will you tell me what your mother told you? What herreasons were? I have a right to know that, haven't I, in my effort tomake my side clear?" He spoke in direct, intimate appeal. 

Jack's lips were trembling and his whole nature was throbbing in anew-found sympathy. For the first time he saw his father as a man ofsensitive feeling, capable of deep suffering. And he was to have thetruth, all the truth, in kindness and affection. 

"After you had left the house at Versailles, " said Jack, "she took me inher arms and said that you were my father. 'Did you like him?' she asked;and I said no, realizing nothing but the childish impression of theinterview. At that she was wildly, almost hysterically, triumphant. I wasglad to have made her so happy. 'You are mine alone! You have only me!'she declared over and over again. 'And you must never ask me anyquestions, for that is best. ' She never mentioned you afterward; and inall my life, until I was fourteen, I was never away from her. "

Again the palm of John Wingfield, Sr. 's hand ran back and forth over hisknee and the foot that was against the chair leg beat a nervous tattoo;while he drew a longer breath than usual, which might have been either ofsurprise or relief. His face fell back behind the rim of the lamp's rays, but he did not turn it away as he had when Jack was talking. 

"You know only the Jasper Ewold who has been mellowed by time, " he began. "His scholarship was a bond of companionship for you in the isolation ofa small community. I know him as boy and young man. He was veryprecocious. At the age of eight, as I remember, he could read his Caesar. You will appreciate what that meant in a New England town--that he wassomewhat spoiled by admiration. And, naturally, his character and minewere very different, thanks to the difference in our situations; for theEwolds had a good deal of money in those days. I was the type of boy whowas ready to work at any kind of odd job in order to get dimes andquarters for my little bank. 

"Well, it is quite absurd to go back to that as the beginning of JasperEwold's feelings toward me; but one day young Wingfield felt that youngEwold was patronizing him. We had a turn at fisticuffs which resulted inmy favor. Jasper was a proud boy, and he never quite forgave me. In fact, he was not used to being crossed. Learning was easy for him; he wasgood-looking; he had an attractive manner, and it seemed only his rightthat all doors should open when he knocked. Soon after our battle he wentaway to school. Not until we were well past thirty did our paths crossagain. He was something of a painter, but he really had had no setpurpose in life except the pleasures of his intellectual diversions. Iwill not say that he was wild, but at least he had lived in the abundantfreedom of his opportunities. He fell in love at the same time that I didwith Alice Jamison. You have seen your mother's picture, but that givesyou little idea of her beauty in girlhood. "

"I have always thought her beautiful!" Jack exclaimed spontaneously. 

"Yes. I am glad. She always was beautiful to me; but I like best to thinkof her before she turned against me. I like to think of her as she was inthe days of our courtship. Fortune favored me instead of Jasper Ewold. Ican well understand the blow it was to him, that she should take thestorekeeper, the man without learning, the man without family, as peoplesupposed then, when he thought that she belonged entirely to his world. But his enmity thereafter I can only explain by his wounded pride; by amortal defeat for one used to having his way, for one who had never knowndiscipline. Your mother and I were very happy for a time. I thought thatshe loved me and had chosen me because I was a man of purpose, whileJasper Ewold was not. "

John Wingfield, Sr. Spoke deliberately, measuring his thought before heput it into words, as if he were trying to set himself apart as onefigure in a drama while he aimed to do exact justice to the others. 

"It was soon after you were born that your mother's attitude changed. Shewas, as you know, supersensitive, and whatever her grievances were shekept them to herself. My immersion in my affairs was such that I couldnot be as attentive to her as I ought to have been. Sometimes I thoughtthat the advertisement with our name in big letters in every morningpaper might be offensive to her; again, that she missed in me theeducation I had had to forfeit in youth, and that my affection couldhardly take its place. I know that Jasper Ewold saw her occasionally, andin his impulse I know that he said things about me that were untrue. Butthat I pass over. In his place I, too, might have been bitter. 

"The best explanation I can find of your mother's change toward me is onethat belongs in the domain of psychology and pathology. She suffered agreat deal at your birth and she never regained her former strength. Whenshe rose from her bed it was with a shadow over her mind. I saw that shewas unhappy and nervous in my presence. Indeed, I had at times to facethe awful sensation of feeling that I was actually repugnant to her. Shewas especially irritable if I kissed or fondled you. She dropped all herfriends; she never made calls; she refused to see callers. I consultedspecialists and all the satisfaction I had was that she was of apeculiarly high-strung nature and that in certain phases of melancholia, where there is no complete mental and physical breakdown, the patientturns on the one whom she would hold nearest and dearest if she werenormal. The child that had taken her strength became the virtual passionof her worship, which she would share with no one. 

"When she proposed to go to Europe for a rest, taking you with her, Iwelcomed the idea. I rejoiced in the hope that the doctors held out thatshe would come back well, and I ventured to believe in a happy future, with you as our common object of love and care. But she never returned, as you know; and she only wrote me once, a wild sort of letter about whata beautiful boy you were and that she had you and I had the store and Iwas never to send her any more remittances. 

"I made a number of trips to Europe. I could not go frequently, becausein those days, Jack, I was a heavy borrower of money in the expansion ofmy business, and only one who has built up a great business canunderstand how, in the earlier and more uncertain period of our bankingcredits, the absence of personal attention in any sudden crisis mightthrow you on the rocks. Naturally, when I went I wrote to Alice that Iwas coming; but I always found that she had gone and left no address forforwarding mail from the Crédit Lyonnais. Once when I went withoutwriting she eluded me, and the second time I found that she had a cottageat Versailles. That, as you know, was the only occasion when I ever sawyou or her until I came to bring you home after her sudden death. "

"Yes, " Jack whispered starkly. "That day I had left her as well asusual and came home to find her lying still and white on a couch, herbook fallen out of her hand onto the floor and--" the words choked inhis throat. 

"And the stranger, your father, who came for you seemed very hard andforbidding to you!"

"Yes, " Jack managed to say. 

"But, Jack, when my steps sounded so firm the day I left you atVersailles it was the firmness of force of will fighting to accept theinevitable. For I had seen your face. It was like mine, and yet I had togive you up! I had to give you up knowing that I might not see you again;knowing that this tragic, incomprehensible fatality had set you againstme; knowing that any further efforts to see you meant only pain for Aliceand for me. Whatever happiness she knew came from you, and that sheshould have. And remember, Jack, that out of all this tragedy I, too, hadmy point of view. I had my moments of reproach against fate; my momentsof bitterness and anger; my moments when I set all my mind with, volcanicenergy into my affairs in order to forget my misfortune. I had to buildfor the sake of building. Perhaps that hardened me. 

"When you came home I saw that you were mine in blood but not mine inheart. All your training had been foreign, all of estrangement from thebusiness and the ways of the home-country; which you could not help, Icould not help, nothing now could help. But, after all, I had beenbuilding for you; that was my new solace. I wanted you to be equal towhat was coming to you, and that change meant discipline. To be frankwith you, as you have been with me, you were sickly, hectic, dreamy; andwhen word came that you must go to the desert if your life were to besaved--well, Jack, I had to put affection aside and consider this blowfor what it was, and think not of kind words but of what was best for youand your future. I knew that my duty to you and your duty to yourself wasto see you become strong, and for your sake you must not return until youwere strong. 

"Now, as for the scene in the drawing-room the other day: I could notforget what Jasper Ewold had said of me. That was one thing. Another wasthat I had detected his influence over you; an influence against thepurpose and steadiness that I was trying to inculcate in you; andsuddenly coming upon him in my own house, in view of his enmity and theway in which he had spoken about me, I was naturally startled andindignant and withdrew to avoid a scene. That is all, Jack. I haveanswered your questions to the best of my knowledge. If others occur toyou I will try my best to answer them, too;" and the father seemed readyto submit every recess of his mind to the son's inquisition. 

"You have answered everything, " said Jack; "everything--fairly, considerately, generously. "

There was a flash of triumph in the father's eyes. Slowly he rose andstood with his finger-ends caressing the blotting-pad. Jack rose atthe same time, his movement automatic, instinctively in sympathy withhis father's. His head was bowed under stress of the emotion, incapable of translation into language, which transfixed him. It hadall been made clear, this thing that no one could help. His feelingtoward his mother could never change; but penetrating to the depths inwhich it had been held sacred was a new feeling. The pain that hadbrought him into the world had brought misery to the authors of hisbeing. There was no phantom except the breath of life in his nostrilswhich they had given him. 

Watchfully, respecting the son's silence, the father's lips tightened, his chin went out slightly and his brows drew together in a way thatindicated that he did not consider the battle over. At length, Jack'shead came up and his face had the strength of a youthful replica of theancestor's, radiant in gratitude, and in his eyes for the first time, inlooking into his father's, were trust and affection. There was no word, no other demonstration except the steady, liquid look that spoke thebirth of a great, understanding comradeship. The father fed his hungerfor possession, which had been irresistibly growing in him for the lasttwo months, on that look. He saw his son's strength as something that hadat last become malleable; and this was the moment when the metal was atwhite heat, ready for knowing turns with the pincers and knowing blows ofthe hammer. 

The message from Jim Galway was still on the table where the father hadlaid it after reading. Now he pressed his fingers on it so hard that thenails became a row of red spots. 

"And the telegram, Jack?" he asked. 

Jack stared at the yellow slip of paper as the symbol of problems thatreappeared with burning acuteness in his mind. It smiled at him in thesatire of John Prather triumphing in Little Rivers. It visualizedpictures of lean ranchers who had brought him flowers in the days of hisconvalescence; of children gathered around him on the steps of hisbungalow; of all the friendly faces brimming good-will into his own onthe day of his departure; of a patch of green in desert loneliness, witha summons to arms to defend its arteries of life. 

"They want me to help--I half promised!" he said. 

"Yes. And just how can you help?" asked his father, gently. 

"Why, that is not quite clear yet. But a stranger, they made me one ofthemselves. They say that they need me. And, father, that thrilled me. Itthrilled the idler to find that there was some place where he could be ofservice; that there was some one definite thing that others thought hecould do well!"

The father proceeded cautiously, reasonably, with his questions, as onewho seeks for light for its own sake. Jack's answers were luminouslyfrank. For there was always to be truth between them in their newfellowship, unfettered by hopes or vagaries. 

"You could help with your knowledge of law? With political influence?Help these men seasoned by experience in land disputes in that region?"

"No!"

"And would Jasper Ewold, whom I understand is the head and founder of thecommunity, want you to come? Has he asked you?" the father continued, drawing in the web of logic. 

"On the contrary, he would not want me. "

"And Miss Ewold? Would she want you?"

There Jack hesitated. When he spoke, however, it was to admit the factthat was stabbing him. 

"No, she would not. She has dismissed me. But--but I half promised, " headded, his features setting firmly as they had after Leddy had fired athim. "It seems like duty, unavoidable. "

The metal was cooling, losing its malleability, and the father proceededto thrust it back into the furnace. 

"Then, I take it that your value to Little Rivers is your cool handwith a gun, " he said, "and the summons is to uncertainties which maylead to something worse than a duel. You are asked to come because youcan fight. Do you want to go for that? To go to let the devil, as youcall it, out of you?"

Now the metal was soft with the heat of the shame of the moment when Jackhad called to Leddy, "I am going to kill you!" and of the moment when hesaw Pedro Nogales's limp, broken arm and ghastly face. 

"No, no!" Jack gasped. "I want no fight! I never want to draw a bead on aman again! I never want to have a revolver in my hand again!"

He was shuddering, half leaning against the desk for support. Hisfather waited in observant comprehension. Convulsively, Jackstraightened with desperation and all the impassioned pleading to Maryon the pass was in his eyes. 

"But the thing that I cannot help--the transcendent thing, not of logic, not of Little Rivers' difficulties--how am I to give that up?" he cried. 

"Miss Ewold, you mean?"

"Yes!"

"Jack, I know! I understand! Who should understand if not I?" The fatherdrew Jack's hand into his own, and the fluid force of his desire formastery was flowing out from his finger-ends into the son's fibres, whichwere receptively sensitive to the caress. "I know what it is when thewoman you love dismisses you! You have her to think of as well asyourself. Your own wish may not be lord. You may not win that which willnot be won"--how well he knew that!--"either by protest, by persistence, or by labor. You are dealing with the tender and intangible; withfeminine temperament, Jack. And, Jack, it is wise for you, isn't it, tobear in mind that your life has not been normal? With the switch fromdesert to city life homesickness has crept over you. From to-night thingswill not be so strange, will they? But if you wish a change, go toEurope--yes, go, though I cannot bear to think of losing you the verymoment that we have come to know each other; when the past is clear andamends are at hand. 

"And, Jack, if your mother were here with us and were herself, would shewant you to go back to take up a rifle instead of your work at my side? Ido not pretend to understand Jasper Ewold's or Mary Ewold's thoughts. Shehas preferred to make another generation's ill-feeling her own in a thingthat concerns her life alone. She has seen enough of you to know hermind. For, from all I hear, you have not been a faint-hearted lover. Isit fair to her to follow her back to the desert? Is it the courage ofself-denial, of control of impulse on your part? Would your mother wantyou to persist in a veritable conquest by force of your will, whosestrength you hardly realize, against Mary Ewold's sensibilities? And ifyou broke down her will, if you won, would there be happiness for you andfor her? Jack, wait! If she cares for you, if there is any germ of lovefor you in her, it will grow of itself. You cannot force it into blossom. Come, Jack, am I not right?"

Jack's hands lay cold and limp in his father's; so limp that it seemedonly a case of leading, now. Yet there was always the uncertain in theboy; the uncertain hovering under that face of ashes that the father wasso keenly watching; a face so clearly revealing the throes of a strugglethat sent cold little shivers into his father's warm grasp. Jack's eyeswere looking into the distance through a mist. He dropped the lids as ifhe wanted darkness in which to think. When he raised them it was to lookin his father's eyes firmly. There was a half sob, as if thissentimentalist, this Señor Don't Care, had wrung determination from aprecipice edge, even as Mary Ewold had. He gripped his father's handsstrongly and lifted them on a level with his breast. 

"You have been very fine, father! I want you to be patient and go onhelping me. The trail is a rough one, but straight, now. I--I'm toobrimming full to talk!" And blindly he left the library. 

When the door closed, John Wingfield, Sr. Seized the telegram, rolled itup with a glad, fierce energy and threw it into the waste-basket. Hishead went up; his eyes became points of sharp flame; his lips parted in asmile of relief and triumph and came together in a straight line beforehe sank down in his chair in a collapse of exhaustion. After a while hehad the decanter brought in; he gulped a glass of brandy, lighted anothercigar, and, swinging around, fell back at ease, his mind a blank exceptfor one glowing thought:

"He will not go! He will give up the girl! He is to be all mine!"

It is said that the best actors never go on the stage. They play realparts in private life, making their own lines as they watch the otherplayers. One of this company, surveying the glint of his bookcases, wassatisfied with the greatest effort of his life in his library. 

