"Whayee!" Piney found a shivering voice at last, "ef I never git rich till I come down into an ugly hole fer riches I'll be mighty pore all my days." Bruce smiled absently at the boy's susceptibility, but threw a reassuring arm about his shoulder. He smiled again when presently Piney drew away. That was Piney's habit, as affectionate in instinct as a kitten, and as timid of manifestation as a wild doe.

Old Bernique called his little party to a halt at the bottommost dip of the Gulch, where a deep, clear and rock-bound spring wound murmurously over a rocky bed. Two red spots came out in the old man's cheeks, his eyes began fairly to flame again, his breath came in wheezy gasps, and his old face pinched up sharp and sensitive as a pointer's nose. He pointed to the debris of shattered rock about the spring. "The wataire fell over a cap-rock here," he said brusquely, the nervous constriction of his throat making it hard for him to say anything. "The strata underneath were soft and had been worn away by the wataire. I put a duck-nest of dynamite in there this morning,—and—see—there!"

Anybody could see; the zinc and lead ores were disseminated, rich and warm, in the loose rocks of the out-cropping. "It's a vein thirty inches thick and it runs,—it runs str-r-aight through the Canaan Tigmores,—sometimes sinking many feet from the surface,—but always there,—I am vair' sure of that,—str-r-aight through the Canaan Tigmores——" The old man's breath began to jerk with a sick, sobbing sound.

"Well,"—Steering was not so unaccustomed a miner by now but what the sight there in the Gulch had its effect upon him,—"Well," he said gingerly, "if you are right, Uncle Bernique, if the face doesn't cut blind, why, Mr. Crittenton Madeira and old Grierson have a good thing, haven't they?"

"Urg-h-h!" Old Bernique made a gnashing sound and leaned his head listeningly. The thud of the stream-drill reached them faintly from its place afar in the Canaan Tigmores. "They come fas'!" he said mournfully.

"Wisht I wuz aouter this," interrupted Piney, shivering.

"I have been track' thees mother lode,"—began old Bernique again, his feverish gaze again seeking out Bruce,—"I think,"—he stopped and fell to musing,—"What you gawn do, Mistaire Steering," he queried suddenly, with his weary old head twisted to one side, "what you gawn do about thees?"

"Lord, Uncle Bernique, I can't do anything. You might do something for yourself. You might sell your rights of discovery, might not you?"

"Non! Non! There is othaire thing,—there is a most good possibilitee,—thees mother lode, Mistaire Steering, it come out,—I think it come out somewhere, eh?—Mistaire Steering, have you got leetle mawney?"

"That's exactly how much, Uncle Bernique, a little."

"Mistaire Steering, eef you got leetle mawney to buy leetle land, I think I know good land to buy."

"I have told you all along to consider my money your money, Uncle Bernique."

"We must be vair' quiet about all thees, Mistaire Steering,—Piney, you compr-r-ehend that we tr-r-us' you, as I have always tr-r-us' you, absolutement! We must be vair' quiet. Thees leetle piece land run down close to the rivaire, below Poetical, at those Sowfoot Crossing, and eet ees not vair' good land for the farming——"

Thud! Thud! The old man caught his temples with both hands. "I am 'most craze' by that steam-drill," he whispered. "Eet come so close to our secret. Let us get away. That sound cr-r-aze me. Found! Found! Vair' large lode, Mistaire Steering.—Sacre! The sound of that steam-drill is to me the most worse thing. That lode run through and come out by the rivaire, eef I am not mistake', Mistaire Steering. I go to buy that land to-night. You go back with Piney, please sair. Eef you come with me, you excite the question and the price. To me it will be sold without question. I am eccentrique, they say. You return to Canaan and have your mawney ready for me, Mistaire Steering. That bat Grierson, Mistaire Steering! When I think——"

Old Bernique was still throwing out riches of castigation at Grierson, Madeira, himself, fate, still half incoherent, when the three friends at last got back to their horses, and separated. Down at the foot of the bluff again, Steering, a little sore-headed with the ache of anticipation, hope, doubt, sat his horse in Piney's company and watched the old man ride off up the river unattended. Steering felt excited and exalted himself, but the old Frenchman was really, as he said, "craze'." Piney was the only sensible one left. Piney was not at all enthused and stayed very quiet until he parted with Bruce some distance out from Canaan. Bruce went on back to town to wait for Old Bernique at the hotel.

Piney took the path that led up to the bluff behind Madeira Place. As he came through the Madeira grounds Crittenton Madeira came out of the house and stood on the back porch, regarding him quizzically. Piney had a peculiar, poorly hidden dislike of Madeira that, taken with the boy's charm of personality, more or less amused the Canaan capitalist.

"Where have you been, young man?"

"In the woods."

"Look here, learning anything when you are out with that man Steering?"

"Yep."

"What, for instance?"

"Not to talk."

Madeira laughed carelessly. "You go and get Miss Madeira to sing, young Impudence," he said. "I'd just as soon hear the tenor, too. I am going to rest,"—he sighed deeply,—"I'm going to try to rest out here in the garden. I'd like some music."

Madeira went to the garden and stretched out on a bench, the smile that he had given Piney staying on his face, crinkling in automatically with the grievous strain that was about his eyes and mouth in these days. After a little he closed his eyes softly, enjoyingly. From the library came the carolling sweetness of Piney's tenor. And by and by, following it, soaring up with it, the glorious fulness of Salome Madeira's velvety soprano.

Bruce, far down the river road, heard, too.



Chapter Twelve

THE COLOSSUS OF CANAAN

After Crittenton Madeira had organised the Canaan Mining and Development Company the Canaan Call sent him in one leaping, exultant paragraph out of his position as "our esteemed fellow townsman" into a position of far more classic significance by naming him the "Colossus of Canaan." Madeira was a man of lightning-like execution of a plan, once he had got hold of his plan, and Bruce Steering, sharpened by circumstances into a consideration of every chance about him and even beyond him, had brought Madeira the plan from far away New York. Throwing his immense energies toward the prospect of ore in the Canaan Tigmores, bringing forward every dollar of his fortunes,—as usual not so large as they were accredited with being,—to finance his new projects, Madeira had accomplished wonders within an incredibly short time. There were those, unacquainted with the contents of an envelope in Madeira's vest pocket, who marvelled that a sharp man should let his projects be entangled with entailed property, but for the most part Canaanites were too accustomed to follow where Madeira led to marvel, or to ask foolish questions. Even for those so inclined Madeira had good answers. On the one side, he could show, from the progress already made, that there must be such a great quantity of ore in the Canaan Tigmores that it would be possible to take fortunes out of them during old Grierson's possession of the hills, even though the old man lived but a few years. On the other side he could show that it was not in the Canaan Tigmores alone that he was pushing the search for ore, but in the outlying land that had passed into his control as well. It was true that he had put a steam-drill into the Canaan Tigmores, but it was equally true that he had put steam-drills up the Di at two or three points far beyond the Tigmores. He made it as plain as day that the operations of the Canaan Mining and Development Company would extend all over that section, and that the Company's chances could not be taken away even by the death of Grierson. And he made it equally and cheerfully plain that Grierson would not die.

Out on the streets of Canaan, among the puppets who danced at his touch upon the strings, Madeira never faltered in his exposition of the Company's affairs and enterprises, and in the Company's offices behind the Bank of Canaan, his direction was steady, resourceful and comforting. He could build up potential profits for the investing Canaanites and build down potential failure in a manner so satisfying that the Canaanites gladly gave him their money and fondly hung upon him.

It was Mr. Quin Beasley, that conclusive reasoner, who said, "Simlike ef you talk to Crit fer abaout th'ee bats of your eye he cand show you that ef innybody,—don't keer who,—would putt, wall say,—wall, don't keer haow much you say,—as much as tin thousand,—in the Comp'ny an' leave it slumber fer say—wall, don't keer haow long you say,—as much as fo', five months,—it 'ud be wuth,—be wuth,—wall, I don't keer to over-fetch, but I reckin f'm whut Crit says, th'aint no tellin' whut it would be wuth."

And it was the Canaan Call that endorsed Mr. Madeira in that emphatic editorial, which is herewith reproduced, just as it was doled out relentlessly to the few Canaan sulkers, under the caption of

"IT WILL BE DRAMATIC, BY GOSH!

"When Crit Madeira, the Colossus of Canaan, accomplishes what he surely shall accomplish, when the roar of mill machinery begins to reverberate through the hills of the future Joplin, arousing the vast energies and resources of We-all, Pewee and Big Wheat, let us be generous. If there was a sponge, kicker, shirk or drone, let us cover his selfishness with the mantle of charity. Leave him under the beating light of progress to wrestle with whatever remnant of a conscience he may happen to have. If he can stand by and coolly watch us work our gizzards out for the common good, and then reach out to share the fruits of our sacrifices, energies and enterprise, without a qualm, we can remember that there are many things in this world worth far more than money, one of which is that sense of having done our neighbour's share as well as our own. It will be enough for us to watch when, bewildered by the lusty life and growth and the maze of new-made streets of the future city, the laggard stands debating with that other self, that genius that has kept him what he is. Fancy his striking attitude, thumbs in arm-pits and eyes rolling up to some tall spire, crying out to his other self, 'Thou canst not say I helped do this! Shake not thy towseled locks at me!'—By gosh, it will be dramatic!"[2]

Within a month after Bruce Steering had entered the portals of Missouri, Madeira had put his first steam-drill into the hills. Within two more weeks he had put in another. It took him less time to do the things that other men think about and talk about and put off than any man Steering had ever known. One day, not so very long after old Bernique's find in Choke Gulch, word had gone over Canaan like an eagle's scream that ore had been struck in the Canaan Tigmores. Old Bernique had wrung his hands, and Steering had gone grimly back to a little up-river shack, at Redbud, below Sowfoot Crossing, where he was spending a great deal of his time these later days.