XXXIII

PRATHER SEES THE PORTRAIT

It did not occur to Jack to question a word of the narrative that hadreduced a dismal enigma to luminous, connected facts. With the swiftprocesses of reason and the promptness of decision of which he wascapable on occasion, he had made up his mind as to his future even as heascended the stairs to his room. The poignancy of his father's appeal hadstruck to the bed-rock of his affection and his conscience, revealingduty not as a thing that you set for yourself, but which circumstancesset for you. 

Never before had he realized how hopelessly he had been a dreamer. Firio, P. D. , Wrath of God, and Jag Ear became the fantastic memory of anotherincarnation. His devil should never again rejoice in having his finger ona trigger or send him off an easy traveller in search of gorgeoussunrises. His devil should be transformed into a backbone of unremittingapprenticeship in loving service for the father who had built for him inlove. Though his head split, he would master every detail of thebusiness. And when Jack stepped into the Rubicon he did not splash aroundor look back. He went right over to the new country on the other bank. 

But there were certain persons whom he must inform of the crossing. First, he wrote a telegram to Jim Galway: "Sorry, but overwhelming dutyhere will not permit. Luck and my prayers with you. " Then to Firio aletter, which did not come quite so easily: "You see by now that you aremistaken, Firio. I am not coming back. Make the most of the ranch--yourranch--that you can. " The brevity, he told himself, was in keeping withFirio's own style. Besides, anything more at length would have opened upan avenue of recollections which properly belonged to oblivion. 

And Mary? Yes, he would write to her, too. He would cut the last strandwith the West. That was best. That was the part of his new courage ofself-denial stripping itself of every trammeling association ofsentiment. Other men had given up the women of their choice; and he couldnever be the man of this woman's choice. Somehow, his father's talk hadmade him realize an inevitable outcome which had better be met andmastered in present fortitude, rather than after prolonged years offruitless hope centering two thousand miles away. He started a dozenletters to Mary, meaning each to be a fitting _envoi_ to theircomradeship and a song of good wishes. Each one he wrote in the haste ofhaving the task quickly over, only to throw away what he had written whenhe read it. The touch that he wanted would not come. He was simplyflashing out a few of a thousand disconnected thoughts that ran awayincoherently with his pen. 

But wasn't any letter, any communication of any kind, superfluous? Wasn'tit the folly of weak and stupid stubbornness? She had spoken her finalword in their relations at the hotel door. There was no Little Rivers;there was no Mary; there was nothing but the store. To enforce this fiathe had only to send the wire to Jim and post the letter to Firio. This hewould do himself. A stroll would give him fresh air. It was just what heneeded after all he had been through that evening; and he would see thestreets not with any memory of the old restlessness when he and hisfather were strangers, but kindly, as the symbol of the future. 

His room was on the second floor. As he left it, he heard the door-bellring, its electric titter very clear in the silence of the house. Nodoubt it meant a telegram for his father. At the turn of the stairs onthe first floor he saw the back of the butler before the open door. Evidently it was not a matter of a telegram, but of some late caller. Jack paused in the darkness of the landing, partly to avoid the bother ofhaving to meet anyone and partly arrested by the manner of the butler, who seemed to be startled and in doubt about admitting a stranger at thathour. Indistinctly, Jack could hear the caller's voice. The tone wasfamiliar in a peculiar quality, which he tried to associate with a voicethat he had heard frequently. The butler, apparently satisfied with thecaller's appearance, or, at least, with his own ability to take care of asingle intruder, stepped back, with a word to come in. Then, out of theobscurity of the vestibule, appeared the pale face of John Prather. Jackwithdrew farther into the shadows instinctively, as if he had seen aghost; as if, indeed, he were in fear of ghosts. 

"I will take your card to Mr. Wingfield, " said the butler. 

Prather made a perfunctory movement as if for a card-case, butapparently changed his mind under the prompting suggestion that it wassuperfluous. 

"My name is John Prather, " he announced. "Mr. Wingfield knows who I amand I am quite sure that he will see me. "

While the butler, after rapping cautiously, went into the library withthe message, John Prather stood half smiling to himself as he lookedaround the hall. The effect seemed to please him in a contemplativefashion, for he rubbed the palms of his hands together, as he had in hissurvey of the diamond counters. He was serenity itself as John Wingfield, Sr. Burst out of the library, his face hard-set. 

"I thought you were going this evening!" he exclaimed. "By what right doyou come here?"

He placed himself directly in front of Prather, thus hiding Prather'sfigure, but not his face, which Jack could see was not in the leastdisturbed by the other's temper. 

"Oh, no! The early morning train has the connections I want for Arizona, "he answered casually, as if he were far from being in any hurry. "I wastaking a walk, and happening to turn into Madison Avenue I found myselfin front of the house. It occurred to me what a lot I had heard aboutthat ancestor, and seeing a light in the library, and considering howlate it was, I thought I might have a glimpse of him withoutinconveniencing any other member of the family. Do you mind?"

He put the question with an inflection that was at once engaging andconfident. 

"Mind!" gasped John Wingfield, Sr. 

"I am sure you do not!" Prather returned. Now a certain deference and acertain pungency of satire ran together in his tone, the mixture beingnicely and pleasurably controlled. "Is it in there, in the drawing-room?"

"And then what else? Where do you mean to end? I thought that--"

"Nothing else, " Prather interrupted reassuringly. "Everything is settled, of course. This is sort of a farewell privilege. "

"Yes, in there!" snapped John Wingfield, Sr. "It's the picture on theother side of the mantel. I will wait here--and be quick, quick, I tellyou! I want you out of this house! I've done enough! I--"

"Thanks! It is very good-natured of you!"

John Prather passed leisurely into the drawing-room and John Wingfield, Sr. Stood guard by the door, his hand gripping the heavy portieres forsupport, while his gaze was steadily fixed at a point in the turn of thestairs just below where Jack was obscured in the shadow. His face wasdrawn and ashen against the deep red of the hangings, and torment andfear and defiance, now one and then the other, were in ascendency overthe features which Jack had always associated with composed andunchanging mastery until he had seen them illumined with affection onlyan hour before. And the father had said that he had never met or heard ofJohn Prather! The father had said so quietly, decidedly, withouthesitation! This one thought kept repeating itself to Jack's stunnedbrain as he leaned against the wall limp from a blow that admits of noaggressive return. 

"The ancestor certainly must have been a snappy member of society in histime! It has been delightful to have a look at him, " said John Prather, as he came out of the drawing-room. 

He paused as he spoke. He was still smiling. The mole on his cheek wastoward the stairway; and it seemed to heighten the satire of his smile. The faces of the young man and the old man were close together and theywere standing in much the same attitude, giving an effect of likeness inmore than physiognomy. That note of John Prather's voice that had soundedso familiar to Jack was a note in the father's voice when he wasparticularly suave. 

"This is the end--that is the understanding--the end?" demanded JohnWingfield, Sr. 

"Oh, quite!" John Prather answered easily, moving toward the door. Hedid not offer his hand, nor did John Wingfield, Sr. Offer to take it. But as he went out he said, his smile broadening: "I hope that Jackmakes a success with the store, though he never could run it as well asI could. Good-by!"

"Good-by!" gasped John Wingfield, Sr. 

He wheeled around distractedly and stood still, his head bowed, hisfingers working nervously before his hands parted in a shrugging, outspread gesture of relief; then, his head rising, his body stiffening, once more his arbitrary self, he started up the stairs with the firm yetelastic step with which he mounted the flights of the store. 

If Jack remained where he was they would meet. What purpose in questionsnow? The answer to all might be as false as to one. He was no more in amood to trust himself with a word to his father than he had been to trusthimself with a word to John Prather. He dropped back into the darknessof the dining-room and sank into a chair. When a bedroom door upstairshad closed softly he was sequestered in silence with his thoughts. 

His own father had lied to him! Lied blandly! Lied with eyes limpid withappeal! And the supreme commandment on which his mother had ever insistedwas truth. The least infraction of it she would not forgive; it was theonly thing for which she had ever punished him. He recalled the oneoccasion when she had seemed harsh and merciless, as she said:

"A lie fouls the mouth of the one who utters it, Jack. A lie may tortureand kill. It may ruin a life. It is the weapon of the coward--and neverbe a coward, Jack, never be afraid!"

At the New England preparatory school which he had attended after he camehome, a lie was the abomination on which the discipline of studentcomradeship laid a scourge. Out on the desert, where the trails runstraight and the battle of life is waged straight against thirst andfatigue and distance, men spoke straight. 

And nothing had been explained, after all! The phantom was back, definite of form and smiling in irony. For it had a face, now, the faceof John Prather! How was he connected with the story of the mother? thefather? the Doge?

Then, like a shaft of light across memory, came the recollection of athing that had been so negligible to Jack at the time. It was Dr. Bennington's first question in Jack's living-room; a question socarelessly put and so dissociated from the object of his visit! Jackremembered Dr. Bennington's curious glance through his eyebrows as heasked him if he had met John Prather. And Dr. Bennington had brought Jackinto the world! He knew the family history! The Jack that now rose fromthe chair was a Jack of action, driven by the scourge of John Prather'ssmile into obsession with the one idea which was crying: "I will know! Iwill know!"

Downstairs in the hall he learned over the telephone that Dr. Benningtonhad just gone out on a call. It would be possible to see him yetto-night! An hour later, as the doctor entered his reception-room he wasstartled by a pacing figure in the throes of impatience, who turned onhim without formality in an outburst:

"Dr. Bennington, you asked me in Little Rivers if I had ever met JohnPrather. I have met him! Who is he? What is he to me?"

The doctor's suavity was thrown off its balance, but he did not losehis presence of mind. He was too old a hand at his profession, toocapable, for that. 

"I refuse to answer!" he said quickly and decisively. 

"Then you do know!" Jack took a step toward the doctor. His weight was onthe ball of his foot; his eyes had the fire of a command that was not tobe resisted. 

"Heavens! How like the ancestor!" the doctor exclaimed involuntarily. 

"Then you do know! Who is he? What is he to me?"

It seemed as if the ceiling were about to crack. The doctor looked awayto avoid the bore of Jack's unrelenting scrutiny. He took a turn up anddown, rapidly, nervously, his fingers pressed in against the palms andthe muscles of his forearms moving in the way of one who is trying tohold himself in control by an outward expression of force against inwardrebellion. 

"I dined with your father to-night!" he exclaimed. "I counseled him totell you the truth! I said that if he did not want to tell it for its ownsake, as policy it was the only thing to you! I--I--" he stopped, facingJack with a sort of grisly defiance. "Jack, a doctor is a confessor ofmen! He keeps their secrets! Good-night!" And he strode through theoffice door, which he closed behind him sharply, in reminder that theinterview was at an end. 

As Jack went down the steps into the night, the face of John Prather, with a satirical turn to the lips, was preceding him. Now he walked madlyup and down and back and forth across town to the river fronts, withpanting energy of stride, as he fastened the leash of will on quiveringnerves. When dawn came it was the dawn of the desert calling to a brainthat had fought its way to a lucid purpose. It started him to the storein the fervor of a grateful mission, while a familiar greeting keptrepeating itself in his ears on the way:

"You won't forget, Jack, about giving me a chance to come along if youever go out West again, will you?"

The question was one in answer to a promise; a reminder from certainemployees into whom he had fused his own spirit of enthusiasm about drywastes yielding abundance. 

"But you must work very hard, " he had told them. "Not until you havecallouses on your hands can you succeed or really know how to enjoy adesert sunrise or sunset. After that, you will be able to stand erect andlook destiny in the face. "

"No February slush!" Burleigh, the fitter, had said. "No depending onone man to hold your job!"

"Your own boss! You own some land and you just naturally get what youearn!" according to Joe Mathewson. 

"And from what I can make out, " observed one of the automobile vandrivers whom Jack had accompanied on the suburban rounds, "it requiresabout as much brains as running an automobile to be what you'd call afirst-class, a number one desert Rube, Jack!"

"Yes, " Jack told him. "The process that makes the earth fruitful is notless complicated than a motor, simply because it is one of the earliestinventions. You mix in nature's carbureter light and moisture with thechemical elements of the soil. "

"I'm on!" the chauffeur rejoined. "If a man works with a plow instead ofa screwdriver, it doesn't follow that his mind is as vacant as a cow thatstands stockstill in the middle of the road to show you that you can'tfool her into thinking that radiators are good to eat. "

In explaining the labor and pains of orange-growing, which ended onlywith the careful picking and packing, Jack would talk as earnestly as hisfather would about the tedious detail which went into the purchase andsale of the articles in any department of the store. He might not be ableto choose the best expert for the ribbon counter, but he had a certainconfidence that he could tell the man or the woman who would make good inLittle Rivers. No manager was more thorough in his observation of clerksfor promotion than Jack in observing would-be ranchers. He had given hispromise to one after another of a test list of disciples; and at times hehad been surprised to find how serious both he and the disciples wereover a matter that existed entirely on the hypothesis that he was notgoing to stay permanently in New York. 

This morning he was at the store for the last time, arriving even beforethe delivery division, to circulate the news that he was returning toLittle Rivers. Trouble was brewing out there, he explained, but theycould depend on him. He would make a place for them and send word when hewas ready; and all whom he had marked as faithful were eager to go. Thushe had builded unwittingly for another future of responsibilities when hehad paused in the midst of the store's responsibilities to tell storiesof how a desert ranch is run. 

But one disciple did not even want to wait on the message. It was PeterMortimer, whom Jack caught on his way to the elevator at eight, his usualhour, to make sure of having the letters opened and systematicallyarranged when his employer should appear. 

"So you are going, Jack! And--and, Jack, you know?" asked Petersignificantly. 

"Yes, Peter. And I see that you know. "

"I do, but my word is given not to tell. "

Through that night's march Jack had guessed enough. He had guessed hisfill of chill misery, which now took the place of the hunger of inquiry. The full truth was speeding out to the desert. It was with John Prather. 

"Then I will not press you, Peter, " he said. "But, Peter, just onequestion, if you care to answer; was it--was it this thing that drove mymother into exile?"

"Yes, Jack. "

Then a moment's silence, with Peter's eyes full of sympathy and Jack'sdull with pain. 

"And, Jack, " Peter went on, "well, I've been so long at it that suddenly, now you're going, I feel choked up, as if I were about to overflow withanarchy. Jack, I'm going to give notice that I will retire as soon asthere is somebody to take my place. I want to rest and not have to keeptrying to remember if I have forgotten anything. I've saved up a littlemoney and whatever happens out there, why, there'll be some place I canbuy where I can grow roses and salads, as you say, if nothing moreprofitable, won't there?"

"Yes, Peter. I know other fertile valleys besides that of Little Rivers, though none that is its equal. I shall have a garden in one of them andyou shall have a garden next to mine. "

"Then I feel fixed comfortable for life!" said Peter, with a perfectlywonderful smile enlivening the wrinkles of his old face, which made Jackthink once more that life was worth living. 

Later in the morning, after he had bought tickets for Little Rivers, Jackreturned to the house. When he stood devoutly before the portrait, whose"I give! I give!" he now understood in new depths, he thought:

"I know that you would not want to remain here another hour. You wouldwant to go with me. "

And before the portrait on the other side of the mantel he thought, challengingly and affectionately:

"And you? You were an old devil, no doubt, but you would not lie! No, you would not lie to the Admiralty or to Elizabeth even to save yourhead! Yes, you would want to go with me, too!"

Tenderly he assisted the butler to pack the portraits, which were put ina cab. When Jack departed in their company, this note lay on the desk inthe library, awaiting John Wingfield, Sr. 's return that evening:

"Father:

"The wire to Jim Galway which I enclose tells its own story. It waswritten after our talk. When I was going out to send it I saw JohnPrather and you in the hall. You said that you knew nothing of him. Ioverheard what passed between you and him. So I am going back to LittleRivers. The only hope for me now is out there. 

"I am taking the portrait of my mother, because it is mine. I am takingthe portrait of the ancestor, because I cannot help it any more than hecould help taking a Spanish galleon. That is all I ask or ever couldaccept in the way of an inheritance. 

"Jack. "

XXXIV

"JOHN WINGFIELD, YOU--"

John Wingfield, Sr. Had often made the boast that he never worried;that he never took his business to bed with him. When his head touchedthe pillow there was oblivion until he awoke refreshed to greet theproblems left over from yesterday. Such a mind must be a reliablyco-ordinated piece of machinery, with a pendulum in place of a heart. Itis overawing to average mortals who have not the temerity to say"Nonsense!" to great egos. Yet the best adjusted clocks may have a lapsein a powerful magnetic storm, and in an earthquake they might even betipped off the shelf, with their metal parts rendered quite as helplessby the fall as those of a human organism subject to the constitutionalweaknesses of the flesh. 

It was also John Wingfield, Sr. 's boast to himself that he had never beenbeaten, which average mortals with the temerity to say "Nonsense!"--thatmost equilibratory of words--might have diagnosed as a bad case ofself-esteem finding a way to forget the resented incidental reverses ofsuccess. Yet, even average mortals noted when John Wingfield, Sr. Arrived late at the store the morning after Jack's departure for the Westthat he had not slept well. His haggardness suggested that for once thepushbutton to the switch of oblivion had failed him. The smile ofsatisfied power was lacking. In the words of the elevator boy, impersonal observer and swinger of doors, "I never seen the old man likethat before!"

But the upward flight through the streets of his city, if it did notbring back the smile, brought back the old pride of ownership anddomination. He still had a kingdom; he was still king. Resentment roseagainst the cause of the miserable twelve hours which had thrown themachinery of his being out of order. He passed the word to himself thathe should sleep to-night and that from this moment, henceforth thingswould be the same as they had been before Jack came home. Yes, there wasjust one reality for him. It was enthroned in his office. This morningwas to be like any other business morning; like thousands of mornings tocome in the many years of activity that stretched ahead of him. 

"A little late, " he said, explaining his tardiness to his secretary; asuperfluity of words in which he would not ordinarily have indulged. "Ihad some things to attend to on the outside. "

With customary quiet attentiveness, Mortimer went through the mail withhis employer, who was frequently reassuring himself that his mind was asclear, his answers as sure, and his interest as concentrated as usual. This task finished, Mortimer, with his bundle of letters and notes inhand, instead of going out of the room when he had passed around thedesk, turned and faced the man whom he had served for thirty years. 

"Mr. Wingfield--"

"Well, Peter?"

John Wingfield, Sr. Looked up sharply, struck by Mortimer's tone, whichseemed to come from another man. In Mortimer's eye was a placid, confident light and his stoop was less marked. 

"Mr. Wingfield, I am getting on in years, now, " he said, "and I haveconcluded to retire as soon as you have someone for my place; the sooner, sir, the more agreeable to me. "

"What! What put this idea into your head?" John Wingfield, Sr. Snapped. Often of late he had thought that it was time he got a younger man inPeter's place. But he did not like the initiative to come from Peter; noton this particular morning. 

"Why, just the notion that I should like to rest. Yes, rest and play alittle, and grow roses and salads, " said the old secretary, respectfully. 

"Roses and salads! What in--where are you going to grow them?"

There was something so serene about Peter that his highly imperious, poised employer found it impertinent, not to say maddening. Peter had alook of the freedom of desert distances in his eyes already. A lieutenantwas actually radiating happiness in that neutral-toned sanctum of power, particularly this morning. 

"I am going out to Little Rivers, or to some place that Jack findsfor me, where I am to have a garden and work--or maybe I better callit potter around--out of doors in January and February, just like itwas June. "

Peter spoke very genially, as if he were trying to win a disciple on hisown account. 

"With Jack! Oh!" gasped John Wingfield, Sr. He struck his closed fistinto the palm of his hand in his favorite gesture of anger, theantithesis of the crisp rubbing of the palms, which he so rarely used oflate years. Rage was contrary to the rules of longevity, exciting theheart and exerting pressure on the artery walls. 

"Yes, sir, " answered Peter, pleasantly. 

"Well--yes--well, Jack has decided to go back!" Then there rose stronglyin John Wingfield, Sr. 's mind a suspicion that had been faintly signaledto his keen observation of everything that went on in the store. "Are anyother employees going?" he demanded. 

"Yes, sir, I think there are; not immediately, but as soon as he finds aplace for them. "

"How many?"

"I don't think it is any secret. About fifty, sir. "

"Name some of them!"

"Joe Mathewson, that big fellow who drives a warehouse truck, andBurleigh;" and Peter went on with those of the test proof listwhom he knew. 

Every one of them had high standing. Every one represented a value. Whileat first John Wingfield, Sr. Had decided savagely that Mortimer shouldremain at his pleasure, now his sense of outraged egoism took an oppositeturn. He could get on without Mortimer; he could get on if every employeein the store walked out. There were more where they came from in a cityof five millions population; and no one in the world knew so well as hehow to train them. 

"Very good, Peter!" he said rigidly, as if he were making a declarationof war. "Fix up your papers and leave as soon as you please. I will haveone of the clerks take your place. "

"Thank you. That is very kind, Mr. Wingfield!" Mortimer returned, sopolitely, even exultantly, that his aspect seemed treasonable. 

John Wingfield, Sr. Tried to concentrate his attention on some long andimportant letters that had been left on his desk for furtherconsideration; but his mind refused to stick to the lines of typewriting. 

"This one is a little complicated, " he thought, "I will lay it aside. "

He tried the second and the third letters, with no better results. Atanned face and a pair of broad shoulders kept appearing between him andthe paper. Again he was thinking of Jack, as he had all night, to theexclusion of everything else. Unquestionably, this son had a lot ofmagnetic force in him; he had command of men. Why, he had won fifty ofthe best employees out of sheer sentiment to follow him out to thedesert, when they had no idea what they were in for!

His gaze fell and rested for some time on the bunch of roses on his desk. Every morning there had been a fresh bunch, in keeping with the customthat Jack had established. The father had become so used to theirpresence that he was unconscious of it. For all the pleasure he got outof them, they might as well have been in the cornucopia vase in thelimousine. His hand went out spasmodically toward the roses, as if hewould crush them; crush this symbol of the thing drawn from the motherthat had invaded the calm autocracy of his existence. The velvetyrichness of the petals leaning toward him above the drooping grace oftheir stems made him pause in realization of the absurdity of his anger. A feeling to which he had been a stranger swept over him. It was like abreaking instinct of dependableness; and then he called up Dr. Bennington. 

"Well, he has gone!" he told the doctor, desperately. 

"You did not tell him the truth!" came the answer; and he noted that thedoctor's voice was without its usual suavity. It was as matter-of-fact tothe man of millions as if it had been advising an operation in adispensary case. 

"No, not exactly, " John Wingfield, Sr. Confessed. 

"I told you what his nature was; how it had drawn on the temperament ofhis mother. I told you that with candor, with a decently human humilityappealing to his affections, everything was possible. And remember, he isstrong, stronger than you, John Wingfield! There's a process of fate inhim! John Wingfield, you--" The sentence ended abruptly, as if the doctorhad dropped the receiver on the hooks with a crash. 

Phantoms were closing in around John Wingfield, Sr. .. . His memoryranged back over the days of ardent youth, in the full tide of growingsuccess, when to want a thing, human or material, meant to have it. .. . And in his time he had told a good many lies. The right lie, big anddaring, at the right moment had won more than one victory. With JohnPrather out of the way, he had decided on an outright falsehood to hisson. Why had he not compromised with Dr. Bennington's advice and triedpart falsehood and part contrition? But no matter, no matter. He wouldgo on; he was made of steel. 

Again the tanned face and broad shoulders stood between him and thepage. Jack was strong; yes, strong; and he was worth having. All the olddesire of possession reappeared, in company with his hatred of defeat. He was thinking of the bare spot on the wall in the drawing-room in placeof the Velasquez. There would be an end of his saying: "The boy is thespit of the ancestor and just as good a fighter, too; only his abilitiesare turned into other channels more in keeping with the spirit of theage!" An end of: "Fine son you have there!" from men at the club who hadgiven him only a passing nod in the old days. For he was not displeasedthat the boy was liked, where he himself was not. The men whom he admiredwere those who had faced him with "No!" across the library desk; who hadgot the better of him, even if he did not admit it to himself. And thestrength of his son, baffling to his cosmos, had won his admiration. No, he would not lose Jack's strength without an effort; he wanted it for hisown. Perhaps something else, too, there in the loneliness of the officein the face of that bunch of roses was pulling him: the thrill that hehad felt when he saw the moisture in Jack's eyes and felt the warmth ofhis grasp before Jack left the library. 

And Jack and John Prather were speeding West to the same destination!They would meet! What then? There was no use of trying to work in anoffice on Broadway when the forces which he had brought into being overtwenty years ago were in danger of being unloosed out on the desert, withJack riding free and the fingers of the ancestor-devil on the reins. JohnWingfield, Sr. Called in the general manager. 

"You are in charge until I return, " he said; and a few hours later he wasin a private car, bound for Little Rivers. 

PART III

HE FINDS HIS PLACE IN LIFE

XXXV

BACK TO LITTLE RIVERS

As with the gentle touch of a familiar hand, the ozone of high altitudesgradually and sweetly awakened Jack. The engine was puffing on anupgrade; the car creaked and leaned in taking a curve. Raising the shadeof his berth he looked out on spectral ranges that seemed marching andtumbling through dim distances. With pillows doubled under his head helay back, filling sight and mind with the indistinctness and spaciousmystery of the desert at night; recalling his thoughts with his lastview of it over two months ago in the morning hours after leaving ElPaso and seeing his future with it now, where then he had seen hisfuture with the store. 

"Think of old Burleigh raising oranges! I am sure that the trees will bewell trimmed, " he whispered. "Think of Mamie Devore in the thick of thegreat jelly competition, while the weight of Joe Mathewson's shouldersstarts a spade into the soil as if it were going right to the centre ofthe earth. Why, Joe is likely to get us into international difficultiesby poking the ribs of a Chinese ancestor! Yes--if we don't lose ourLittle Rivers; and we must not lose it!"

The silvery face of the moon grew fainter with the coming of a ruddierlight; the shadows of the mountains were being etched definitely on theplateaus that stretched out like vast floors under the developing glowof sunrise; and the full splendor of day had come, with its majesticspread of vision. 

"When Joe sees that he will feel so strong he will want to get out andcarry the Pullman, " Jack thought. "But Mamie will not let him for fearthat he will overdo!"

How slow the train seemed to travel! It was a snail compared to Jack'seagerness to arrive. He was inclined to think that P. D. , Wrath of God, and Jag Ear were faster than through expresses. He kept inquiring of theconductor if they were on time, and the conductor kept repeating thatthey were. How near that flash of steel at a bend around a tongue ofchaotic rock, stretching out into the desert sea, with its command to manto tunnel or accept a winding path for his iron horse! How long in comingto it in that rare air, with its deceit of distances! Landmark afterlandmark of peak or bold ridge took the angle of some recollected view ofhis five years' wanderings. It was already noon when he saw Galeria fromthe far end of the long basin that he had crossed, with the V as thecompass of his bearings, on the ride that brought him to the top to meetMary and Pete Leddy. 

Then the V was lost while the train wound around the range that formedone side of the basin's rim. The blaze of midday had passed before itentered the reaches of the best valley yet in the judgment of aconnoisseur in valleys; and under the Eternal Painter's canopy a spot ofgreen quivered in the heat-rays of the horizon. His Majesty was in adreamy mood. He was playing in delicate variations, tranquil andenchanting, of effects in gold and silver, now gossamery thin, nowthick and rich. 

"What is this thing crawling along on two silken threads and so afraid ofthe hills?" he was asking, sleepily. "Eh? No! Bring the easel to me, ifyou want a painting. I am not going to rise from my easy couch. There!Fix that cushion so! I am a leisurely, lordly aristocrat. Palette? No, Iwill just shake my soft beard of fine mist back and forth across the sky, a spectrum for the sunrays. So! so! I see that this worm is a railroadtrain. Let it curl up in the shadow of a gorge and take a nap. I willwake it up by and by when I seize my brush and start a riot in theheavens that will make its rows of window-glass eyes stare. "

"I am on this train and in a hurry!" Jack objected. 

"Do I hear the faint echo of a human ego down there on the earth?"demanded the Eternal Painter. "Who are you? One of the art critics?"

"One of Your Majesty's loving subjects, who has been away in a foreignkingdom and returns to your allegiance, " Jack answered. 

"So be it. I shall know if what you say is true when I gaze into youreyes at sunset. "

"I am bringing you a Velasquez!" Jack added. 

"Good! Put him where he can have a view out of the window of his firstteacher at work in the studio of the universe. "

The train crept on toward the hour of the Eternal Painter's riot andtoward Little Rivers, while the patch of green was softly, impalpablygrowing, growing, until the crisscross breaks of the streets developedand Jack could identify the Doge's and other bungalows. He was on theplatform of the car before the brakes ground on the wheels, leaning outto see a crowd at the station, which a minute later became a prospect offamiliar, kindly, beaming faces. There was a roar of "Hello, Jack!" inthe heavy voices of men and the treble of children. Then he did not seethe faces at all for a second; he saw only mist. 

"Not tanned, Jack, but you'll brown up soon!"

"Gosh! But we've been lonesome without you!"

"Cure any case of sore eyes on record!"

Jack was too full of the glory of this unaffected welcome in answer tohis telegram that he was coming to find words at first; but as he fairlydropped off the steps into the arms of Jim Galway and Dr. Patterson heshouted in a shaking voice:

"Hello, everybody! Hello, Little Rivers!"

He noted, while all were trying to grasp his hands at once, that the menhad their six-shooters. A half-dozen were struggling to get his suitcase. Not one of his friends was missing except the Doge and Mary. 

"Let the patient have a little air!" protested Dr. Patterson, as somestarted in to shake hands a second time. 