As the winter broke, Madeira's ability to seize the pivotal point on which to turn theory into practice wrought so surely and so swiftly as to be inexplicable to anyone unaware of the fever that drove him on. His first face of ore had cut blind, but he only put two more drills to work, and in the early spring one of the drills struck ore again, a small face, but ore. They had not found the big lode yet, but every indication was that much to the good. The Canaan Call became so jubilant over the second find that even the sulkers lost sight of the fact that the find was on entailed property. Confidence in Madeira went to high pitch, a supreme tension that a touch might snap.

All Canaan was waking up in these days, all Tigmore County was nervous. Town and county were in a pleased, tortured, ante-boom consciousness that, first thing you know, there would be a new Canaan. Some new streets were laid out; a number of people bought chenille portieres; and though Crittenton Madeira quietly drew his money out of the Grange, for other and weightier uses, the Grange secured new capital elsewhere and flourished mightily. For farmers from We-all Prairie and Pewee and Big Wheat Valley, cotton raisers from the "Upper Bottom" and corn and cattle men from the "Lower Bottom" came into Canaan "to trade," and filled the aisles of the Grange, gossiping, getting information about the ore developments, then crossing swiftly and determinedly to Madeira's bank to leave their money with the president of the Canaan Mining and Development Company.

Out at his house, in his office, in the garden, on horseback, on foot, Madeira kept his daughter Sally near him. He watched his daughter almost constantly, just for the satisfaction of seeing her. As the girl went about her household duties, or walked in the garden with her long, supple stride, or rode the high-tempered horses from the stable, or drove with him, the fine glow on her face, her magnificent health and honesty and strength radiating from her, she was, for Madeira, a continual justification.

"Catch me taking anything away from a girl like that to give it to a damn Yankee like Steering," he would tell himself over and over. "Won't she do the most good with it? It'll be hers soon. Won't she do the most good? Answer me that, now."

So much for the outside where Madeira lived in the world of realities and met the various demands of each day's relations capably and coolly. Inside his private office behind the bank, at his desk, he lived in another world, a world where shadow became substance, possibility became actuality and fear made facts out of fancy.

At night, after Canaan had put its lights out and had lapsed into the shroud-like stillness of a country town's sleep, Madeira was there, with his ghost, in his office,—figuring, figuring. On the roll-top of his desk he kept a letter spread out in front of him. It always happened that he took that letter out of his vest pocket for the purpose of destroying it, and it always happened that when he got up, far into the night, he picked the letter up and replaced it in his pocket. If the words of the letter had been seared across eternity with the red-hot iron of fate they could not have been more indestructible.

Besides the letter, Madeira always had on the desk maps, geological surveys, time estimates. Von Moltke never figured half so carefully nor on half so many shaky hypotheses as did Madeira in his office during these nights. He came to know, through awful, blood-sweating hours, that with so much blasting, so much pick-and-shovel work, allowing for so many back-sets from water and blind rock, so many shifts of men could progress to certain points, in so many days. He sometimes realised that all this was unnecessary; that it was aging him and crazing him; that he could put his work through on the Tigmores long before word of old Grierson's death would, by any unfortuitous accident, leak into Canaan, if it ever got there; that he would never have to resort to the subways that he was figuring on to steal the ore out of the Canaan Tigmores; that all this ceaseless, merciless calculation was but the reaction of a conscience, stalking, gaunt and lunatic, through the charnel-house of its own experience. But for all that he had to go on crossing bridges that he was never to reach, covering black tracks that he was never to make. Often at his desk there, his mind became strangely obtunded and he babbled vapidly; his big face pinched up till it seemed lean and grey, and he pitched forward, face down, upon the desk.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The author acknowledges a conspicuous indebtedness to a Southwestern weekly for this editorial.



Chapter Thirteen

MISS SALLY MADEIRA'S SWEETHEART

Miss Sally Madeira, trying to make her way down Main Street one Saturday afternoon, in the early spring of the year 1900, had to go very slowly because of the country people in front of the Grange. Occasionally some of the farm-wives called to her shily. The road was noisy and dusty with the passing of mule-teams, buggies, buckboards, riders on horseback. Out of the continuous rattle a child's voice piped shrilly. The owner of the voice was a little girl who wore a hat with a bunch of cherries on it. She stood up in the bed of a farm-waggon and screamed at Miss Madeira, who at once made her way to the edge of the side-walk of broken bricks and waited for the little girl's waggon to come in to the curb. The waggon was full of children, but Miss Madeira was somehow able to call them all by name.

"He gimme fifty cents!" was what the cherry-hat little girl said immediately, with some genius for steering conversation toward the things that interested her.

"You rich thing!" cried Miss Madeira, and then foolishly, and unnecessarily, inquired, "who is he?"

"Yo' sweetheart."

Miss Madeira lowered her voice in such a suggestive manner that when the little girl spoke again her voice was lowered, too.

"When did you see him?" asked Miss Madeira.

"See him ev' day. I cand go daown to Sowfoot by myse'f. He's sick." Miss Madeira looked quickly at some of the older members of the family in the waggon. They were a hill farm family from Sowfoot Crossing neighbourhood. "Yep, he's been sick,—with the malary simlike," was what the older members had to say upon the subject. Miss Madeira quickly left the subject and talked about the corn crop and the price of chickens for a little while, then presently went on down Main Street toward her father's bank, where her black horses were hitched.

Far down Main Street, in front of one of the frame houses that edged the street on either side, some children were enjoying a bonfire of dead leaves, front doors were opening and women were coming out to watch the fire; and, by their interest-lit eyes and by what they called to each other across the slumberous afternoon air, were showing that they were skilled in getting diversion out of smaller things than bonfires. It was the neighbourhood of Canaan's biggest and best. The doors that had opened had shown glimpses of the finest three-ply carpets in all Tigmore County, and though the women who had come out on the porches had grammatical peculiarities of their own, they were distinctly unapologetic and assured. You could easily imagine them laughing, with a consciousness of advantage, at the other grades of grammar and carpets in Canaan.

"Smells real good, don't it?" called one who was comfortable and portly, and who had her apron wrapped about her hands, "always makes me feel that spring's came when the rakin' and burnin' begin."

"Mrs. Pringle told me that they had some big fires aout toward the Ridge las' night. Burned the rakin' aout to Madeira Place. I missed that. D'you see it? I mighta seen it just as well's not from my back porch, tew!" shrilled another woman, in whose words a well-defined jealousy was patent, the jealousy of the person whose life is too small for her to afford to miss any of it.

"Yes, you oughta saw it," chimed in another. "Cert'n'y was no little-small flame. I could see Sally movin' araoun' in the flare. Had that tramp-boy taggin' abaout with her. I declare, if he di'n' look like a gipsy!"

The neighbourly throng was at this moment augmented by the appearance of two ladies who fluttered out on the porch of a rose-trellised cottage, like small, proud pouter pigeons. They were the Misses Marion, twin-sisters, quite inseparable, and, because their minds had run in exactly the same groove for all of their lives and because they were of about equal mental readiness, apt to get the same impression at exactly the same time, and apt to attempt expression in exactly the same breath.

Occasionally this was trying, both to the Misses Marion and to their hearers, and it was particularly trying when the two now called simultaneously from the rose-embowered porch to the women in the neighbouring yards:

"Have you heard——"

"Have you heard——"

Miss Shelley Marion turned to Miss Blair Marion with delicate courtesy: "Continue, sister," she said, just as Miss Blair said, "Sister, continue."

"Have we heard what, for goodness' sake?" snapped one of the would-be hearers, breaking in rawly upon the soft waves of the hand and the imploring taps with which each of the two gentlewomen was endeavouring to make way for the other.

"I continued last time, sister."

"I think not, Blair; I think I did. Proceed."

"Have you heard the news?" Miss Blair having yielded with great self-rebuke to Miss Shelley, the question gurgled liquidly from yard to yard, like a small twisting brook.

The two women whose yards adjoined the Misses Marions' yard came down to the separating fences and leaned their arms on the paling rails waitingly; the third woman moved up to the corner of her yard which was nearest the Misses Marion. She was the woman who had deplored missing the hill fires, and there was a resolute look on her face.

"Talk loud, Miss Blair," she said commandingly. But before Miss Blair could get her mouth open to talk at all there was the sound of horses' hoofs from up toward Court House Square, and a light vehicle, drawn by two powerful Kentucky blacks, rolled into view.

"Lawk, it's Sally Madeira!" cried Miss Blair impulsively, and then looked immediately convicted, for Miss Shelley had got only as far as "Lawk!"

When the slender equipage, with its spirited, long-tailed horses, and its high springy seat, with the erect young figure on it, had gone by, the women looked at each other, with pursed lips and knowing eyes.

"There, aint I been sayin'," cried the fat one, "she's a-lookin' peaked!"

Then somebody noticed that the Misses Marion were in the throes of another spasm of courtesy, and, reminded by that of the critical juncture where Miss Blair had left off a few minutes before, one of the women called to her:

"What news was that, Miss Blair? Say, you! Miss Blair! What news?"

"Why," said Miss Blair, having finally effected some sort of affectionate compromise with Miss Shelley, "why, these news,—they say that that N'York man is Sally Madeira's sweetheart, tew!"

"Lan' alive! I've heard that m'self!" said Mrs. Beasley, the wife of the Grange storekeeper. She had heard no such thing, but Mrs. Beasley was an idealist of no mean order, and she at once got a feeling about the matter that was little short of knowledge, and went on with headlong impetus, "I've heard that m'self. Yes, he's her sweetheart."

"The men up to the Grange said not, at first."

"Men never know."

Meantime, out beyond the town, Miss Madeira had circled around to the river road, and, coming up behind Madeira Place, passed it at a smart clip.

Farther along, the river road left the river to bend through Poetical on its little plateau, and the gait at which Miss Madeira went through Poetical was disturbing to the geese and hogs there. East of Poetical she got back to the river. It was very still along the Di. She could hear her own heart beating. Once it occurred to her that life would have been much simpler if she had gone to Europe the past fall, as Miss Elsie Gossamer had insisted upon her doing. Once she murmured, "It would be all right if he would only tell me,—I can't do anything until he tells me—what can a woman do until he tells her!" On ahead of her she could see a little shack perched up the bluff, and in front of the shack, on a log that served for a bench, a man sat, making something out of something. His hands were busy.

He got to his feet a little unsteadily as she came toward him. It seemed to him that there was a blue veil across his eyes, but he winked it away quickly enough, shook the ache out of his shoulders, put down the shoe-string that he was making out of a squirrel's skin, and stood in front of the shack waiting, with his hat in his hand. He had on a mud-stained corduroy hunting suit and big buckskin leggings, and there was a week's growth of beard on his face. He looked not unlike a highly civilised bear, and he felt his looks. She did not seem to see him until she was close upon him.

"Oh," she cried, "I was not expecting to find you here," and when that sounded a little bald, added quickly, "I heard that you were sick and I thought it likely that you were up in Canaan."

"Oh, no, I am not sick," he told her, hastening down to the trap, the delicious excitement that possessed him well restrained, "and since you have found me here, won't you get out and have some,—well, let me see,—some coffee and bacon? And I can make a lovely corn-dodger. Also I have some kind of good stuff in a can, though I can't get the can open. Do please stop and dine." Steering, sick, gaunt, gay, mocking at hardship, hope deferred and far-reaching disappointment, was at his best. Her eyes slipped away from his as he pressed his invitation. Then she laughed softly, with the little shake of her laughter when a notion appealed to her happily.

"I'm going to accept," she said, "I'll cook things and you can eat them."

"I'll make a sacred duty of my part," he promised gravely; he was lifting her from the buggy; her hands were on his shoulders; for a little delirious minute she was in his arms; he could not keep his hands from closing about her sweet body lingeringly as he lifted her; her eyes were looking into his, her face was coming down close to his; he had a wild fleeting hallucination that she——

"Don't imagine," she began, and his senses came back to him and he set her down, "don't imagine that I can't cook. Where's your range?"

He showed her a scooped-out place in the side of the bluff. "There are two bricks in the back, two on each side and two on the top," he explained with some pride.

"I am afraid you have brought foolish habits of luxury out of the East with you," was her reply. She made him build her a fire and bring some water and meal and then she took things entirely out of his hands.

"It's a picnic," she said. Her gown she had folded back and pinned up until a little tangle of silk and lace frou-froued beneath it bewilderingly; her sleeves she had rolled back until the creamy tan of her round slim arms showed to the elbow; her hat she had taken off, and the sun danced in the gold lustres of her hair. She was all aglow; she belonged out in the fresh air and the sunlight like this; she could stand it; that dusky-gold radiance played from her like a burnish. Steering sat down on the log bench and watched her, hypnotised by her into haunting fancies of something, somebody, somewhere. She was one of those beings whose rich magnetism of face and personality brings them close to you, not only for the present, but also for the past, one of those people who are apt to make you feel that you have known them before, forever, a feeling that flowers into elusive fragrances, suggestions, reminiscences, flown on the first stir of a thought to catch them.

"What a long time since I even so much as saw you," he sighed happily, happy because here before him in the body again she was exactly the girl he remembered, exactly the girl he had dreamed of all winter. "What have you done all winter?" he asked.

"Nursed Father. He has stayed at home with me a good deal. It was a lovely winter, wasn't it?"

Steering thought of the long, quiet, lonely days, the weeks, the months during which he had seen her only to bow to her. Then he thought of the calendar inside his office. Every day that he had seen her on his rare trips up river to Canaan was marked with an imitation of the rising sun. There were only eight rising suns for the whole winter. Then he thought how the memory of those sun days had stayed with him and made him feel blessed. Then he answered, "Yes, it has been lovely,—nice, open weather. I have been out on the Di in a skiff almost every day." He did not add that every day his journey had been to the upper water near Madeira Place; but he might have.

"Once or twice I have seen you." She did not add that she had stood at her window, behind a partly drawn blind, gazing after him through slow tears; but she might have. "What a very long time indeed since we saw each other,—and talked to each other!"

"Oh, about two thousand years," he answered with careful calculation.

"I wonder if you remember the ride across country into the sunset?"

Should he ever forget it? Then the spring wind blew up to them from off the Di with a coolish, dampening touch. "What do you hear from Elsie?" he asked, heeding the wind's touch.

"She is in love. What do you hear from Mr. Carington?"

"That same. It seems very right and fit. Carington and Elsie are well mated. The wedding will happen in July. Carry wants me to come back to him for it."

She was stirring the meal and water together briskly, with her back half turned to him. At his words she stopped in her work and put her hand up to her heart with her strange little pushing gesture, as though she must push her heart down. "And you will go, I suppose?"

"No, I shan't go."

She took her hand down and laughed lightly. He could not hear the joyful relief in the laugh, but she could. "My, but you have become attached to Redbud, haven't you? Hasn't it been lonely for you here?"

"Well, the cherry hat little girl up above Sowfoot has been a comfort. And then I've studied a heap."

"Studied what?"

"Mizzourah!"

"Redbud and Sowfoot are good teachers," she laughed; then her face sobered quickly, "but I don't think you should stay down here by the river when you are ill," she said. Her sweet, wistful interest was balsamic to him. For a moment he tried to look sicker than he was.

"Oh, it's nothing, nothing," he protested in a gone voice.

"Yes, it is something," she had the corn-dodgers going over a slow fire and was dubiously regarding a second skillet that he had brought her. "Don't you ever try water for it?" she interrupted herself to ask. He admitted that he was not as careful of the skillet as he should be, and she went back to her first anxiety, "Why do you stay here when you are ill?"

"Oh, I'm not ill a bit, not really." He had forgotten to be ill. Regarding her dreamily from his bench he was wishing that the moment could be eternity, that he could be hungry forever and that forever she could make corn-dodgers for him.

"I think you are sick. Something is the matter with you?"

"Yes," he changed his position a little on the bench, "something is the matter with me."

"Well, why don't you go on and say what?" She put the skillet on some of the coals and the coffee-pot on the skillet, being too busy to look around at him.

"Oh!"—he wanted to tell her, but his pride saved him in time. She was in rich in gold and land and cattle, in ore, too now; and he? He didn't know how he was going to fill his meal sack the next time it was empty. That was where matters had got with him. "I think I won't go on and say what, after all; let's not bother. Let's just be happy for the minute. That's something I have learned out here in Missouri, just to be happy when you get the chance, minute by minute, no matter what sort of hours are to come after. This, now, is so much more than I had hoped for. I hadn't really hoped to see you again before——"

"Before what?"

"Well, a fellow can't go on like this forever, can he? I expect I am going to cut all this."

"What! And leave Uncle Bernique?"

"Uncle Bernique can hold the claim alone, you know. And I'm wasting hope and energy here. What's the use in staying longer?"

She was very busy with the bacon now and he did not see her face. There was a wild quiver on it, of grief, fright, dismay.

"You ought not to leave Uncle Bernique and Piney, I am sure of that," she said at last earnestly, almost commandingly.

"Heigh-ho! I think Bernique is getting restless, too. He will be drifting off soon on that tidal wave of ore fever that comes over him; Piney has been gone for a great while. It's pretty lonely. It's getting on my nerves. Of course I shouldn't pet my nerves if I had any hope about the run here, but I haven't. I think that the work we have carried on is fairly conclusive."

"But wait a minute, didn't you buy this land? Didn't you put some money in it?"

Steering laughed blithely. "Not much," he said. The thing that made him laugh was the fact that though it was not much it was all that he had, and it was, in a way, amusing to consider how he was to get away from Canaan. Looking at Sally Madeira, who suggested luxury nonchalantly, trouble about ways and means was bound to be untimely and laughable. Indeed, looking at Sally Madeira all troubles were more or less laughable.

"You haven't gone to Europe?" he reminded her, after he had drunk her health in the coffee.

"No! I haven't gone."

"Are you going?"

"Not unless Father's health improves."

"Isn't he well?"

"No," her face clouded sadly, "he is over-working. Oh, you don't know how sorry I am," she began, and faltered.

"Sorry? for him?"

"Yes. And for you. And for m— and because things have come around like this."

"Let's not be sorry just now," said Steering. "Won't you, please, talk about glad things now. It's so pleasant to have you here." Since she was unhappy, he took charge of her unhappiness, and would not be serious any longer about anything. When she brought him his corn-dodger on a shingle and more coffee in a tin dipper, he was foolish with happiness, kept his own spirits high and overcame every little disposition to seriousness on her part until their picnic had to come to an end, and she must be starting back down the river road.