"Fellow-citizens, if there's anything in the direct primary I feel sureof the nomination!" said Jack drily. 

"You're already elected!" shouted Bob Worther. 

Around at the other side of the station Jack found Firio waiting his turnin patient isolation, with P. D. , Wrath of God, and Jag Ear. 

"_Sí! sí_!" called Firio triumphantly to all the sceptics who had toldhim that Jack would not return. 

Jack took the little Indian by the shoulders and rocked him back andforth in delight, while Firio's eyes were burning coals of jubilation. 

"You knew!" Jack exclaimed. "You were right! I have come back!"

"_Sí, sí_! I know!" repeated Firio. 

"No stopping him from bringing the whole cavalcade to the station, either, " said Jim Galway. "And he wouldn't join the rest of us out infront of the station. He was going to be his own reception committee andhold an overflow meeting all by himself!"

There was no disguising the fact that the equine trio of veteransremembered Jack. With P. D. And Jag Ear the demonstration wasunrestrained; but however exultant Wrath of God might be in secret, hewas of no mind to compromise his reputation for lugubriousness by anypublic display of emotional weakness. 

"Wrath of God, I believe you were a cross-eyed Cromwellian soldier inyour previous incarnation!" said Jack; "and as it is hard for a horse tobe crosseyed, you could not retain the characteristic. Think of that!Wouldn't a cross-eyed Cromwellian soldier strike fear to the heart of anyloyalist? And Jag Ear, you're getting fat!"

"I keep his hoofs hard. When he fat he eat less on trail!" explainedFirio, becoming almost voluble. "All ready for trail!" he hinted. 

"Not now, Firio, " said Jack. "And, Firio, there's a package at thestation, a big, flat case. It came by express on the same train withme--the most precious package in the world. See that it is taken tothe house. "

"Sí! You ride?" asked Firio, offering P. D. 's reins. 

"No, we'll all walk. "

The procession had started toward the town when Jack felt something softpoking him in the small of the back and looked around to find that thecause was P. D. 's muzzle. Wrath of God and Jag Ear might go with Firio, but P. D. Proposed to follow Jack. 

"And after I have ridden you thousands of miles and you've heard all mysongs over and over! Well, well, P. D. , you are a subtle flatterer! Comealong!" Then he turned to Jim Galway: "Has John Prather arrived?"

"Yes, last night. "

"He is here now?" Jack put in quickly. 

"No; he pulled out at dawn on his way to Agua Fria. "

"Oh!" Jack was plainly disappointed. "He has the grant for thewater rights?"

"Yes, " said Jim, "though he hasn't made the fact public. He doeseverything in his smooth, quiet fashion, with a long head, and I supposehe hasn't things just right yet to spring his surprise. But there is nodisputing the fact--he has us!"

One man henceforth was in control of the water. His power over thedesert community would be equivalent to control of the rains in ahumid locality. 

"You see, " Jim continued, "old man Lefferts' partners had really neversold out to him; so his transfer to the Doge wasn't legal. He turned hispapers over to Prather, giving Prather full power to act for him insecuring the partners' surrender of their claims and straighten outeverything with the Territory and get a bonafide concession. That is as Iunderstand it, for the whole business has been done in an underhand way. Prather represented to the Doge that he was acting entirely in theinterests of the community and his only charge would be the costs. TheDoge quite believed in Prather's single-mindedness and public spirit. Well, with the use of money and all the influences he could command, including the kind that Pete Leddy exercises, he got the concession andin his name. It was very smart work. I suppose it was due to the craftyway he could direct the Doge to do his wishes that the Doge happened tobe off the scene at the critical stage of the negotiations. When he wentto New York all that remained was for him to obtain the capital for hisscheme. Lefferts and his partners had the underlying rights and the Dogethe later rights, thanks to his improvements, and Prather has them both. Well, Leddy and his crowd have been taking up plots right and left;that's their share in the exploitation. They're here, waiting for theannouncement to be made and--well, the water users' association is stillin charge; but it won't be when Prather says the word. "

"And you have no plans?" Jack asked. 

"None. "

"And the Doge?"

"None. What can the old man do? Though nobody exactly blames him, a goodmany aren't of a mind to consult him at all. The crisis has passed beyondhim. Three or four men, good men, too, were inclined to have it out withJohn Prather; but that would have precipitated a general fight withLeddy's gang. The conservatives got the hot-heads to wait till you came. You see, the trouble with every suggestion is that pretty much everybodyis against it except the fellow who made it. The more we have talked, the more we have drifted back to you. It's a case of all we've got in theworld and standing together, and we are ready to get behind you and takeorders, Jack. "

"Yes, ready to fight at the drop of the hat, seh, or to sit still on ourdoorsteps with our tongues in our cheeks and doing the wives' mending, asyou say!" declared Bob Worther. "It's right up to you!"

"You are all of the same opinion?" asked Jack. 

They were, with one voice, which was not vociferous. For theirs was thatsignificantly quiet mood of an American crowd when easy-going good natureturns to steel. Their partisanship in pioneerdom had not been withsix-shooters, but with the ethics of the Doge; and such men when arouseddo not precede action with threats. 

"All right!" said Jack. 

There was a rustle and an exchange of satisfied glances and a chorus ofapproval like an indrawing of breath. 

"First, I will see the Doge, " Jack added; "and then I shall go tothe house. "

Galway, Dr. Patterson, Worther, and three or four others went on with himtoward the Ewold bungalow. They were halted on the way by Pete Leddy, Ropey Smith, and a dozen followers, who appeared from a side street andstopped across Jack's path, every one of them with a certain slouchingaggressiveness and staring hard at him. Pete and Ropey still kept faithwith their pledge to Jack in the _arroyo_. They were without guns, buttheir companions were armed in defiance of the local ordinance which hadbeen established for Jack's protection. 

"Howdy do, Leddy?" said Jack, as amiably as if there had never beenanything but the pleasantest of relations between them. 

"Getting polite, eh! Where's your pretty whistle?" Leddy answered. 

"I put it in storage in New York, " Jack said laughing; then, with asudden change to seriousness: "Leddy, is it true that you and JohnPrather have got the water rights to this town?"

"None of your d----d business!" Leddy rapped out. "The only business I'vegot with you has been waiting for some time, and you can have it your wayout in the _arroyo_ where we had it before, right now!"

"As I said, Pete, I put the whistle in storage and I have alreadyapologized for the way I used it, " returned Jack. "I can't accommodateyou in the _arroyo_ again. I have other things to attend to. "

"Then the first time you get outside the limits of this town you willhave to play my way--a man's way!"

"I hope not, Pete!"

"Naturally you hope so, for you know I will get you, you--"

"Careful!" Jack interrupted. "You'd better leave that out until we areboth armed. Or, if you will not, why, we both have weapons that naturegave us. Do you prefer that way?" and Jack's weight had shifted to theball of his foot. 

Plainly this was not to Pete's taste. 

"I don't want to bruise you. I mean to make a clean hole through you!"he answered. 

"That is both courteous and merciful; and you are very insistent, Leddy, "Jack returned, and walked on. 

"Just as sweet as honey, just as cool as ice, and just as sunny asJune!" whispered Bob Worther to the man next him. 

Again Jack was before the opening in the Ewold hedge, with its glimpseof the spacious living-room. The big ivory paper-cutter lay in itsaccustomed place on the broad top of the Florentine table. In line withit on the wall was a photograph of Abbey's mural in the Pennsylvaniacapitol and through the open window a photograph of a Puvis de Chavanneswas visible. Evidently the Doge had already hung some of thereproductions of masterpieces which he had brought from New York. But noone was on the porch or in the living-room; the house was silent. AsJack started across the cement bridge he was halted by a laugh from hiscompanions. He found that P. D. Was taking no risks of losing his masteragain; he was going right on into the Doge's, too. Jim took charge ofhim, receiving in return a glance from the pony that positively reekedof malice. 

Again Jack was on his way around the Doge's bungalow on the journey hehad made so many times in the growing ardor of the love that had masteredhis senses. The quiet of the garden seemed a part of the pervasivestillness that stretched away to the pass from the broad path of thepalms under the blazonry of the sun. As he proceeded he heard thecrunching of gravel under a heavy tread. The Doge was pacing back andforth in the cross path, fighting despair with the forced vigor of hissteps, while Mary was seated watching him. As the Doge wheeled to faceJack at the sound of his approach, it was not in surprise, but rather inpreparedness for the expected appearance of another character in adrama. This was also Mary's attitude. They had heard of his coming andthey received his call with a trace of fatalistic curiosity. The Dogesuddenly dropped on a bench, as if overcome by the weariness anddepression of spirits that he had been defying; but there was somethingunyielding and indomitable in Mary's aspect. 

"Well, Sir Chaps, welcome!" said the Doge. "We still have a seat in theshade for you. Will you sit down?"

But Jack remained standing, as if what he had to say would be soon said. 

"I have come back and come for good, " he began. "Yes, I have come back totake all the blue ribbons at ranching, " he added, with a touch of gardennonsense that came like a second thought to soften the abruptness of hisannouncement. 

"For good! For good! You!" The Doge stared at Jack in incomprehension. 

"Yes, my future is out here, now. "

"You give up the store--the millions--your inheritance!" cried the Doge, still amazed and sceptical as he sounded the preposterousness of thisidea to worldly credulity. 

"Quite!"

There was no mistaking the firmness of the word. "To make your fortune, your life, out here?"

The Doge's voice was throbbing with the wonder of the thing. 

"Yes!"

"Why? Why? I feel that I have a right to ask why!" demanded the Doge, inall the majesty of the moment when he faced John Wingfield, Sr. In thedrawing-room. 

"Because of a lie and what it concealed. Because of reasons that may notbe so vague to you as they are to me. "

"A lie! Yes, a lie that came home!" the Doge repeated, while he passedhis hand back and forth over his eyes. The hand was trembling. Indeed, his whole body was trembling, while he sought for self-control and tocollect his thoughts for what he had to say to that still figure awaitinghis words. When he looked up it was with an expression wholly new toJack. Its candor was not that of transparent mental processes in serenephilosophy or forensic display, but that of a man who was about to laybare things of the past which he had kept secret. 

"Sir Chaps, I am going to give you my story, however weak and blameworthyit makes me appear, " he said. "Sir Chaps, you saw me in anger in theWingfield drawing-room, further baffling you with a mystery which musthave begun for you the night that you came to Little Rivers when weexchanged a look in which I saw that you knew that I recognized you. Itried to talk as if you were a welcome stranger, when I was holding in myrancor. There was no other face in the world that I would not rather haveseen in this community than yours!

"How glad I was to hear that you were leaving by the morning train! How Icounted the days of your convalescence after you were wounded! How glad Iwas at the news that you were to go as soon as you were well! With what arevelry of suggestion I planned to speed your parting! How demoralized Iwas when you announced that you were going to stay! How amazed at yourseriousness about ranching--but how distrustful! Yet what joy in yourcompanionship! At times I wanted to get my arms around you and hug you asa scarred old grizzly bear would hug a cub. And, first and last, yoursuccess with everybody here! Your cool hand in the duel! That iron inyour will which would triumph at any cost when you broke Nogales's arm!For some reason you had chosen to stop, in the play period of youth, onthe way to the inheritance to overcome some obstacle that it pleased youto overcome and to amuse yourself a while in Little Rivers--you with yoursteadiness in a fight and your airy, smiling confidence in yourself!"

"I--I did not know that I was like that!" said Jack, in hurt, gropingsurprise. "Was I truly?"

The Doge nodded. 

"As I saw you, " he said. 

Jack looked at Mary, frankly and calmly. 

"Was I truly?" he asked her. 

"As I saw you!" she repeated, as an impersonal, honest witness. 

"Then I must have been!" he said, with conviction. "But I hope that Ishall not be in the future. " And he smiled at Mary wistfully. But hergaze was bent on the ground. 

"And you want it all--all the story from me?" the Doge asked, hesitating. 

"All!" Jack answered. 

"It strikes hard at your father. "

"The truth must strike where it will, now!"

"Then, your face, so like your father's, stood for the wreck of twolives to me, and for recollections in my own career that tinged my viewof you, Jack. You were one newcomer to Little Rivers to whom I could notwholly apply the desert rule of oblivion to the past and judgment ofevery man solely by his conduct in this community. No! It was out of thequestion that I could ever look at you without thinking who you were. 

"You know, of course, that your father and I spent our boyhood inBurbridge. Once I found that he had told me an untruth and we had ourdifference out, as boys will; and, as I was in the right, he confessedthe lie before I let him up. That defeat was a hurt to his egoism that hecould not forget. He was that way, John Wingfield, in his egoism. It waslike flint, and his ambition and energy were without bounds. I rememberhe would say when teased that some day he should have more money than allthe town together, and when he had money no one would dare to tease him. He had a remarkable gift of ingratiation with anyone who could be ofservice to him. My uncle, who was the head of the family, was fond ofhim; he saw the possibilities of success in this smart youngster in a NewEngland village. It was the Ewold money that gave John Wingfield hisstart. With it he bought the store in which he began as a clerk. He losta good part of the Ewold fortune later in one of his enterprises that didnot turn out well. But all this is trifling beside what is to come. 

"He went on to his great commercial career. I, poor fool, was an egoist, too. I tried to paint. I had taste, but no talent. In outbursts ofdespair my critical discrimination consigned my own work to the rubbishheap. I tried to write books, only to find that all I had was a headstuffed with learning, mixed with the philosophy that is death to theconcentrated application that means positive accomplishment. But I couldnot create. I was by nature only a drinker at the fountain; only astudent, the pitiful student who could read his Caesar at eight, learn alanguage without half trying, but with no ability to make my knowledge ofservice; with no masterful purpose of my own--a failure!"

"No one is a failure who spreads kindliness and culture as he goesthrough life, " Jack interrupted, earnestly; "who gives of himselfunstintedly as you have; who teaches people to bring a tribute of flowersto a convalescent! Why, to found a town and make the desert bloom--thatis better than to add another book to the weight of library shelves or toget a picture on the line!"

"Thank you, Jack!" said the Doge, with a flash of his happy manner ofold, while there was the play of fleeting sunshine over the hills andvalleys of his features. "I won't call it persiflage. I am too selfish, too greedy of a little cheer to call it persiflage. I like the illusionyou suggest. "

He was silent for a while, and when he spoke again it was with the tragicsimplicity of one near his climax. 

"Your father and I loved the same girl---your mother. It seemed that inevery sympathy of mind and heart she and I were meant to travel the longhighway together. But your father won her with his gift for ingratiationwith the object of his desire, which amounts to a kind of genius. He wonher with a lie and put me in a position that seemed to prove that thelie was truth. She accepted him in reaction; in an impulse of heart-breakthat followed what she believed to be a revelation of my true characteras something far worse than that of idler. I married the woman whom hehad made the object of his well-managed calumny. My wife knew where myheart was and why I had married her. It is from her that Mary gets herdark hair and the brown of her cheeks which make her appear so at home onthe desert. Soon after Mary's birth she chose to live apart from me--butI will not speak further of her. She is long ago dead. I knew that yourmother had left your father. I saw her a few times in Europe. But shenever gave the reason for the separation. She would talk nothing of thepast, and with the years heavy on our shoulders and the memory of what wehad been to each other hovering close, words came with difficulty andevery one was painful. Her whole life was bound up in you, as mine was inMary. It was you that kept her from being a bitter cynic; you that kepther alive. 