"Do you feel like doing something for me?" she asked, her hand in his, as she made ready to go.

"Something? Everything."

"Then wait just as long as you can, will you?"

"Yes, I will, gladly, since you ask it, just as long as I can." Steering's voice sang as he answered.

She would not let him accompany her on her homeward journey, but went on down the river road alone, and Steering returned to the shack, and carefully measured the amount left in his meal sack, and carefully counted the money in his wallet. There was just about enough in the sack to last ten days, flanked by the potatoes and the bacon, and there was so little in the wallet that any kind of emotion about it seemed a waste. Still, he did not appear to appreciate the extremity of the situation as yet. His face was all lit up and the sound of his own voice pleased him.

"I will wait, just as long as I can," he repeated at the end of his calculations, "and I can till the meal gives out."



Chapter Fourteen

WHEN THE MEAL GAVE OUT

Steering sat on his bunk in his shack with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and his eyes upon an empty bag that hung from the bough of a weeping-willow tree. He had just written Carington to explain that it could not be said that he had conquered Missouri, and that he was leaving next day for Colorado to try his luck at gold on the Cripple Creek circuit. He had not explained to Carington that he would walk the greater part of the way. By some strange perversity of pride a man never does explain a thing of that kind to anybody, least of all to Carington, best friend and close sympathiser.

Arrangements for his journey were about complete. Before he had left New York he had turned everything into ready cash that could be so turned, so that even when he first reached Missouri his personal effects had not made travel a burden to him. During the past weeks all the balance of his belongings that possessed any negotiability whatsoever had been turned into meal. And his meal sack was empty! By no sort of foreknowledge can a man accustomed to enough money for current expenses,—a goodly budget as recognised by the class of which Steering was an exemplar,—imagine, during his easy circumstances, how he would feel if ever things should so go against him that he would be left staring into an empty meal sack. Steering felt an awkward incompetence to realise the case now. He had looked at the sack at close range, patted it, as though to mollify its consequences to him, pooh-poohed it, taken it philosophically, taken it smilingly, but he had been all the time unable to get his eyes off it, even though he had finally carried it down to the river's edge and hung it upon the bough of the weeping willow tree. His eyes were still upon it, he was still regarding it at long range, through the shack door, getting the foreshorten of it, getting the middle distance, getting the perspective, utterly unable to stop his ceaseless staring into the emptiness of it, stop wondering what next and how next.

He got up and went to the door of the shack and looked out. By and by it occurred to him that the case would be much worse if there were anyone besides himself concerned. All the vague fleeting sympathies that had ever been aroused within him by newspaper stories of starving families, the nearest he had ever come to the actuality of starving families, quivered and stirred within him. The first thing he knew, he was feeling infinitely relieved that he had no starving family. He had a sensitive and active imagination, and, as he pictured the hungry little children that he did not have, tears of gratitude came into his eyes, and he blew gay kisses to those airy little folks.

It was glorious weather. Wild spring flowers were abundant, and there were cheerful whiskings among the trees where the birds and squirrels were busy again. The young shoots strained with the urge of the sap, making little popping noises. Steering started now and again and held his head waitingly. He had been watching and hoping for Piney for days, and was on the alert. Every noise, however, resolved itself into the noise of bird, squirrel, or sapling. There was never the voice nor the footfall of the human. Once that very afternoon, he had been so sure that he had heard Piney's pony up on the bluff that he had gone up there searchingly, joyfully. But except for a little scatter, that he took to be the lift of a covey of quail somewhere off in the Gulch bushes, not a sound or sign came up to the bluff. Steering mourned for Piney. If the tramp-boy had not gone away, things might have been more bearable. But the lad's jealousy and his love for Steering were in battle royal now, and Piney kept far from his hero, on the misty hills. Uncle Bernique was off on the hills, too, almost all the time; at the moment of this present crisis Bernique had been away for days. It was the merciless loneliness of the effort there at Redbud that had been most effective in dulling Steering's endurance. If he had been less lonely he might have devised ways of standing Missouri yet longer. Up at Dade farm they kept telling him, when he went up there for one of his visits to the little girl with the cherries on her hat, that he had "malary." It did not seem to him a very able diagnosis, but, as he had admitted to Miss Madeira, something was the matter with him, and it had now become his notion that the quicker he got out of Missouri the quicker he would be cured of the something. He was all ready to commence his treatment; he had corn-dodgers for supper that night, and for breakfast next morning, and with the morning sun he meant to travel on. The only reason that he did not start now, this minute, was because—well, she had come up the river road about this hour once, and he was waiting. Circumstanced as he was now, with the only three people whom he could count as friends in Missouri almost always away from him, life had come to mean little but this feverish, alert waiting. He went out and sat down by the shivering Di for his very last wait for any of the three.

It was there that old Bernique came upon him. Steering was shivering a little, too.

"Dieu! You have the malaria!" was the Frenchman's greeting.

"Go 'long, I have no such thing; I'm only as lonely as the devil." Steering got up and shook hands with the old man with so much energy that Bernique made a grimace of pain. "Come up here and talk," cried Steering, his eagerness to hear the sound of a human and friendly voice making him overlook the excitement under which Bernique laboured. He tied Bernique's horse to a bush and drew the old man up the bluff. "Where have you been this time? Where is Piney? Hello! what's the matter with you anyhow? struck another lode?"

Old Bernique spread out his palms avertingly. "You go fas'," he protested. "Wait, I beg. I have again had those exper-r-ience that so much disturb me. But no, I have not found anothaire lode, though I have been on the hills vair' long time. Thees day I come a-r-round by the way of Canaan. At the pos'-office I am stop'." The old man was talking now with his eyes burning into Steering's eyes, an expression of horror flattening his face; he held the four fingers of one lean hand pressed to his mouth, so that his words came out inarticulate and broken, though they seemed to scorch his throat like balls of fire. "At the pos'-office one say to me, 'Here is lettaire for you!' I take the lettaire and read.... Now, I ask you, Mistaire Steering, to take it and read." Bernique drew forth a letter from his pocket and thrust it into Steering's hand with a finely dramatic gesture. He had the appreciation of his race for climax.

The letter, Steering saw at once, was in the same gnarled handwriting as that letter which Crittenton Madeira had given him to read on the first day of his arrival in Canaan, and its contents made evident the same gnarled personality that had been made evident by that first letter.

"Read it aloud," said Bernique, and Steering read:

"'Deep Canyon, Colorado, September 23rd, 1899,' hey! what's the matter with the date, where's the slow-boy been?"

"Read on, Mistaire Steering," said Bernique grimly. But Steering looked at the post-mark on the envelope in his hand before he read on.

"Post-mark's dated April 23rd, 1900—why——"

"Read on!" cried old Bernique. "It is explain'," and Steering read on.

"'My dear Placide:—You and I were good friends in the days that we spent in prospecting over the Canaan hills, and, even though I incurred your displeasure when I abandoned the hills, I am depending upon the old friendship to influence you to do a last friendly act for me. It is not necessary for me to acquaint you with the detail of humiliations and persecutions to which I have been subjected by the man of whom I was once so foolish as to borrow money, any more than it is necessary for me to condone to you the desire that has developed within me to make him bite the dust, even as he has made me bite it. I am not remorseless in this. I gave him his chance to escape me, but, quite as I anticipated, he has fallen into the trap that I set for him; else would you not be reading this letter to-day, nearly a year after it was written.

"'Look close now, friend Placide. Nearly a year prior to the date that you will get this, that is to say on the 23rd of last September, the same day that I write this letter to you, I wrote Crittenton Madeira that I should be dead when my letter reached him, dead under an assumed name, in a strange land. It was the God's truth. I was dead when the letter reached him. You are reading a letter from the dead now, friend Placide.'" Steering stopped for a moment with a little shiver, but Bernique urged him on, and he read again—"'Placide, in that letter to Madeira were my instructions to turn over the Canaan Tigmores to Bruce Steering, because, I being dead, the hills were due to pass on to my heir. Well, Placide, has Madeira done that? Has he carried out my instructions? Has he fulfilled his trust? Has Steering possession of the Canaan Tigmores?

"'Like the thief that he is, Madeira has not done his part. Had he done it, you would not be reading this letter to-day. I wrote it and placed it with the clerk of Snow Mountain County, the county in which I died, to be mailed to you on the 23rd of April, 1900, only in case no inquiry had ever come from Madeira to verify my death. No inquiry has ever come! So the clerk of the county, who is my executor, mails this letter to you. This letter, Placide, is to attest that for seven months Crittenton Madeira has been in unlawful possession of the Canaan Tigmores, defrauding my heir and holding land under my name after being advised of my death and of the means of verifying the advice. There are now, in the keeping of the clerk of Snow Mountain County, two sealed envelopes, to be delivered by him, the one to you, the one to Crittenton Madeira. Madeira's has never been called for. See that yours is. In it you will find the credentials of my identity, my sworn statements, and the documents that prove my late encumbency of the entail. I am buried in the pauper's field in the cemetery of Deep Canyon. The stone slab that I have directed to be put over me bears the inscription, "James Gray, Died September 23, 1899."

"'Get your proofs together, Placide, and carry them to the defrauded heir. I have not forgotten the letters that I received from him, nor his young eagerness to get at the land that is now his and that should have been his nearly a year ago. Put the proofs before him. And I pray that he may be quick and sure to deal out judgment and retribution. He is my kinsman. Let him for me, as well as for himself, wield the lash that I put in his hands.

"'Do these things for me, friend Placide, and believe that even in the grave, I remain,

"'Very gratefully yours,

"'BRUCE GRIERSON.'"

The letter fell from Steering's hand and fluttered to the ground, while he sat with his hands hanging limply from his knees for a moment. "Grierson is dead! Grierson is dead!" he repeated. The funereal words rang through his ears like a grand Praise-God. He knew that he ought to be sorry and that he was inexpressibly glad, not because the grim old man was dead—dead, with his malevolence reaching out toward Madeira, spinning and twisting like a great cobweb snare from the grave—but because of what must now happen, because vistas of wonderful beauty were opening up through the long shadows of the Tigmores, because if the end had come to the house of Grierson, beginning had come to the house of Steering. Life, big, splendid, stretched out before him. Old Bernique had risen and was pacing the banks of the Di nervously. Steering, too, got to his feet. Going down to Bernique, he took the old man's hands in his. Neither heard a little rustle up the bluff in the leafy bushes.

"Oh, Uncle Bernique!" said Steering, and stopped because of the wild sound of his own voice. He saw that it would be dangerous for him to try to talk with his mind in that high tremulous whirl. The old man clung to him, silent, too, for a teeming moment.

"Now God above, why not Crit Madeira tell you that tr-r-ue way of things?" shouted Bernique at last fiercely. "Why not?"

The two men looked into each other's eyes, Steering bearing up the old man, who clutched him feverishly. When the Frenchman began to talk again his teeth were chattering. "Why not? Hein? Because he t'ief. But God above! We got those proof! Dead for mont's. And Madeira know it! The Teegmores are yours for mont's, Mistaire Steering! And Madeira know it! We put that fine man where he belong. We jail him! He t'ief! We r-r-uin him, as he would r-r-uin you!"

"Ruin him!" Bruce said the words over measuredly. "We can do it easily. Everything he has has gone into the company that is getting its chief encouragement out of the Tigmores. It will be easy to ruin him."

"Yes, God above, it will be easy! We r-r-ruin him. We do that thing quick and glad." Bernique slid his lean hands up Steering's arms and held to him.

"Wait! Wait!" The Frenchman's convulsive anger received a sudden check by the sound of Steering's voice. He clung more tightly to Steering's arms as he looked into Steering's face, then shrank back helplessly.

"My God!" said the old man, "I forgot!"

"Yes," answered Steering, no hesitation in his voice. "Yes, you forgot her. We must not do that, you know."

After a while they sat down and talked it over at length from beginning to end, and then back again, from end to beginning. Up in the Tigmores Crit Madeira's drills beat and bore at the heart of the earth, deeper, deeper; by the Redbud shack, the two men, on the ground, bore into Madeira's trickery, deeper, deeper. By the light of that torch from the Rockies, they followed the twisting trail all the way from inception to finish. The tortuous, underhand curve of it now and then looked like the self-deceptive work of lunatic cunning. As they talked about it, they talked too earnestly for the little whisking movements in the growth up the bluff to reach their ears.

"At least," cried old Bernique at last, "at least the Teegmores are yours! At last! At last!"

At last! At last! Steering's eyes were travelling the long tumbling Tigmore line. "If they are," he said in that musing way he had developed within the last quarter of an hour, "if I take the Tigmores now, Uncle Bernique, I'll pull Madeira's house about him. That company of his is not so secure that it could stand a blow at its head. If I take the Tigmores,—Uncle Bernique, listen a minute," he was pleading, "she has been used to much all her life. I can't take her father's fortune away from him. Don't you see that? I can't do anything. You understand?" he was commanding. Bernique jumped to his feet.

"God above, you mean——" The thought snapped in the old man's brain, the words stuck in his throat.

"I mean that we must leave things as they are. I can't ruin her father. That's all I mean!"

Bernique doubled up both fists. "I'll see him damn' before he shall keep those Teegmores! I can r-ruin him!" But Bruce caught the old man's arm in a grip that hurt. When Bernique spoke again it was to say breathlessly, "You take the Teegmores, Mistaire Steering, and protect Madeira's fortune. You can do that easy."

"I know. It looks easy. But think back a little. Madeira is sure to fight. Grierson's death occurred months ago under an assumed name. To prove that he died we must prove when he died, where he died and who he was. To prove all that is to let the light in upon dark places. I hardly see how the light can be let in, Uncle Bernique, without cutting Madeira out sharp and keen as a rascal. Madeira would never allow,—at this juncture, he couldn't allow us to establish my claim to the Tigmores on my word and yours. He has done unwise, crazy things already. He would fight us. I know it, you know it. We could win. But where would our victory leave him, Uncle Bernique? Ah, you see?"

The old man was shaking from head to foot. He clung close to Steering. "Oh, my God!" he moaned, "I will not let this thing be."

"Yes, you will let it be! It is my affair even more than it is yours. You will do as I say about it, Uncle Bernique. Here and now, you shall swear this oath with me: I by my love for Sally Madeira, you by your love for Piney's young mother, that never, so help us God, shall one or the other of us carry word of these matters to anyone, least of all to Crittenton Madeira or his daughter Salome!"

The old man's breath came gustily, his cheeks flamed, the hectic burned like fire in his shrivelled cheeks. He loosed his clinging hold and tried to shake Bruce off.

"Swear," Bruce decreed again, his powerful grip on the old man, his eyes half shut, "I by my love for Sally Madeira, you by your love for Piney's young mother! Swear!" He held up his own right hand, and Bernique said brokenly:

"God above, I swear!" The old man was crying. Neither heard the swish in the bluff growth, neither saw the brave light in the two eyes that peered through the bushes.

"Why now, everything is all right," cried Bruce. "Are you going on into Canaan to-night, or shall you sleep here with me? I think that I shall take the skiff now and go up toward Madeira Place, then drift back down-stream, a sort of good-bye journey. What will you do meantime?"

Old Bernique hardly knew. He was sore, bewildered. He thought he might spend the night on the hills, then again he might come back to the shack for the night. He wanted to go into Choke Gulch first thing.

Bruce pushed away in the skiff through the swollen Di. Bernique got his horse and started off, climbing the yellow road up the bluff slowly, heading toward Choke Gulch. As he neared the top, he lifted his head and saw Piney and the pony outlined on the bald summit of the bluff. The boy made a trumpet of his hands and shouted to Bernique.

"Hurry! For God's sake! So I cand talk to you!" Piney's was a reckless and impassioned young figure, cut out against the sky sharply, on a pony that danced like a dervish.

The old man nodded, with a flash of pleasure at the sight of the boy, then let his head fall wearily upon his breast. He felt very powerless. When he reached Piney's side he put out his hand and held to the boy's hand as though he found its warmth and firmness sustaining.

"Let's git into the timber," said Piney, and they rode forward a little way quite silent. "I don' want Mist' Steerin' to look back an' see me here," the boy explained. In the growth where the hills began to roll down toward Choke Gulch, Piney stopped short, with a detaining hand upon Bernique's bridle.

"I hearn," he said. His young face was so grey and solemn that Bernique regarded him questioningly. "I was simlike half asleep up there in the bushes. Whend you begand to tell your story, I waked up an' I listened. I hearn all you said an' all he said. Ev'thing. Unc' Bernique, you cayn't tell nobody! Mist' Steerin', he cayn't tell nobody!—but Me!" the boy was breathing harder, his face was growing greyer, "Unc' Bernique, I'm f'm the hills, an' not like them," the blood began suddenly to come back to his lips; he raised in his stirrups and slashed at the branches of a black-jack tree with his riding switch, as though he cut a vow across the air, high up. "But what I can, I will!" he cried, and clenched his hands proudly. "Fer her an'—an' fer him!" he choked. Whatever he meant to do, his young passion for Salome Madeira and his young affection for Steering, his hero, leaped out on his face whitely. "She loves him, too, Unc' Bernique!" he cried in a final, broken crescendo.

Old Bernique stared at the boy in exaltation. "God above!" he shouted, "if that is it, it begins to be hope in my old breast! All may come right yet, and no oaths broken!"

"None broke!" cried Piney. "One more took! I'm a-ridin' saouth, to Madeira Place, Unc' Bernique;" he gathered up the reins from his pony's neck,—"I'm a-goin' to Miss Sally Madeira to tell her abaout Mist' Steerin';" he was blind with hot, young tears. "She'll do the rat thing whend she knows, Unc' Bernique;" he had put the pony about,—"I'll see you on the hills in the mornin'!" he was gone down the yellow road like a winged Mercury.

On the hills behind him, Old Bernique, comprehending and envying, locked his hands on his saddle-horn in a vehement tension. His lips moved, and what he said seemed to float out after the flying figure of the boy like a benediction.



Chapter Fifteen

A MISTAKE SOMEWHERE

The afternoon of that day was golden out at Madeira Place. Through the kitchen windows the sun streamed in, in broad, unfretted bands of light. Just beyond the window the crab-apple trees and the quince trees and the pear trees and the damson trees were rioting in blossom.