"Some of the Ewold money that John Wingfield lost was mine. You see howhe kept on winning; how all the threads of his weaving closed in aroundme. I came to the desert to give Mary life with the fragments of myfortune; and here I hope that, as you say, I have done something worthierthan live the life of a wandering, leisurely student who had lapsed intothe observer for want of the capacity by nature or training to doanything else. 

"But sometimes I did long for the centres of civilization; to touchelbows with their activities; to feel the flow of the current ofhumanity in great streets. Not that I wanted to give up Little Rivers, but I wanted to go forth to fill the mind with argosies which I couldenjoy here at my leisure. And Mary was young. The longing that sheconcealed must be far more powerful than mine. I saw the supremeselfishness of shutting her up on the desert, without any glimpse of theouter world. I sensed the call that sent her on her lonely rides to thepass. I feared that your coming had increased her restlessness. 

"But I wander! That is my fault, as you know, Sir Chaps. Well, we come tothe end of the weaving; to the finality of John Wingfield's victory. Little Rivers was getting out of hand. I could plan a ranch, but I hadnot a business head. I had neither the gift nor the experience to dealwith lawyers and land-grabbers. I knew that with the increase ofpopulation and development our position was exciting the cupidity ofthose who find quicker profit in annexing what others have built than inbuilding on their own account. I knew that we ought to have a great dam;that there was water to irrigate ten times the present irrigated area. 

"Then came John Prather. I saw in him the judgment, energy, and abilityfor organization of a real man of affairs. He was young, self-made, engaging and convincing of manner. He liked our life and ideals in LittleRivers; he wanted to share our future. In his resemblance to you I sawnothing but a coincidence that I passed over lightly. He knew how tohandle the difficult situation that arose with the reappearance of oldman Lefferts' partners. He would get the water rights legalized beyonddispute and turn them over to the water users' association; he wouldbring in capital for the dam; the value of our property would beenhanced; Little Rivers would become a city in her own right, while I wasgrowing old delectably in the pride of founder. So he pictured it and soI dreamed. I was so sure of the future that I dared the expense of a tripto New York. 

"And always to me, when I looked at you and when I thought of you, youwere the son of John Wingfield; you incarnated the inheritance of hisstrength. But when, from the drawing-room, I saw your father, whom I hadnot seen for fifteen years, then--well, the thing came to me in a burningsecond, the while I glimpsed his face before he saw mine. He was smilingas if pleased with himself and his power; he was rubbing the palms of hishands together; and I saw that it was John Prather who was like JohnWingfield in manner, pose, and feature. You were like the fighting man, your ancestor, and your airy confidence was his. And I, witless andunperceiving, had been won by the same methods of ingratiation with whichJohn Wingfield had won the assistance of the Ewold fortune for the firststep of his career; with which he had won Alice Jamison and kept meunaware of his plan while he was lying to her. 

"Finally, let us say, in all charity, that your father is what he isbecause of what is born in him and for the same reason that the snowballgathers size as it rolls; and I am what I am for the same reason that thewind scatter the sands of the desert--a man full of books and tangentinconsequence of ideas, without sense; a simpleton who knows a paintingbut does not know men; a garrulous, philosophizing, blind, oldsimpleton, whose pompous incompetency has betrayed a trust! Through me, men and women came here to settle and make a home! Through me theylose--to my shame!"

The Doge buried his face in his hands and drew a deep breath morepitiful than a sob, which, as it went free of the lungs, seemed to leavean empty ruin of what had once been a splendid edifice. He was instriking contrast to Mary, who, throughout the story fondly regardinghim, had remained as straight as a young pine. Now, with her rigiditysuddenly become so pliant that it was a fluid thing mixed ofindignation, fearlessness, and compelling sympathy, she sprang to hisside. She knew the touchstone to her father's emotion. He did not wanthis cheek patted in that moment of agony. He wanted a stimulant; somejustification for living. 

"There is no shame in believing in those who speak fairly! There ishonor, the honor of faith in mankind!" she cried penetratingly. "There isno shame in being the victim of lies!"

"No! No shame!" the Doge cried, rising unsteadily to his feetunder the whip. 

"And we are not afraid for the future!" she continued. "And the other menand women in Little Rivers are not afraid for the future!"

"No, not afraid under this sun, in this air. Afraid!"

An unconquerable flame had come into his eyes in answer to that inMary's. 

"The others have asked me to act for them, and I think I may yet save ourrights, " said Jack. "Will you also trust me?"

"Will I trust you, Jack? Trust you who gave up your inheritance?"exclaimed the Doge. "I would trust you on a mission to the stars or tolead a regiment; and the wish of the others is mine. "

Jack had turned to go, but he looked back at Mary. 

"And you, Mary? I have your good wishes?"

He could not resist that question; and though it was clear that nothingcould stay him--as clear as it had been in the _arroyo_ that he wouldkeep his word and face Leddy--he was hanging on her word and he wasseeing her eyes moist, with a bright fire like that of sunshine on stillwater. She was swaying slightly as a young pine might in a wind. Her eyesdarkened as with fear, then her cheeks went crimson with the stir of herblood; and suddenly, her eyes were sparkling in their moisture like waterwhen it ripples under sunshine. 

"Yes, Jack, " she said quietly, with the tense eagerness of a good causethat sends a man away to the wars. 

"That is everything!" he answered. 

So it was! Everything that he could ask now, with his story and hers sofresh in mind! He started up the path, but stopped at the turn to lookback and wave his hand to the two figures in a confident gesture. 

"Luck with you, Sir Chaps!" called the Doge, with all the far-carryingforce of his oldtime sonorousness. 

"Luck! luck!" Mary called, on her part; and her voice had a flute notethat seemed to go singing on its own ether waves through the tendergreen foliage, through all the gardens of Little Rivers, and even awayto the pass. 

"Mary! Mary!" he answered, with a ring of cheeriness. "Luck for me willalways come at your command!"

A moment later Galway and the others saw him smiling with a hope that ranas high as his purpose, as he passed through the gateway of the hedge. 

"It will all be right!" he told them. 

With P. D. Keeping his muzzle close to the middle of Jack's back, theparty started toward his house, which took them almost the length of themain street. 

"Prather went by the range trail, of course?" Jack asked Galway. 

"No, straight out across the desert, " said Galway. 

"Straight out across the desert!" exclaimed Jack, mystified. 

For one had a choice of two routes to Agua Fria, which was well over theborder in Mexico. Not a drop of water was to be had on the way across thetrackless plateau, but halfway on the range trail was a camping-place, Las Cascadas, where a spring which spouted in a tiny cascade welcomed thetraveller. Under irrigation, most of the land for the whole stretchbetween the two towns would be fertile. There was said to be a bigunderground run at Agua Fria that could be pumped at little expense. 

"All I can make out of Prather's taking a straight line, which really isslower, as you know, on account of the heavy sand in places, is to lookover the soil, " said Galway. "He may be preparing to get a concession inMexico at the same time as on this side, so as to secure control of thewhole valley. It means railroads, factories, new towns, millions--but youand I have talked all this before in our dreams. "

"Who was with him?" Jack asked. 

"Pedro Nogales. He seems to have taken quite a fancy to Pedro and Pedrois acting as guide. Leddy recommended him, I suppose. "

"No one else?"

"No. "

"Good!" said Jack. 

As they turned into the side street where the front of Jack's bungalowwas visible, Jim Galway observed that they had seen nothing of Leddy orany of his followers. 

"Maybe he's gone to join Prather, " said Bob Worther. 

But Jack paid no attention to the remark. He was preoccupied with thefirst sight of his ranch in over two months. 

"It will be all right!" he called out to the crowd in his yard; for theothers who had met him at the station were waiting for him there. "Bob, those umbrella-trees could shade a thin, short man now, even if he didn'thug the trunk! Firio has done well, hasn't he?" he concluded, after hehad walked through the garden and surveyed the fields and orchards infond comparison as to progress. 

"The best I ever knew an Indian to do!" said Jim Galway. 

"And everything kept right on growing while I was away! That's the joy ofplanting things. They are growing for somebody, if not for you!"

Inside the house he found Firio, with the help of some of the ranchers, taking the pictures out of their cases. Firio surveyed the buccaneerfor some time, squinting his eyes and finally opening them saucer-widein approval. 

"You!" he said to Jack. And of the Sargent, after equally deliberateobservation, he said: "A lady!"

That seemed about all there was to say and expressed the thought of theonlookers. 

"And, Firio, now it's the trail!" said Jack. 

"_Sí, sí_!" said Firio, ever so softly. "We take rifles?"

"Yes. Food for a week and two-days' water. "

It pleased Jack to hang the portraits while Firio was putting on JagEar's pack; and he made it a ceremony in which his silence wasuninterrupted by the comments of the ranchers. They stood in wonderingawe before John Wingfield, Knight, hung where he could watch the EternalPainter at his sunset displays and looking at the "Portrait of a Lady"across the breadth of the living-room, whose neutral tones made a perfectsetting for their dominant genius. 

"I believe they are at home, " said Jack, with a fond look from one to theother, when Firio came to say that everything was ready. 

"Señor Jack, " whispered Firio insinuatingly, "for the trail you wear thegrand, glad trail clothes and the big spurs. I keep them shiny--the bigspurs!" He was speaking with the authority of an expert in trailfashions, who would consider Jack in very bad form if he refused. 

"Why, yes, Firio, yes; it is so long since we have been on the trail!"And he went into the bedroom to make the change. 

"I've never seen him quite so dumb quiet!" said Worther. 

Jack certainly had been quiet, ominously quiet and self-contained. Whenhe came out of the bedroom he was without the jaunty freedom of mannerthat Little Rivers always associated with his full regalia. In place ofthe dreamy distances in his eyes on such occasions were a sadpreoccupation and determination. When they went outside to Firio and thewaiting ponies, the Eternal Painter was in his evening orgy of splendor. But even Jack did not look up at the sky this time as he walked along insilence with his fellow-citizens to the point where the farthest furrowof his ranch had been drawn across the virgin desert. His foot wasalready in the stirrup when Jim Galway spoke the thought of all:

"Jack, there's only two of you, and if it happened that you metLeddy--"

"It is Prather that I want to see, " Jack answered. 

"But Leddy's whole gang! We don't know what your plans are, but ifthere's going to be a mix-up, why, we've got to be with you!"

"No!" said Jack, decidedly. "Remember, Jim, you were to trust me. This isa mission that requires only two; it is between Prather and me. We aregoing to get acquainted for the first time. "

Already Firio, riding Wrath of God, had started, and the bells of Jag Earwere jingling, while the rifles, their bores so clean from Firio's care, danced with the gleams of sunset in their movement with the burro'sjogging trot. Jack sprang into the saddle, his face lighting as the footcame home in the stirrup. 

"It will be all right!" he called back. 

P. D. In the freshness of his long holiday, feeling a familiar pressure ofa leg, hastened to overtake his companions; and the group of LittleRiversites watched a chubby horseman and a tall, gaunt horseman, bathedin gold, riding away on a hazy sea of gold, with Jag Ear's bells growingfainter and fainter, until the moving specks were lost in the darkness. 

XXXVI

AROUND THE WATER-HOLE

Easy traveller had turned speedy traveller, on a schedule. Never had heand Firio ridden so fast as in pursuit of John Prather, who had eighthours' start of them on a two-days' journey. Jag Ear had to trot all thetime to keep up. Ounce by ounce he was drawing on his sinking fund of fatin a constitutional crisis. 

"I keep his hoofs good. I keep his wind good. All right!" said Firio. 

It was after midnight before the steady jingle of Jag Ear's orchestra hadany intermission. An hour for food and rest and the little party was offagain in the delicious cool of the night, toward a curtain pricked withstars which seemed to be drawn down over the edge of the world. 

"What sort of horses had Prather and Nogales?" Jack asked. He must reachthe water-hole as soon as Prather; for it was not unlikely that Prathermight have fresh mounts waiting there to take him on to the nearestrailroad station in Mexico. 

"Look good, but bad. Nogales no know horses!" Firio answered. 

"And they rode in the heat of the day!" said Jack, confidently. 

"_Sí_! And we ride P. D. And Wrath of God!"

There were no sign-posts on this highway of desert space except themany-armed giant cacti, in their furrowed armor set with clusters ofneedles, like tawny auroras gleaming faintly; no trail on the hard earthunder foot, mottled with bunches of sagebrush and sprays of low-lyingcacti, all as still as the figures of an inlaid flooring in the violetsheen, with an occasional quick, irregular, shadowy movement when afrightened lizard or a gopher beat a precipitate retreat from theinvading thud of hoofs in this sanctuary of dust-dry life. And the courseof the hoofs was set midway between the looming masses of the mountainwalls of the valley. 

Firio listened for songs from Señor Jack; he waited for stories fromSeñor Jack; but none came. He, the untalkative one of the pair, theliving embodiment of a silent and happy companionship back and forth fromColorado to Chihuahua, liked to hear talk. Without it he was lonesome. If, by the criterion of a school examination, he never understood morethan half of what Jack said, yet, in the measure of spirit, he understoodeverything. 

Now Jack was going mile after mile with nothing except occasional urgingwords to P. D. His close-cut hair well brushed back from his foreheadrevealed the sweep of his brow, lengthening his profile and adding to theeffect of his leanness. The moonlight on his face, which had lost itstan, gave him an aspect of subdued and patient serenity in keeping withthe surroundings. You would have said that he could ride on foreverwithout tiring, and that he could go over a precipice now without evenseeing any danger sign. He had never been like this in all Firio'smemory. The silence became unsupportable for once to Indian taciturnity. If Jack would not talk Firio would. Yes, he would ask a question, just tohear the sound of a voice. 

"We go to fight?"

"No, Firio. "

"Not to fight Prather?"

"No. "

"To fight Leddy?"

"I hope not. "

"Why we go? Why so--why so--" he had not the language to express thestrange, brooding inquiry of his mind. 

"I go to save Little Rivers. "

"_Sí_!" said Firio, but as if this did not answer his question. 

"I go to get the end of a story, Firio--my story!" continued Jack. "Ihave travelled long for the story and now I shall have it all fromJohn Prather. "

"_Sí, sí_!" said Firio, as if all the knowledge in the world had flashedinto his head quicker than the hand of legerdemain could run the leavesof a pack of cards through its fingers. "And then?"

At last Firio had won a smile from the untanned face which could not bethe same to him until it was tanned. 

"Then I shall plant seeds and keep the ground around them soft andthe weeds out of it; and I shall wear my heart on my sleeve and lay asiege--a siege in the open, without parallels or mines! A siege inthe open!"

Firio did not understand much about parallels or mines or, for thatmatter, about sieges; but he could see the smile fading from Jack's lipsand could comprehend that the future of which Jack was speaking was veryfar from another prospect, which was immediate and vivid in his mind. 

"But you must fight Leddy! _Sí, sí_! You must fight Leddy first!"

"Then I must, I suppose, " said Jack, absently. "All things in their turnand time. "

"_Sí_!" answered Firio. All things in their turn and time! This deserttruth was bred in him through his ancestry, no less than in the EternalPainter himself. 

Again the silence of the morning darkness, with all the stars twinklingmore faintly and some slipping from their places in the curtain into thedeeper recesses of the broad band of night on the surface of the rollingball. The plodding hoofs kept up their regular beat of the march of theirlittle world of action in the presence of the Infinite; plodding, plodding on into the dawn which sent the last of the stars in flight, while the curtain melted away before blue distances swimming with light. Still bareheaded, Jack looked into the face of the sun which heaved abovean irregular roof of rocks. It blazed into the range on the other side ofthe valley. It slaked its thirst with the slight fall of dew as a great, red tongue would lick up crumbs. Sun and sky, cactus and sagebrush, rockand dry earth and sand, that was all. Nowhere in that stretch of basinthat seemed without end was there a sign of any other horseman or ofhuman life. 

But at length, as they rode, their eyes saw what only eyes used to desertreaches could see, that the speck in the distance was not a cactus oreven two or three cacti in line, but something alive and moving. Perceptibly they were gaining on it, while it developed into two ridersand a pack animal in single file. Now Jack and Firio were coming into aregion of more stunted vegetation, and soon the two figures emerged intoa stretch of gray carpet on which they were as clearly silhouetted as awhite sail on a green sea. 

"Very thick sand there--five or six miles of it. It make this thelong way, " said Firio. "They call it the apron of hell to fools whoride at noon. "

"And beyond that how many miles to the water-hole?"

"Five or six. "

But Firio knew a way around where the going was good. It made adifference of two or three miles in distance against them, but two orthree times that in their favor in time and the strength taken out oftheir ponies. 

"How long will Prather be in getting through the sand?" Jack asked. 

Firio squinted at the objects of their pursuit for a while, as if hewanted to be exact. 

"Almost as many hours as miles, " he said. 

Near the zenith now, the sun was a bulging furnace eye, piercing throughshirts into the flesh and sucking the very moisture of the veins. Asingle catspaw was all that the Eternal Painter had to offer over thatbasin shut in between the long, jagged teeth of the ranges biting intothe steel-blue of the sky. The savage, merciless hours of the desert dayapproached; the hours of reckoning for unknowing and unpreparedtravellers. 

Jag Ear's bells had a faint plaintiveness at intervals and again theirjingling was rapid and hysterical, as he tried to make up the distancelost through a lapse in effort. He had ceased altogether to wiggle thesliver of ear--the baton with which he conducted his orchestra--becausethis was clearly a waste of energy. P. D. 's steps still retained theirdogged persistence, but their regular beat was slower, like that of aclock that needs winding. His head hung low. Wrath of God was no more andno less melancholy than when he was rusticating in Jack's yard. It seemedas if his sad visage, so reliably and grandly sad, might still bemarching on toward the indeterminate line of the horizon when his legswere worn off his body. 

"Firio, you brown son of the sun, " said Jack, with a sudden display ofhis old-time trail imagery, "you prolix, garrulous Firio, you knew! Youhad the great equine trio ready, and look at the miles they have donesince sunset to prove it! You, P. D. , favorite trooper of our householdcavalry! You, Wrath of God, don't be afraid to make an inward smile, foryour face will never tell on you! You, Jag Ear, beat a tattoo with thefragment of the gothic glory of burrohood, for we rest, to go on all thefaster when the heat of the day is past!"

While Prather and Nogales were riding over hell's apron, their pursuershad saddles off hot, moist backs, over which knowing hands were run tofind no sores. After they had eaten, P. D. And Wrath of God and Jag Earstood in drooping relaxation which would make the most of every moment ofrespite. Jack and Firio, with a blanket fastened to the rifles asstandards, made a patch of shade in which they lay down. 

"Have a nap, Firio, " said Jack. "I will wake you when it is timeto start. "

"And you--you no sleep?" asked Firio. 

"I could not sleep to-day, " Jack answered. "I don't feel as if I couldsleep until I've seen Prather and heard his story--my story--Firio!" Andhe lay with eyes half closed, staring at the steel blue overhead. 

It was well after midday when they mounted for the remainder of thejourney. The Eternal Painter was shaking out the silvery cloud-mist ofhis beard across a background that had a softer, kindlier, deeper blue. The shadows of the ponies and their riders and Jag Ear and his pack nolonger lay under their bellies heavily, but were stretched out to oneside by the angle of the sun, in cheerful, jogging fraternity. Pratherand Nogales had again become only a speck. 

"Do you think that they are out of the sand?" asked Jack. 

"Very near, " Firio answered. 

"Their ponies had a whole night's rest--we must not forget that, " saidJack; "and they must be in a hurry, for certainly Nogales had senseenough to rest over noon. "

"_Quien sabe_!" answered Firio. "But we catch them--_sí, sí_!"

Leading the way, Firio turned toward the eastern range until he came to anarrow tongue of shale almost as hard to the hoofs as asphalt, that ranlike a shoal across that sea of sand. Rest had given the great equinetrio renewed life. P. D. , reduced in rank to second place, could not thinkof allowing more than a foot between his muzzle and the tail of Wrath ofGod, who was bound to make up the time he had lost in pursuit of thehorizon. Another hypothesis of Jack's as to the cause of Wrath of God'smelancholy was that solemn Covenanter's inability to get any nearer tothe edge of the earth. Once he could poke his nose through the bluecurtain and see what was on the other side, the satisfaction of hiseternal curiosity might have made him a rollicking comedian. As for JagEar, his baton was once more conducting his orchestra in spirited tempo. He, who was nearest of all three in heart to Firio, might well have beensaying to himself: "I knew! I knew we were not going through the sand!Firio and I knew!"

So rapidly were they gaining that, when past the sand and they turnedback westward, it was only a question of half an hour or so to come upwith Prather and Nogales. Nogales had been riding ahead; but now Prather, after gazing over his shoulder for some time at his pursuers, took thelead. He was urging his horse as if he would avoid being overtaken. Evidently Nogales did not share that desire, for he let Prather go onalone. But Prather's horse was too tired after its effort in the sand andhe halted and waited until Nogales, at a slow walk, closed up the gapbetween them, when they proceeded at their old, weary gait. 

As Jack and Firio came within hailing distance, both Prather and Nogalesglanced at them sharply; but no word was spoken on either side. Theabsence of any call between these isolated voyagers of the desert sea wasstrangely unlike the average desert meeting. Prather and Nogales did notlook back again, not even when Jack and Firio were very near. A neigh byP. D. , a break into a trot by him and Wrath of God, and Firio was sayingto Nogales:

"You went right through the sand!"

"_Sí_!" answered Pedro, with a grin. 

Still Prather did not so much as turn his head to get a glimpse of Jack, nor did he offer any sign of knowledge of Jack's presence when Jackreined alongside him so close that their stirrup leathers were brushing. Prather was gazing at the desert exactly in front of him, the reinshanging loose, almost out of hand. His horse was about spent, if not onthe point of foundering. Jack was so near the mole on the cheek of thepeculiar paleness that never tans that by half extending his arm he mighthave touched it. After all, it was only a raised patch of blue, a blemishremovable by the slightest surgical operation which its owner must havepreferred to retain. 

Firio and Nogales, also riding side by side, were also silent. There wasno sound except Jag Ear's bells, now sunk to a faint tinkle in keepingwith the slow progress of Prather's beaten horse. Looking at Prather'shands, Jack was thinking of another pair of hands amazingly like them. Inthe uncanniness of its proximity he was imagining how the profile wouldlook without the birthmark, and he found himself grateful for thesilence, which spoke so powerfully to him, in the time that it providedfor bringing his faculties under control. 

"How do you do?" he said at last, pleasantly. 

Probably the silence had been equally welcome to Prather in charting hisown course in the now unavoidable interview. He looked around slowly, andhe was smiling with a trace of the satire that Jack had seen in theelevator, but smiling watchfully in a way that covers the apprehension ofa keen glance. And he saw features that were calm and eyes that werestill as the sky. 

"How do you do?" he answered; and paused as one who is about to slip apoint of steel home into a scabbard. "How do you do, brother?" headded, as if uttering a shibboleth that could protect him from anyphysical violence. 

"Brother! Brother! Yes!" repeated Jack, with dry lips. 

This shaping of conviction into fact so nakedly, so coolly, made all thedesert and the sky swim before him in kaleidoscopic patches of blue andgray, shot with zigzag flashes. He half reeled in the saddle; his handsgripped the pommel to hold himself in place. It was as if a long strainof nervous tension had come to an end with a crack. Prather's smile tooka turn of deeper satisfaction. It was like John Wingfield, Sr. 's afterJack had left the library. 

"This is the first time we have ever met to speak, " said Prather, easily. 

"Yes!" assented Jack, the gray settling back into desert and the blueinto sky and the zigzag flashes becoming only the brilliance of lateafternoon sunshine. 

"Certainly it is time that we got acquainted, brother, " said Prather. 

"It is!" agreed Jack. "It is time that I knew your story!"

"Which you have hardly heard from your--I mean, our father!" The pausebetween the "your" and the "our" was made with an appreciativesignificance. "Well, you see, I was the brother who had the mole onhis cheek!"

"Yes--pitifully yes!" said Jack, with a kind of horror at the expressionof this face in his father's likeness, no less than at the words. 

"Why, no! I've often thought of _you_ rather pitifully!" said Prather. 

"You well might!" Jack answered, feelingly. "We may well share a commonpity for each other. "

There was no sign that John Prather subscribed to the sentiment except ina certain quizzical turn of his lips, as he looked away. 

"Yes, the story has been kept from me. I have come for it!" said Jack. 

"That is raking out the skeletons. But why not rake out our skeletonstogether, you and I?" said Prather. 

It was clear that he enjoyed the prospect as an opportunity forretributive enlightenment. 

"To begin with, I have the rights of primogeniture in my favor, " he said. "I was born a day before you were, in the same city of New York. Mymother's name was not down in the telephone list as Mrs. Wingfield, however--I look at it all philosophically, you understand--and it wasjust that which made the difference between you and me, outside of thedifference of our natures. But I am proud of my birth on both sides, inmy own way. My mother was won without marriage and she was true tofather. A woman of real ability, my mother! She was well suited to beJohn Wingfield's wife; better, I think, in the practical world ofmaterialism than your mother. By a peculiar coincidence, unknown tofather, my mother called in Dr. Bennington. So you and I have a furtherbond, in that the same doctor brought us into the world. "

"And my mother must have known this!" Jack exclaimed, in racking horror. 

At last the cause of her exile was clear in all its grisly monstrousness;the source of the pain in her eyes in the portrait had been traced home. Again he saw her white and trembling when she returned to the house inVersailles to find a visitor there; and now he realized the fulness ofher relief when the frail boy said that he did not like his father. Hertravels had spoken the restlessness of flight in search of oblivion tothe very fact of his paternity. The "I give! I give!" of the portrait wasthe giving of the infinity of her fine, sensitive being to him to makehim all hers. His feeling which had held him on the desert when he shouldhave gone home, that feeling of literal revulsion toward his inheritance, was a thing born in him which had grown under her caresses and hertraining. She had been living solely for him to that last moment when thebook dropped out of her hand; and the incarnation of that which hadkilled her was riding beside him now in the flesh. He felt a weaving ofhis muscles, a tightening of his nerves, as if waiting on the spark ofwill, and all the strength that he had built in the name of the store wasmadly tempted. But no! John Prather was not to blame, any more thanhimself. He would listen to John Prather, as justice listens to evidence, and endure his stare to the end. 

"Yes, your mother knew, " continued Prather. "My mother made a point ofhaving her know. That was part of my mother's own bitterness. That washer teaching to me from the first. She had no illusions. She knew theadvantages and the disadvantages of her position. She was and is one ofthe few persons in the world of whom my father is a little afraid. "

"Then she still lives?" asked Jack sharply. 

"Yes, she is in California, " Prather returned. "She often referred to themole on my cheek as the symbol of my handicap in the world of convention. 'But for the mole, Jack, you would have the store, ' she often said. Itdelighted her that I had my father's face. As I grew older theresemblance became more marked. I could see that I pleased my father withmy practical ideas of life, which I developed when quite young. He saw toit that my mother and I lived well and that I went to a good school. Frommy books I drew the same lesson as from my peculiar inheritance; thelesson that my mother was always inculcating. 'A bank account, ' she wouldrepeat, 'will erase even a mole patch on the cheek. It is the supremepower that will carry you anywhere, Jack. You must make money!'

"When father came to see her he would talk with a candor with which I amsure he never talked to your mother. He would tell of his successes, revealing the strategy and system by which they were won, finding herboth understanding and sympathetic. I became a little blade thatdelighted to get sharp against his big blade by asking him questions. Hedid not want me about the store, and this was one of the things in whichmy mother humored him. She knew just when to humor and just when tothreaten the play of the strong card which she always held. 

"All the while her ambition was laying its plans. It was that I shouldhave the Wingfield store one day, myself. Out of school hours I wouldrange the other department stores. You see, I had not only inherited myfather's face more strikingly than you had, but also his talents. Ispent the summer vacations of my fourteenth and fifteenth years in astore. I won the attention of my superiors and promise of promotion. Iforesaw the day when I should so prove my ability that father would takeme into his own store, and then, gradually, I would make my place, secure, while you were idling about Europe. And in those days you werefrail and I was vigorous. 

"There was no mistaking that father's sense of convention was the onething that stood between him and my desire. He feared the world's opinionif the truth became known, and deep down in heart he could never get overthe pride of having married into your mother's family. You had very goodblood on the maternal side, as they say, while my mother had begun in thecloak department and was self-made, like father. Again, I was so trulyhis son in every instinct that he may have been a little jealous of me. Father does not like to think that any other man was ever quite as greatas he is. I confess that is the way I feel, too. That is what life is, after all--it is yourself. Yes, I saw the store as mine--surely mine, with time!"

Prather's reins lay across the pommel of the saddle drawn taut by thedrooping head of his horse, which was barely dragging one foot afteranother. He gave Jack a glance of flashing resentment and then, in hisfirst impulse of real emotion, made a fist of one hand and drove itangrily into the palm of the other before continuing. 