The kitchen itself was a place to take comfort in. By a table sat fat black Chloe, seeding raisins, when she was not asleep. Before another table stood Sally Madeira, her brown, round arms bared to the elbow, flapping cake batter with a wooden paddle. With her sense of eternal fitness the girl was a fine housekeeper as easily as she was a sweet singer and a good horsewoman. She had kept the past beautifully intact in the old brick-floored room. Overhead hung strings of red peppers, streaks of scarlet on the heavy black rafters. Little white sacks of dried things, peas and beans and apples, depended from hooks. Against the walls were quaint old tin safes, their doors gone, their shelves covered with dark blue crockery. The tin and brass stuff shone brightly. On a low shelf stood a great piggin of water, a fat yellow drinking gourd sticking out of it. The whole picture was a kitchen pastel, delicately toned, a kitchen of the long ago, Sally Madeira fitting into it exquisitely, re-establishing the stately domesticity of an old regime by her fine adaptability and appreciation.

Chloe brought the raisins over to Miss Madeira at last, and let them drop slowly into the crock, watching carefully for stray bits of stem.

"Simlike nowadays ef he teef go agin a hardness spile he tas' fuh de cake," she said anxiously.

"We do have to humour his poor appetite, don't we, Chloe? Never mind, he'll be better soon, I hope."

"Whut madder wid he, Miss Sally, innyhow, Honey?"

"Just overwork, I think, Chloe. Works all the time; in the office now, bent double over his desk."

The darky shuffled restlessly on her flat feet. "Simlike to me he pester'd. I d'n know. Miss Sally, who else gwine eat dishyer cake tumorreh, Honey?"

"I'm not expecting any company at all, Chloe. Father isn't really well enough to care to talk to people."

"Miss Honey, simlike de house gittin' mighty lonesome nowadays. Taint like it uster be."

"Do you feel it, Chloe? Do you know I've grown to like it better quiet." The girl's voice was wistful, she let the batter trickle recklessly while she gazed off out of the window. Then she sighed and began to beat the batter very hard.

"Miss Honey-love?"

"Yes, Chloe."

"That tha' Mist' Steerin' aint ben come no mo' fuh gre't while, air he?"

"No."

"Samson he say he gwine ride down by Redbud this evenin'."

"Well, Chloe, I'm sorry that I can't send an invitation to your favourite, but I'm afraid Father isn't well enough—oh, there's Piney, Chloe!"

The boy had come up the bridle-path slowly, his mission weighting him and making him languid. At the latticed porch he jumped to the ground, turned the pony's nose into the grass and came into the kitchen.

"Howdy, Miss Sally. Hi, Chloe. Cand I have a drink, please'm, Miss Sally?"

He drank long and greedily from the gourd dipper, so long that Sally Madeira turned to him laughingly at last. "Well, Piney, son, got Texas fever?" she began, and then, being quick of wit, saw at once that the boy's pallor, his thirst, his absorption meant something especial. "I'm glad you came, Piney," she went on capably, and gave the batter paddle to Chloe. "I've been wanting to see you all day to have a little talk with you. Let's go out under the crab-apple tree."

She took off the great apron and led the way from the kitchen, the boy following her with dragging feet. Under the crab-apple tree she drew him down upon a bench beside her. The orchard blooms shut them in close. The stillness was unbroken save for the warm sibilant droning of the insect life in the air. The shadows on the orchard grass were like lace-work.

"Now, Piney, lad," began Miss Madeira at once, "what's the trouble?" Her voice sounded strong, maternal, to Piney, who had been wondering how he was to tell her, calling himself a fool for having undertaken to tell her, reminding himself that he couldn't for the life of him begin. Here, suddenly, the girl was making it easier for him, showing him that the way to begin was to begin.

"I wouldn' tell you the trouble ef I could he'p it, Miss Sally," he said pleadingly, his hands shut about his knees, his eyes beseeching as a fawn's. "Ef they wuz inny way to make things come aout rat lessen I told, I wouldn' tell. But I don' see no way." It was easier to talk up to the thing and around the thing, than to get directly into it.

"Is it your own trouble, Piney?" she asked, helping again.

"No'm."

"Whose trouble, Piney?"

"Mist' Steerin's, Miss Sally."

"Ah!" She leaned nearer Piney. "Tell me quickly, dearie," she said, "is he ill?"

"Well'm, it's your trouble, too, Miss Sally."

"Yes, surely, Piney, go on, go on!"

"And your father's trouble, Miss Sally."

"Something about the Tigmores, I suspect, then, Piney, go on."

"Yes'm, abaout the hills." Then, fortunately for both, his youth made up in directness what it lacked in finesse. "It's this-a-way, Miss Sally," he blurted savagely, "Ole Bruce Grierson is dead an' Mist' Steerin' owns the Tigmores."

Her face shone with joy. "But, Piney, boy, where's the trouble in that? When did Mr. Grierson die? That's not trouble even for him, Piney. He was a weary old man. When did he die?"

"Las' September, Miss Sally," answered the boy gravely.

"Last September? Last Septem—— Why, where's the word been all this while, Piney? Why hasn't my father known?"

"He—he has known, Miss Sally. Miss Sally, it was this-a-way, simlike: that ole man writtend Mist' Madeira he wuz goin' to die an' he tol' Mist' Madeira to give the hills to Mist' Steerin'. But I don't reckon your father believed ole Grierson, Miss Sally."

The girl on the bench under the crab-apple tree was beginning to draw herself up proudly. "There is some mistake somewhere, I can see that, Piney, dear. Where did you learn all this?"

"Wy, Miss Sally," cried the boy, a great, painful reluctance in his voice, "that old varmint Grierson writtend another letter to Unc' Bernique an' had a man hold it up an' not mail it till las' week. Then he lay daown an' died. An' here las' week the letter to Unc' Bernique was mailed, aouter ole Grierson's grave like—an' Unc Bernique he's jes got it, an' it tells him that ole Grierson died las' September an' that he writtend your father to say so."

"I don't understand that, Piney. Mr. Grierson died last September and has written letters since he died, you are getting it all mixed, aren't you?"

Very slowly and laboriously Piney told then what he knew, told it over and over until she had comprehended it, whether she believed it or not. When the boy had finished she was leaning back on the bench, dull and pale.

"But it isn't true," she said, with white lips. "And Mr. Steering, Piney,—has Uncle Bernique told Mr. Steering this fantastic tale?"

"Yes'm."

"And what did Mr. Steering say and do, Piney?"

The memory of what Steering had said and done seemed to come on to Piney like an inspiration. "Miss Sally, he set his jaw an' he ketched Unc' Bernique by the arm an' helt him an' made him swear like this, 'You by your love for Piney's young mother, I by my love for Salome Madeira, that never, s'help us God, will you or I carry word of this to Crittenton Madeira and his daughter Salome'—sumpin like that, Miss Sally. I don' adzackly remember the words."

The dulness had all gone out of her eyes, the colour beat back into her cheeks. She had forgotten Crittenton Madeira. "'I by my love for Salome'—are you sure, Piney?"

"I'm sure, Miss Sally. An' so I thought as wuzn't nobody else to tell you, I'd tell you. I d'n know as I done rat," the boy's face was all a-quiver, too, as he looked up at the girl on the misty heights of her passion. His self-abnegation, his young heroism made him for the moment as finely luminous as she was. Sally Madeira took his head between her hands and gazed into his eyes tenderly, caressingly, and there was in her touch something large and sweet and tender that comforted and soothed the boy while it made his heart leap within him.

"Ah, Darling," she said, "how bitter-sweet it is, this loving! But be patient. Some day it will all seem right." She took her hands away from him and stood up straightly.

"I'm going in to my father now, Piney. There's a mistake somewhere. You wait for me here until I get it all explained. Wait here till I come back."

She went off toward the house then, a fragrant shower of orchard blossoms falling upon her and shutting her away from the boy's eyes as she went.



Chapter Sixteen

MADEIRA'S PEACE

Sally Madeira crept to the door of her father's study and listened. In the pallid light that was stealing up to her from Piney's story her face was shadowy, with hurtful doubt, ashamed fear, and she steadied herself by the wall with hands that shook. She had stopped to put on a white gown that her father loved and her lustrous hair lay banded closely, a halo, about her shapely head. Her face looked like a saint's.

"It is not so much to save Bruce Steering's inheritance for him, it's to save my father for myself." Her lips moved stiffly as she whispered. "My old dream-father, my idol, I cannot live without him!" As she opened the door and passed in, she felt as though he had been away on a long journey and that this might be the hour of his return.

Inside Madeira sat at his desk, Bruce Grierson's letter spread out before him, the ghost of his torture. At night he heard it move, with a spectral rustling, under his pillow where he kept it. By day it writhed, a small, hot thing, over his heart. He had tried again and again to destroy it. Everything else that had got in his way he had destroyed, but this he had not destroyed. He was trying to destroy it now, but he returned it to his pocket, unable to destroy it, ruled by it, when he raised his eyes and saw his daughter before him. She had not been without foresight even in her shame and sorrow. She had taken great pains to gown herself especially for him, especially to establish her influence over him. He held out his arms to her lovingly. In the sickness of soul and body now upon him he had turned more and more to her; she had to be with him almost constantly.

"You look so sweet," he said. "You are sweetest like this. I love you like this." Despite the relief that came when with her, he talked nervously, his mouth jerking. His hands wandered to her head, and he held her face and peered at her. "Sally, I wish I was a girl like you," he said, "girls look so peaceful. Business tangles a man,—just to have peace, Sally."

"It will come Father, it will come. Father, Piney rode in from the hills just now, and he brought me news."

He could feel the tremor of her lithe body against his breast, and he moved quickly and uneasily, suspecting danger. His dreams had so long been terror-fraught that he was all nerves and suspicion. "News of what, Sally?" The whitest, deadest voice, for so simple a question; on his face the most awful strain! She drew back on his knee and looked at him steadily, lovingly, and his eyes dropped and his hands began to drum on the chair-arm.

"Father," she said, "Piney has heard a long story. He was hid on the bluff-side, up at Redbud, and he heard a letter read at the shack there, a dead man's letter."

"A dead—oh, God bless you—wait—Sally, did that move? eh, what foolishness is this, a dead man's letter? What dead man? eh? what dead man?"

"Bruce Grierson, father."

"They lie! They lie! Let them prove it!"

"Ah, that was what I told Piney, Father! I knew, I knew that you could explain it. And you can now, and you will, Father?" She was really beseeching him to rise up against her and the accusation against him, rise up in a great storm of indignation; she was praying that he would do that, expecting that he would, so firm were her convictions of his nobility. She drew back a little, to give him room, as it were; her hands fell upon his knee, and she leaned from him the better to see him, her face aglow with her fierce hope, her big belief, while she waited for that storm, that outraged denial, that tremendous vindication. And while she waited, erect, hopeful, eager, he shrank in upon himself; crumpled and wrinkled in upon himself until he looked weazened and small.

"Let them prove it, let them," a whining mumble.

"They will not, Father." She was leaning toward him again, her face quiet as the first frightened dawn of a grey morning; her voice was beaten and sad, but she went on dauntlessly. "The letter was to Uncle Bernique, Father. And Bruce Steering read it. And though it told him that he was the owner of the Tigmores, he and Uncle Bernique will not prove it." For a moment she paused, and then, with some new purpose on her face, she began again, "There was an oath to make all sure that they would not prove it. Listen, Father, these were the words of the oath: 'Swear, I by my love for Salome Madeira, you by your love for Piney's young mother, that never, so help us God, shall one or the other of us carry word of this thing to anyone, least of all to Crittenton Madeira and his daughter, Salome!'"

"Ah-h-h!" The words of the oath seemed to bring Madeira his first brief respite in a long torture. The girl shivered at such relief, then went on resolutely:

"So now you see, Father, everything is safe. I have come to let you know that everything is safe, that you need not be troubled, sleeping or waking, any more about this thing. You may keep the Tigmores as long as you will," the light of her eyes beat upon him like a rain of pure gold, "you may be as rich as you like, Father. Mr. Steering is to leave here; you need never be dispossessed during your lifetime. It is all safe and sure. Uncle Bernique will not tell, Mr. Steering will not tell, Piney will not tell, I shall make no sign." The tragic strength of her endeavour to make him see that it was all with him; to leave it all to him; if so be that the better part were to be chosen, to make him choose it for himself; re-establish himself in so much as was possible for her loving regard, was in the hot clasp of the young hand that she laid upon him, the sweet earnestness of the face that leaned toward him. It was a strange fight, a battle of vast forces. He began to shake like an aspen leaf, but his eyes lifted to hers presently, to drink from them as from a fountain of life. His lips moved.

"Just to have peace," he gasped hoarsely, "take that letter—take it from my pocket—send it to Steering."

"Father!" It was the cry of victory well won. "Father! I am so glad!" over and over again. "All my life, Father, I have expected the good thing to happen because of you, the right thing, I am so glad!" Laughing, crying, she kissed him, took the letter and stole to the door. "Piney shall be its bearer," she cried as she went, "Piney shall take it; he will say the very best that there is to say!"

She ran out, and the door swung quickly behind her, so that she did not see that he put his hand over his empty pocket and held his heart with a great relief; then pitched forward suddenly, his head on the desk, a look of late-come, profound peace on his face.



Chapter Seventeen

JUST A BOY

It was not quite dark when Piney left Miss Sally Madeira in the garden back of Madeira Place, the Grierson letter in the inside band of his hat. The pretty spring day had closed in grey and sullen, and a high wind tore through the bluffs. Up in Canaan people were going anxiously to their windows, and trying to decide what was about to happen out there in that whirl of dust and wind and high-spattering rain. Down at Madeira Place it was grey, windy, and damp, but the rain had not come on yet. Piney went down the bridle-path from the Madeira grounds and out into the river road at a gallop, and the pony sped on like mad toward the little shack down stream at Redbud. All the way Piney kept a watch on the Di, which was sucking and booming. Long before he reached Redbud the boy had begun to hope that Steering had not put through his evening programme to that last number of going back to Redbud by water, after the haunting visit to the waters about Madeira Place. The river seemed very black and restless with the long urge of the spring rains within her. Now and again, he called loudly, prompted by some fear, he knew not what:

"Steerin'! Steerin'! Steerin'!"

He reached Redbud by and by, to find no Steering, only the little empty shack. The lean bunks, swaddled roughly in their bedding, looked strangely deserted. Piney sat down on Steering's bunk for a moment to take breath. Once his hand patted the covers, and once he stooped down and clung to the pillow.

"Oh, may God bless you! For I love him, my dear Piney! Bless you, for I love him, my dear Piney!" he kept saying over and over, with an hysterical quaver in his voice, his lips pale and moving constantly. "Oh, may God bless you, for I love him, my dear Piney!" It was what Salome Madeira had said to him when he had left her, a white, angelic figure, swaying a little toward him, there in the garden back of Madeira Place. "Oh, may God—for I love him!"

The odour of Bruce's cigars hung about the shack. Piney jumped up suddenly and went down close to the Di to wait and think. At Redbud the river seemed fiercer than farther up-stream. One of the two skiffs that rocked there usually was there now, swashing up and down in the current, but the other was gone. There was a strong eddy in front of Redbud. The bar, Singing Sand, and the Deerlick Rocks choked up the bed of the river and made the water dash vehemently through a narrow channel. Logs went by and branches of trees. Piney paced the bank in a rising fever of impatience, calling, calling; but for a long time his call was without avail, the wind roared so defeatingly in the trees. Close into Deerlick Rocks drifted a great fleet of logs.

"Mist' Steerin'! Mist' Steerin'!" The sweet tenor broke again and again, but again and again Piney pitched a vast effort into it. And, at last, an answer:

"Halloo! That you, Uncle Bernique? I've been——" The voice was wind-blown, and slipped weakly away.

"It's ME! Where are you?" No answer. "Where are you? Hi! Is that you by the bar? Lif' your han' above the drif'-wood! Cayn't you lif' your han'?"

A hand shot up from the back of a log that was well hidden by other flotsam, then fell back weakly. "Ay, here I am! Dead-beat, Piney——" A long roar of wind shut off the rest.

"Hold to your log. I'm a-comin'! comin'! comin'!" The tenor rang and rang across the water as Piney loosed the skiff from its moorings, took up the oars, and pushed out into the Di. With the force in that whirl of black water he realised that there was danger; the skiff trembled and leaped as though some wrathful AEgir caught and shook it. It was well for Steering that Piney was strong, with the strength of the hills and the woods and the quiet.

As he went on some sort of revulsion seized Piney. He stopped calling and began to mutter blackly. "Wisht you'd draown! Wisht you uz dead! Wish-to-hell, you never needa been!"

The log, with its one lamed passenger was drifting slowly in toward Singing Sand, and Piney came on, hard after it. When he reached it at last, Steering was quite speechless, but, with the boy's help, scrambled into the skiff, where he slipped like water to the bottom, the fight back being altogether Piney's.

When Steering could talk at all, he gasped out how it had happened. He had gone much farther up than Madeira Place, and had not put his boat about until two hours before; and then only because a great many logs were coming down, and he decided that he did not want to be caught among them when night should drop. He had got along all right until a log smashed into his skiff and overturned him. He thought he must have struck his head as he went over. At any rate, things were very mixed for a good while. He knew that he had swum for what seemed to be hours, and that then he had realised that he was numb, and had used what little strength he had left to climb upon another log that passed him. He had been on it ever since, flat out, an eternity.

Piney was getting the skiff inshore fast, as Steering talked, and once Steering stopped to admire his youthful vigour. He was a strong man himself, and it was a new sensation to lie weakly admiring strength in somebody else. "Do you know, Piney, I'm dead-beat," he whispered.

"You've had a good deal to stan' in more ways than one to-day," replied Piney.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Steering.

"We're a'most in."

It was only a few minutes later that Piney effected his landing, and, river-lashed and dripping, both scrambled out and fell on the bank by the Redbud shack. For a little while, even Piney was past any further exertion, but when he could use himself again, he got up agilely, hunted up dry wood and made a roaring fire. The twilight had closed into night now; the rain had shifted with the wind and passed by Redbud. Piney brought a blanket from the shack and wrapped Steering in it. Before the fire, Steering lay with his eyes shut for a time, a smile on his face. "You are precious good to stand by me like this, Piney," he said once. "Where have you been for so long, you stingy nigger? Why have you cut me lately?"

"Well, I—oh, I d'n know adzackly." Piney's voice was flat, his face tragic. He was heaping wood on the fire, and in the yellow flare he looked pale with the exhaustion of his work on the river and the excitement under which he was labouring. During this last half hour that he had been working hard to save Steering, taking care of him, helping him, he had had another revulsion of feeling that had swung him up close to his hero again. But crisis was still following crisis in his emotions.

"Well, you turned up at just the right minute for me, Piney. How did you happen along?"

"Oh, I wuz a-huntin' fer you, I reckon. I wuz sent aout to hunt fer you. I gotta letter fer you,—f'm—f'm Miss Madeira."

Steering opened his drowsy eyes and regarded Piney.