"Then father went to Europe to bring you home. He had decided for theson of convention, the son of blood! Though self-made, he was for familyas against talent. Besides, it was a victory for him. At last you werehis. After your return there was a scene between mother and him, a cool, bitter argument. He defied her to play her last card. He said that youknew the truth and that she could at best only make a row. And he wantedus out of New York; the place for me was a new country. He would make usa handsome allowance. So my mother agreed to his terms and we went to thePacific coast. There I was to enter one of the colleges. My mother wantedme to have a college education, you see. The last meeting between fatherand me was very interesting, blade playing on blade. He really hated tolet me go, for by this time he knew how hopeless you were. He embraced meand said that I would get on, anyway. I told him that the only troublewas that while I was the real son, I had a mole on my cheek. 

"The West was best. There we could claim the favor of convention, Mrs. Prather and her son. I matriculated at Stanford, but I saw nothing in itfor me. It was all dream stuff. Greek and Latin don't help in building afortune. They handicap you with the loss of time it takes to learn them, at least; and I meant to be worth a million before I was thirty. Now Iknow that I shall be worth two or three or four millions at thirty, ifall goes as I plan. So I cut college and broke for Goldfield. I ran astore and was a secret partner in a saloon that paid better than thestore. I was in the game morning, noon, and night; it beat marching toclass to recite Horace and fiddle with the binomial theorem, as it mustfor every man who counts for something in the world. "

Throughout, Prather's tone, except for the one moment of anger, had beenthat of an even recital of facts by one who does not allow himself toconsider anything but facts in the judgment of his position. At times hegave Jack covert glances out of the tail of his eye and saw Jack's facewhite and drawn and his head lowered. Now Prather became the victim--sohe would have put it, no doubt--of another outburst of feeling. 

"But it was not like having the store!" he said. "No, my heart was in thestore; and that morning when you saw me looking down from the gallery Iwas permitting myself to dream. I was thinking of what had come to you, the fairy prince of good fortune, who had no talent for your inheritance, and of what I might have done with it. I was thinking how I could win mento work for me"--and there he was smiling with the father's charm--"andof the millions to come if I could begin to build on the foundation thatfather had laid. I saw branches in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia--a greatchain of stores all co-ordinated under my directing hand--I the master!"

He rubbed the palms of his hands together as he had over thescintillation of the jewelry counters. Though Jack had not looked around, his ear recognized that crisp sound of exultant power. 

"Yes, " Jack murmured thoughtfully, as if inviting Prather to go on withanything further he might have to say. 

"All mine--mine!" Prather concluded, in a sort of hypnosis with hisown picture. 

Jack still stared at the earth, his profile limned in gold and the sideof his face toward Prather in shadow. They were nearing the clump ofcotton-woods around the water-hole at the base of a tongue of the rangewhich ran out into the desert, and Firio rode up to whisper in Spanish:

"Señor Jack, see there! Horsemen!"

Jack raised his head with a returning sense of his surroundings to seesome mounted men, eight in all he counted, riding along the range trail ahalf mile nearer the water-hole than themselves. Their horses had thegait of exhaustion after a long, hard ride. 

"You know who it is?" Firio whispered. 

"Yes, " Jack answered. "They had the better trail and have outridden us. All right, Firio!"

"Leddy--Pete Leddy and some of his men!" exclaimed Prather, shading hiseyes to watch the file of figures now passing under the cotton-woods. Itseemed to relieve him. "I suppose he came on my account, " he added, nodding to Nogales. 

"Yes, " said Nogales, with a grin. He always either grinned or his facehad a half savage impassiveness. 

"I wonder if Leddy thought I was in danger, " and Prather gave Jack aknowing glance of satisfaction. "We shall all camp together, " headded, smiling. 

Jack did not answer for a moment. He was intent on the cotton-woods. Leddy and his companions appeared on the other side, the figures ofriders and horses bathed in the sunset glow. Then they disappeared as ifthe earth had swallowed them up. 

"They are going on! They are not going to stop!" said Pratherapprehensively. 

"There is a basin beyond the water-hole and the seepage makes a littlepasture, " Jack explained. "You will see them back in a moment. "

"Oh, yes!" said Prather, with a thrill in his voice; and again thepalms of his hands were making that refrain of delight. "But I havetold my story, " he resumed. "Now may I ask you a question? Why have youcome back?"

Jack looked around frankly and dispassionately. 

"To save Little Rivers from you! I understand that you have secured thewater rights. "

"Well, then, I have!" declared Prather, confidently, "and I mean to havethe rights for the whole valley!" and he struck his fist into his palm. "You see, " he went on, with another flash of satire, "it is not exactlyfair that you should have the store and Little Rivers, too. I had heardof the possibilities here from my friend Leddy, who was also atGoldfield. A useful man in his place! He got his sixth notch there. WhenI came and looked around and saw that here was the opportunity I wanted, I wired father that in any fair division of territory everything west ofthe Mississippi belonged to me"--he was showing some bravado in his senseof security now, when he saw that Leddy and his men were returningthrough the cotton-woods to the water-hole--"and I should like to haveyou out of my way. I told him you were the picture of health, even if youdidn't have anything in your head, and if you were ever going to learnthe business it was time that you began. But father is always careful. Naturally he wanted to check off my report with another's; for he didn'twant you back if you were ill. So he sent Dr. Bennington out to getprofessional confirmation of my statement. "

"And you told Jasper Ewold that you wanted the rights only to turn themover to the water users' association and then bring in capital to build adam, with everybody sharing alike in the prosperity that was to come. "

"Yes, and Jasper Ewold was so simple! Well, what I told him wasstrategy--strategy of which I think father would approve. When you have abig object in view the end must justify the means. Look at the situation!Two hundred thousand acres of land waiting on water to be the mostfertile in the world! Why, when I rode up the valley the first time andsaw what could be done, I was amazed to think that such an opportunityshould be lying around loose. Little Rivers was so out of the way thatother promoters had overlooked it, and everybody had sort of taken it forgranted that Jasper Ewold and his water users' association really hadlegal possession. It was my chance. I thought big. That dam should bemine. I had the money I had made in Goldfield, but it was not enough formy purpose. 

"Where should I turn for outside capital that would not demand amajority interest in the project? I concluded that it was time fatherdid something for me in return for giving up the store. Besides thiscall of justice I had another influence with him. I was sure that whenhe told my mother that you knew the truth he was making a statement thatsuited his purpose. I was sure that you knew nothing of my story andthat father did not want you to know it. I was ready to tell if he didnot meet my demands. 

"Well, you know how he can talk when he wants to gain a point. I fancythat I talked as well as father when I showed him how that dam would payfor itself in five years in tolls and twenty per cent on the capitalafter that; when I showed him how a population ten times that of hisstore would have to take their water from me; when I showed him all theside issues of profit from town sites and the increase of values of thebig holdings which Leddy's men would take up for me. You ought to haveseen his eyes glow. He could not withstand his pride in me. 'You have thegift, the one gift!' he said. I told him yes, it was in the blood; and Istruck while the iron was hot. I got an outright sum from him; and hecould not resist a chance to share all that profit when capital was to behad in New York for three or four per cent. He went in as silent partner, as I was in the saloon at Goldfield; as a partner with a minorityinterest. "

John Prather paused to laugh to himself over his victory, while themovement of palm on palm was rapid and prolonged. 

"Our arrangement amounted to the commercial division of territory for thefamily, which I had suggested, " he went on with appreciative irony. "Youand he were to have the east side of the Mississippi and I was to havethe west, and you were never to know my story. Publicly, father and Iwere strangers and quits, and we came to this agreement in the room of adown-town hotel. 

"The day before I started West I simply had to have a look through thestore--the store that I loved and that I had to lose. Yes, the store isfar more to my taste than this rough western life. Naturally, as myexistence was to be kept a secret from you, when you followed me to theelevator and tried to get acquainted I couldn't have it. "

"But as the elevator descended you pointed to the mole, " said Jack. 

"Did I? I suppose that was an involuntary, instinctive pleasantry. Theprevious evening father and I had had a farewell visit together. We wentinto the country. "

"The night after the scene in the drawing-room!" Jack thought. 

"I knew that father was worried because he had to make an effort to showthat he was not. Usually he can cover his worries perfectly. He said thathe might have a fight in order to keep you and that he very much wantedyou to stay. But he did not succeed, " concluded Prather, fist drivinginto palm. "You came on the express after me. "

"Because, fortunately, you went to the house to have a look at theancestor!"

"Yes, " said Prather. "But I did not see you. "

"However, I saw you from the landing and overheard what passed betweenyou and father!"

"No matter!" cried Prather harshly. "I am prepared for you!" He lookedtoward the water-hole significantly. "And the concession is mine! The damwill be mine!"

"The dam could be built and all the valley might bloom without so muchpower passing into the hands of one man, " said Jack. 

P. D. Scenting the pasturage and feeling the pangs of thirst was startingforward at a smarter pace; but Jack held him back to the snail's crawl ofPrather's pony. 

"Who would do it? Jasper Ewold? Jim Galway?" Prather demanded. "Whatthese men need is a leader. They don't realize what I am doing for them. Do they think I want to put in ten years out here for nothing? For everydollar that they make for me they are going to make one for themselves. That's the rule of prosperity. I am not robbing them. I am taking only myfair share in return for creative business genius. The fellows in LittleRivers who sulk and don't get on will have only themselves to thank. "

"But they lose their independence, " Jack was arguing quietly, as if hewould thrash out the subject. "There are other things than money inthis world. "

"There's nothing much money won't do!" said Prather. 

"It will not give one self-respect or courage or moral fibre; it will notbring the gift of poetry, music, or painting; or turn a lie into truth;or bring back virtue to a woman who has been defiled; or make the courageto face death calmly. "

"It will do all I want!" Prather answered. "Father not having been trueto his agreement by keeping you in New York, why should I keep hissecret? He breaks faith; I break faith. It seems to me as if there wereno escaping the penalty of my birth. I no sooner arrive than I find thewhole town knows of your return; and not only that, but a wire comes fromfather saying that we had better not meet until he comes. "

"Until he comes! Yes, go on!"

"Well, as you say, you are here to save Little Rivers and that meant aninterview with me, and--well, " again the palms in their crisp movement, "before I started out I told Pete Leddy that if you came after me Ishould look to him for protection, and it seems he is on time. "

"Yes, " said Jack, without looking at Prather. All the while he had keptwatch on the water-hole, and he received Prather's announcement stoicallyas a confirmation of his suspicions. 

"So, if you will take my advice, brother, the best thing for you to do isto ride back before we reach the water-hole, unless you prefer Leddy'scompany. This time he will fight you in his way. "

"My horse is tired and there is neither water nor feed for him exceptthere. " Jack stated this quietly and stubbornly, as he nodded toward thecotton-woods. Then he looked around to Prather. Suddenly Prather foundhimself looking at a face that seemed to have only the form of that faceby the side of which he had been riding. It was as if another man hadtaken Jack's place in the saddle. The ancestor was rising in Jack. Prather saw an electric spark in Jack's eyes, the spark of the highvoltage that made his muscles weave and a flutter come in his cheeks. "No, I am not going back until I have recovered the rights that you havetaken from Little Rivers!" he said. 

Prather in sudden confusion realized that he had let his feelings go toosoon. They were not yet at the water-hole, and he was within easy reachof that hand working on the reins in a way that promised an outburst. 

"You think of physical violence against me--your own flesh and blood!" hesaid defensively. 

He saw Jack shudder in reaction and knew that he was safe for the moment. When Jack looked away at the water-hole Prather's fingers slipped to hisown six-shooter and rested there, twitching nervously; and in the rearFirio was watching both him and Nogales shrewdly. 

From any outward sign now, Jack might have been starting on anotherjourney with quiet eagerness; a journey that might end at a precipice afew yards ahead or at the other side of the world. Of this alone youcould be sure from the resoluteness of his features, that he was goingstraight on; while Firio, in the telepathy of desert companionship, understood that he was missing no developing detail within the narrowrange of vision in front of P. D. 's nose. Trusting all to Jack, Firio wason wires, ready for a spring in any direction. 

They were coming to the edge of a depression of an old watercourse thatwound around past the cotton-woods to the ridge itself and included thebasin where Leddy and his followers had tethered their horses. But thispart of it was dry sand. The standing figures around the water-hole hadsunk down. Jack could see them as lumps in a row. A blade of flame fromthe setting sun fell on them, revealing the glint of rifle barrels. 

"Firio! Quick--down! P. D. , down!" Jack called, dismounting with a leap;and as though in answer to his warning came the singing of bullets abouttheir ears. 

P. D. Had been trained to sink on all fours at a word and he and Jacktogether dropped into the cover of the _arroyo_, below the desert line. When he looked around Firio was at his side, still holding the reins ofWrath of God. But Wrath of God's sturdy, plodding nature had littlefacility in learning tricks. A tiny stream of blood was flowing down hisforehead and he lay still. At last, all in loyal service, he had reachedthe horizon. His bony, homely, good old face seemed singularly peaceful, as if satisfied with the reward at his journey's end. Jag Ear wasstanding beside P. D. And Prather's burro next to him, both unharmed. Nogales's horse had also been killed, but its rider was safe. Prather wascrawling down the side of the _arroyo_ on his belly, digging his handsinto the dirt, his face white and contorted and his eyes shifting backand forth in ghastly incomprehension. His horse followed him and sankdown in final surrender to exhaustion. 

By common impulse, Jack and Firio seized the rifles from Jag Ear's pack, while Nogales, a spectator, squatted beside Prather. 

"What--what does it mean?" Prather gasped, spasmodically. "I--I--was itLeddy that fired on us?"

"Yes, " said Jack over his shoulder, as he and Firio started up the bankof the _arroyo_ facing the water-hole. "No doubt of it. "

"It was you they wanted--not me--not me! I--I--"

"I don't know. At all events, I do not mean they shall rush us!" Jackanswered, as he and Firio hugged the slope with their rifles resting ontop and only their heads showing above it. 

"No! It couldn't be that they recognized me. They will let me by! Theyexpect me!"

"Yes, you belong on their side!" Jack called back. 

"I will send out a flag of truce!" said Prather, brightening withthe thought. "You, Nogales, take my handkerchief and go and explainto Leddy!"

Nogales seemed agreeable to the suggestion. Indeed, he was veryexpeditious in starting. While Jack never took his eye off the sight ofhis barrel, Nogales walked across the gleaming interval between the twoparties waving Prather's handkerchief. Leddy rose on his knee watchfully, rifle in hand, while he spoke with Nogales. Then Nogales started backwith his head thrown up jubilantly, but stopped when he was withincalling distance and sang out, truculently:

"Leddy get you both! He get everything!"

He turned on his heel and soon was another lump around the water-hole. 

"That makes nine, Firio!" said Jack. 

He smiled in relief to be rid of Nogales; smiled in happy confidence, asif he were truly the ancestor's child. 

"_Sí_!" answered Firio, as if he had just as soon there were a regimentagainst them. He was happy beyond words. He patted his rifle barrel; hespread out his big red bandanna beside his elbow and on it nicelyarranged a couple of extra charges of cartridges. 

Prather remained flat on the bottom of the _arroyo_, overwhelmed. It wassome time before he could speak. 

"I--I don't understand! It isn't possible!" he said finally. 

"Everything is possible with Leddy. It seems that there can be peacebetween him and me in this valley in only one way, " Jack answered. 

"But me! I suppose he found out that I--" Prather stopped withoutfinishing the sentence. "What am I to do?" he asked Jack in livid appeal. 

"Why, it is three against nine, if you choose!" Jack answered. "You havea rifle, and it is for your life. "

"My life!" Prather gasped, another wave of fear submerging him. 

"Yes. We have no horses with which to make our escape and we should bewinged as soon as we exposed ourselves. Leddy means that we shall die ofthirst, or die fighting. "

Through all this dialogue Jack had been speaking to the head that laybetween his eye and a target. As Prather reached up a trembling hand totake his rifle from the back of his burro one of the lumps around thewater-hole rose, possibly to change position. When it became thesilhouette of a kneeling man, Jack fired and the figure plunged forwardlike an automaton that had had its back broken. 

"Eight!" whispered Firio. 

"Duck!" Jack told him; for a response instantly came in a volley thatkicked up the dust around their heads. 

But Jack's rifle lay in limp hands. 

"Eight!" he repeated, dazedly. "And I shot to kill--to kill!"

His face blanched with horror at the thing that he had done. It seemed asif the strength had been struck out of him. He appeared ready to letdestiny overtake him rather than fire again. Then as in a flash, theancestor in him reappeared and in his features was written that veryprocess of fate which Dr. Bennington had said was in him. Again his handwas firm on the barrel and his eye riveted on the sight, as he drewhimself up until he lay even with the bank of the _arroyo_. 

The volley from the cotton-woods had swept over Prather's head at theinstant that he had taken hold of his rifle. It dropped from his grasp. He burrowed in the sand under the pressure of that near and sinister rushof singing breaths. 

"I can't! I can't!" he said helplessly. 

He was leaden flesh, without the power to move. At his words Jack glancedback to see a dropped jaw and glassy, staring eyes. 

"You are suffering!" exclaimed Jack. "Are you hit?"

"No!" Prather managed to say, and reached out for his rifle in clumsydesperation, as if he were feeling for it in the dark. 

"Take your time!" said Jack encouragingly, as one would to a victim ofstage fright. "There isn't any danger for the moment, while advantage ofposition is with us--the sun over our shoulders and in their faces. "

The lumps around the water-hole grew smaller. Evidently, as a result ofthe lesson, they were creeping backward on their stomachs to a lessexposed position. Two had quite disappeared, or else the brilliant playof light had melted them into the golden carpet of reflected sunshine onwhich they rested. Directly, Jack saw two figures creeping over the rimof the pasturage basin. 

"So, that's it!" he said to Firio. 

Firio nodded his understanding of Leddy's plan to take them in flankunder cover of the _arroyo_. 

"We shall have to respond in kind!" said Jack. 

He left his hat where his head had been and began crawling along the sideof the _arroyo_, but paused to call to Prather, who, now that no bulletswere flying, was trying the mechanism of his rifle with a somewhatsteadier hand:

"Prather, if you could manage to get up there beside Firio and join himin pouring out a magazine full at the right moment, it would help! Ifnot, put your hat up there beside mine. You can do that without exposingyourself. "

Jack's tone was that of one who urges a tired man to take a few moresteps, or an invalid without any appetite to try another sup of broth. Ithad no hint of irony. 

"No matter, " said Firio. "Leddy know he can't fight. Leddy know there isonly two of us!" His tone was without satire, but its sting was sharperthan satire; that of an Indian shrug over a negligible quantity. Itstarted Prather on all fours laboriously toward him. 

"I am going to the turn in the _arroyo_ that commands the next turn, "Jack explained. "When I whistle you empty your magazines. Keep your headsdown and fire fast, no matter if not accurately, so as to disturb theiraim at me!"

"_Sí_!" said Firio. "I know!" No one could deny that he was having a verygood time making war in the company of Señor Jack. "Yes, Mister Prather, "he added, when, after toiling painfully on his belly for the few feet hehad to go, Prather lay with his stark face near Firio's; a face strangelylike that of John Wingfield, Sr. When he saw Jasper Ewold from thedrawing-room doorway. "For your life, Mister Prather! _Sí_! Up a littlemore! Chin high as mine, so! Eye on sight, so!"

Prather obeyed in an abyssmal sort of shame which, for the time being, conquered his fear, though not his palsy; for his rifle barrel trembledon its rest. 

Meanwhile, Jack had crept to the bend in the _arroyo_. He was listening. It would not do to show his head as a warning of his presence. Faintly heheard men moving in the sand, moving slowly and cautiously. At the momenthe chose as the right one, with rifle cocked and finger on trigger, hegave his signal. Then he sprang to the top of the bank, fully exposed tothe marksmen at the water-hole. For no half measure would do. He musthave a full view of the bottom of the next bend. There he saw twocrawling figures. He fired twice and dropped down with three or fourstinging whispers in his ears and a second volley overhead as he wasunder cover. Again he sprang up over the bank in the temptation to seethe result of his aim. One of the would-be flankers lay prostrate andstill, face downward. The other was disappearing beyond the second bend. 

"Seven, now!" he thought miserably, in comprehension of the wholebusiness as ridicule in human savagery. "They won't trouble us againimmediately. They will wait on darkness and thirst, " he concluded; andcalled, as he turned back, to Firio: "It worked like a charm, O son ofthe sun! They could not fire at all straight with your bullets flyingabout their heads, disturbing their--" His speech ended at sight ofPrather, half rolling, half tumbling down the slope, his hands over hisface, while he uttered a prolonged moan. 

"Bullet hit a rock under sand!" said Firio, as Jack hastened to assistPrather, who had come to a halt at the very bottom of the _arroyo_ andlay gasping on his side. Jack took hold of Prather's wrists to draw hishands away from the wound. 

"My God! Out here, like a rat in a trap!" Prather groaned. "When I haveall life before me! In sight of millions and power--a rat in a trap outon this damnable desert, as if I were of no more account than a rancher!"

"Let me see!" said Jack; for Prather was holding his hands tight againsthis face, as if he feared that all the blood in his body would pour outif he removed them. "Let me see! Maybe it is not so bad!"

Prather let his hands drop and the right one which was over the cheekwith the mole was splashed red between the fingers. On the cheek was araw spot, from which ran a slight trickle. The mole had gone. A splinterof rock, or perhaps a bullet, with its jacket split, ricochetingsidewise, had torn it clean from the flesh. 

"Not at all dangerous!" said Jack. 

"No?" exclaimed Prather, in utter relief. 

"It will heal in a fortnight!"

A small medicine case was among the regular supplies that were alwayspacked on that omnibus of a burro, Jag Ear. While Jack was bandaging thewound, Firio, who kept watch, had no news to report. 

"Nothing matters! They will get us, anyway!" Prather moaned. The shock ofbeing hit had quite finished any pretence at concealing his mortal fearof the outcome. 

"Oh, I wouldn't say that! We already have them down to seven!" said Jackencouragingly, as he made a pillow of a blanket and bade Prather resthis head on it. 

But he knew well that they were a seven who had learned wisdom from thefate of their comrades. From Nogales, Leddy must have heard of the lossof two horses. At best, but one of the beleaguered three had any means ofescape. Leddy could well afford to curb his impatience as he campedcomfortably by the water-hole, while his own horses grazed. 

The sun was still above the western ridge in the effulgence of its adieufor the day. Jack was on his knee, with the broad, level glare full onhim, looking at Prather, who was in the shadow; and his reflections weremixed with that pity which one feels toward another who is lame or blindor suffers for the want of any sense or faculty that is born to theaverage human being. For a man of true courage rarely sees a coward asanything but a man ailing; he is grateful for nature's kindness tohimself. And the spark of John Wingfield, Knight, skipping generationsbefore it settled on a descendant, had not chosen John Prather for itsfavor. The ancestor was all Jack's. 

Prather, in his agony of mind, had moments of wondering envy as hewatched Jack's changing expression. He could see that Jack, in entiredetachment from his problem of fighting Leddy, was thinking soberly inthe silence of the desert, unconscious in his absorption of the presenceof any other human being. Suddenly his eyes opened wide in theluminousness of a happy discovery; his lips turned a smile of supremesatisfaction, and his face seemed to be giving back the light of the sun. 

"It's all right!" he said. "Yes, everything is going to be all right!"

"How?" asked Prather wistfully, feeling the infection of the confidentring of Jack's tone. 

"There is one horse left, " said Jack. "He is in better condition thanLeddy imagines. When darkness comes you can get away with him and bymorning he will have brought you to water at Las Cascadas, halfway on therange trail. Then you will be quite safe. "

"Yes! Yes!" Prather half rose, his breath coming fast, his eyes ravenous. 

"And in return you will give Little Rivers back its water rights! Is thata bargain?" Jack asked. 

"Give up my concession and all it means to me! Give it up absolutely--itsmillions!" objected Prather, in an uncontrollable impulse of greed. 

"King Richard III, you remember, " Jack declared, with a trace of his oldhumor breaking out over the new aspect of the situation, "said he wouldgive his kingdom for a horse. He could not get the horse and he lost bothhis kingdom and his life. If he had been able to make the trade he mighthave saved his life and perhaps--who knows?--have won another kingdom. "

"I will save my life!" Prather concluded; but under his breath he addedbitterly: "And you get both the store and Little Rivers!" in theprehensile instinct which gains one thing only to covet another. 

"You have the papers for the concession with you?" Jack asked. 

"I--I--"

"Yes!" interposed Jack firmly. 

"Yes!" Prather admitted. 

"And you have pencil and paper to make some sort of transfer that will bethe first legal step in undoing what you have done?"

"Yes. "

While Prather was occupied with this, Jack found pencil and paper on hisown account and by the light of the sun's last rays and in the happinessof one who has brought a story to a good end, he wrote to his father:

"John Prather will tell you how he and I met out on the desert before youcame and of the long talk we had. 

"You wanted a son who would go on building on the great foundation youhad laid. You have one. He said that you wanted to give him the store. The reason why you might not give it to him no longer exists. The mole isgone. Of course there will be a scar where the mole was. I, too, shallhave to carry a scar. But the means is in your power to go far towarderasing his, for his mother, Mrs. Prather, is still living. 

"So everything is clear. Everything is coming out right. John Prather andI change places, as nature intended that we should. You need have noapprehensions on my account. Though I had not a cent in the world I couldmake my living out here--a very sweet thought, this, to me, with itspromise of something real and practical and worth while, at which I canmake good. I know that you are going to keep the bargain that Prather andI have made; and think of me as over the pass and very happy as I writethis, in the confidence that at last all accounts have been balanced andwe can both turn to a fresh page in the ledger. JACK. "

When Jack, after he had received the transfer, gave the letter to Pratherto read, Prather was transfixed with incredulity. 

"You mean this?" he gasped blankly, as his surprise became articulate. 

"Yes. You have quite the better of King Richard--you gain both thekingdom and the horse. "

"The store, yes, the store--mine! Mine--the store!" said Prather, in aslow, passionate monotone, his fingers trembling with the very triumph ofpossession as he thrust the letter into his pocket. "The store, yes, thestore!" he repeated, amazement mixed with exultation. "But--" his keen, practical mind was recovering its balance; he was on guard again. Betweenhim and the realization of his inheritance lay the shadow of the fear ofthe miles in the night. "But--there is no trick?" he hazarded insuspicion. 

"No!"

Jack spoke in such a way that it removed the last doubt for Prather, whokneaded his palms together in a kind of frenzy, oblivious of all exceptthe moneyed prospect of the kingdom craved that had become a kingdom won. 

"How long before I start?" he asked. 

"As soon as the first darkness settles and before the moon rises. "

"I shall need some food, " Prather went on ingratiatingly. "And they saywounds bring on fever. Have you any water to drink on the way?"

"We will fix you up the best we can. I will divide what water remainsbetween you and P. D. He shall have his share now and you can drinkyours later. "

The sun had set. The afterglow was fading, and in a few minutes, when thelight was quite out of the heavens, Jack announced that it was time forPrather to start. 

"How shall I know the direction?" Prather asked. 

"Trust P. D. He will find it, " said Jack. He held the stirrup for Pratherto mount with the relief of freeing himself at last from the clingingtouch of the phantoms. "You are perfectly safe. In two days you will bemounting the steps of a Pullman on your way to New York. "

"And you? What--what are you going to do?" Prather inquired hectically, with a momentary qualm of shame. 

"Why, if Firio and I are to have water to make coffee for breakfast wemust take the water-hole!" Jack answered, as if this were a thing ofminor importance beside seeing Prather safely on his way. "Be sure not tooverwater P. D. After the night's ride, and don't overdo him on the finalstretch, and turn him over to Galway when you arrive. Home, P. D. ! Home!"he concluded, striking that good soldier with the flat of his hand on thebuttocks. And P. D. Trotted away into the night. 

Jack listened to the hoof-beats on the soft earth dying away and thencrept up beside Firio on the bank and gazed into the black wall in thedirection of the cotton-woods. A slight glow in the basin, which must beLeddy's camp-fire, was the only sign of life in the neighborhood. Thesilence was profound. He had not spoken a word to Firio. With oneproblem forever solved, he was absorbed in another. 

"Leddy drinks, eats, waits!" whispered Firio. "If we try to go theyhunt us down!"

"Yes, " said Jack. 

"And we not go, eh? We stay? We fight?"

"For water, Firio, yes! Two against seven!"

"_Sí_!" Firio had no illusions about the situation. "_Sí_!" he repeatedstoically. 

"And, Firio--" Jack's hand slipped with a quick, gripping caress ontoFirio's shoulder. An inspiration had come to the mind of action, just asa line comes to a poet in a flash; as one must have come to the ancestormany times after he had gone into a tight place trusting to his wits andhis blade to bring him out. "And, Firio, we are going to change our base, as the army men say--and change it before the moon rises. Jag Ear, weshall have to leave you behind, " he added, when they had dropped back tothe burro's side. "Just make yourself comfortable. Leddy surely wouldn'tthink of killing so valuable a member of the non-combatant class. We willcome for you, by and by. It will be all right!"

He gave the sliver of ear an affectionate corkscrew twist before he andFirio, taking all their ammunition, crawled along the bottom of the_arroyo_ and up the ridge where they settled down comfortably behind aledge commanding the water-hole at easy range. 

"It's lucky we learned to shoot in the moonlight!" Jack whispered. 

"_Sí"!_ Firio answered, in perfect understanding. 

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 Señor 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, SeñorJack--_sí, sí_!"

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. 

"Señor 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! Señor Jack he see it. "

"And all through the night you kept firing?"

"_Sí, _ after moon very bright and over our shoulders in their faces!_Sí_, 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, Señor Jack and Leddy call out to eachother. Leddy he swear hard, like he fight. Señor 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 Señor 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 Señor Jack, with the devil out again, 'sorry--and we'll see!' No, Señor 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 from 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. 

"_Sí_! We had enough fight! We get old and sober! _Sí_, 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!"