"Yes, I have. I gotta letter fer you. Y'see, Miss Sally, she's found aout sumpin—sumpin that you didn' want her to find aout." The fire leaped and crackled; Bruce leaned away from its scorch, nearer to Piney. "Y'see, she knows abaout the Tigmores naow," went on Piney steadily. "Unc' Bernique didn' tell her. I told her."

"Piney!" Steering, warm with wrath, turned upon Piney savagely, "You little fool! You brutal little fool!" he cried fiercely. "It's a good thing that you're just a boy, Piney—and you, you! profess to love——"

"Mist' Steerin'." Piney had a man's dignity all in a minute. "I didn' ast you fer no leave to tell her, an' I don't ast you fer nothin' naow. But she had to know. I hearn Unc' Bernique tellin' you abaout that Grierson letter. I hearn you read the letter. I hearn you an' Unc' Bernique swear. Then I swore, too. Then I went an' told her. And then she saw her father, an' she leffen it to her father to make things right, an' he's made things right. She told me I wuz to tell you that. She showed him that he was safe to keep the Tigmores if he wanted to keep 'em, but he didn't want to keep 'em. She told me to tell you that. An' she told me to give you this letter." Piney's young body rocked now with a hushed, sobbing fervour; he lifted his peaked hat from his head, took the letter from the inner band, and pushed it into Bruce's hand. "This letter kim to her father a long time ago, and she ast me to ast you to think of her father abaout it gentle as you can—an' I'm a-astin' you to think of him gentle," the lad's voice suddenly rose shrilly, and he jumped to his feet, "an' I'm a-bustin' to have you say you won't think of him gentle, er sumpin 'at I cayn't stan' an 'll hit you fer! I'm jesta boy, Mist' Steerin', but good God!"

Bruce got to his feet, too. When he caught Piney's flaming eye at last, they stood and faced each other a great moment, then Bruce put his hand out.

"Piney," he said, "I wish I were half the man that you are."

"Oh, Mist' Steerin'! Mist' Steerin'!" On Bruce's shoulder, he sobbed like a child until the terrific strain that he had been on for hours slackened, and he could talk again.

"She's waitin' fer you," he said at last. "She's up yonder in the garden, waitin'. She loves you, Mist' Steerin'. Don't you go fergit that, with y'all's pride an' all. She loves you."

"What? What's that you are saying, Piney?"

"She loves you. I know it, Mist' Steerin'. An' I'm a-tellin' ev' durn thing I know!" declared Piney vehemently, with a high-toned, stubborn self-justification in his voice.

"Dog-on you, old man," Bruce said, turning to grip Piney's hand again. He had it in mind to say a great many other things, in the way of appreciation, thanks, enthusiasms, but all he said was "dog-on you, old man, dog-on you," gripping Piney's hand as he said it. "You make yourself comfortable here in the shack to-night, will you, old man, and I'll go on up there. They are in a little trouble over this up there, Piney." Steering tore the Grierson letter to bits as he spoke, and, then, his eyes wet and shining, he found Piney's pony and went to her in the garden.

Piney lay back on the ground beside the fire. The glow fell squarely over his features, relaxed and softened now. He looked very hopefully and comfortingly young. There was a big, shy gratification on his face.

"'Old man,'" he muttered once or twice. "'Old man.'" A little sob shivered through him. He got up quickly and went into the shack bunk, where he fell asleep at once—because he was so young—and dreamed fine dreams of Italy—because he, too, was fine.



Chapter Eighteen

A PRETTY PRECARIOUSNESS

As Bruce galloped up the river road toward Madeira Place, he found himself so weak with excitement and physical exhaustion, that he had to bow over the saddle-horn and cling there, like an old man. It was a ride to remember. Once he raised his head and looked out into the night. The storm had broken, and high in the quivering heavens the moon shone with a wild, palpitant glory. In the north and east the clouds had gathered with a mighty up-piling, from which the eye sank back affrighted, it towered so near heaven. The trees along the river, the shaking, shimmering river itself, were all shot with light. It was a grand scene, but removed, turbulent, unreal. Steering's strength failed him again, and he fell back over the saddle and hung on. There come times in a man's life, good times as well as bad times, when he can do nothing but hang on. On these dizzying peaks of happiness, Steering scarcely dared let himself look beyond the pony's nose. He was so high up, so near the consummation of—oh—of everything. It would be ridiculously easy to set matters straight now, in one way or another. She loved him! If that were true, it would make everything else come right. And that was true. Piney had been sure of it, and Piney had just left her. Everything else, all life, could be made to close around that salient, delicate fact like the rose-leaves close around the heart of the rose. Let her father keep the hills; he did not care, if he could have the girl. He did not care about anything, if he could have the girl. And he could have the girl. Thank God for that.

Little by little he began to allow himself a meagre consciousness that he was drawing nearer, nearer! Now, just below the grounds of Madeira Place! Now, up along the bridle-path! Now, at the garden gate!

He leaned over the pony's head, slipped the gate latch, and passed into the garden. Dismounting, he tied the pony, and turned toward the house. Dark, in the shadow of the trees behind it, the house lay very quiet, unlighted, infinitely peaceful. In front of the negro cabin at the side of the house, Bruce could see Samson, his chair tilted against the cabin wall, his pipe in his mouth, his bare feet swinging contentedly. From inside the cabin came the low croon of Samson's fat black wife. Some hens clucked sleepily in the hen-house. With the moonlight disintegrated and softened by the trees, everything up toward the house breathed peace. Out here in the garden, however, where the gold light beat down straightly, there was a sense of waiting, unrest, sweet and tumultuous. Out here in the garden it was glorious, but it was not peaceful. What was it that was responsible for that misty halation of incompleteness, longing? the shaking breath of the wide-lipped roses? the secrets within the bowed slender lilies? the tortured joy of the whole garden life of fragrance and beauty?

Over by the old vine-covered stump there was a gleam of white, swaying a little, breathing a little, it seemed, and Steering went toward it, strength coming back into his limbs, his head lifting as he came, his arms outheld.

"I hoped that you would come, Mr. Steering. I have been waiting a long time for you," she said, not moving, her eyes meeting his, something in her face, her rigidity, stopping him. Her hands were pale and still on the grey-green of the vines; her face had caught the wild, gold gleam of the moon. "I wanted to tell you myself about that letter, Mr. Steering. I wanted to tell you myself about the Tigmores being yours. I have grown afraid, out here in the dark, that Piney might not have been able to make you understand, might have misled you in some way about—what I said. I was very much excited when I talked to Piney, Mr. Steering, and I am not sure that I made it clear to him that I am very glad indeed that the hills are yours at last; glad because we are—or have been—such good friends, Mr. Steering, glad for that reason—for friendship's sake, and for nothing," her voice wandered, and the beat of her low broad breast was girlishly pitiful, "else, but friend——" she could not go on.

"Ship," suggested Bruce, with a great desire to help her, but very much at sea. Was it to be failure, after all? Had Piney made a vast mistake? This proud, pale woman here—suddenly an awful timidity seized him, but he shook himself out of that brusquely and came on. "She loves you, don't you go fergit that!" Piney's admonition piped up to him on a high and tuneful memory. He realised that he was walking a path through the flower-tangled, pretty precariousness of romance as he came on toward her—potential lovers' quarrels, separation, the irate parent, a girl's pride, her foolish, solemn effort to fight him back for fear that she had led him on too far, a man's uneasy timidity, the complication of their circumstances—the memory of them all made little snares for his feet, as he came on toward her. But he came on, growing bolder as he came, deciding what to do as he came. It was a crisis for romance as he faced her across the old vine-covered stump. He put his hands down on the stump near her hands, and his face caught the gleam of the light overhead, as hers did.

"Piney has just pulled me out of the river," he said in a wan voice, "and it was all I could do to get here. I—I am as shaky as a kitten."

She looked up at him, betrayed into it by his careful conservation of that weakness in his voice, and, seeing how pale he was, her hands stole in under his. "Oh, but I am weak, and sick!" he went on, pursuing his advantage mercilessly, his hands closing over hers, while her face leaned toward him, all lit and trembling, "I am weak, but I love you so!"

"Ah—h!" she cried, a shaking, joyful cry, "you ought to have said that long ago, Bruce! Tying my hands all winter! Now, it doesn't matter which of us owns the old hills, does it?"

It was there, under the pale, wild light of the moon, with the wide-lipped roses, the slender-bowed lilies, the tremulous fragrance, the delicate unrest, the tortured joy of the garden's life of beauty all around them, that she crept into his arms shyly and radiantly. The trees rustled with low glad music, and the night air seemed full of mystic influences, blessings, happinesses.

From the quiet house beyond, there drifted toward them the sense of late-come, profound peace.



Chapter Nineteen

WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE

There was a vast turmoil in Canaan. For the matter of that, there was a vast turmoil far out the road toward Poetical, and away across Big Wheat Valley, and all over We-all Prairie. The very air was a-tremble. In Canaan all the stores were closed or closing. Court House Square was full of vehicles that seemed poised at the very moment of departure; people were laughing or talking excitedly, with foolish good-humour, as though they did not know what they were saying, but realised that it made precious little difference whether they knew or not. Children were being lifted into waggons, surreys, buggies. Great hampers were being stowed and re-arranged under the seats of the vehicles, sometimes tied to the single-trees to swing there with solemn, heavy gaiety. Young men, very alert, in red neckties and unbuttoned kid gloves, wheeled and turned recklessly through the streets in light road sulkies, drawn by high-stepping trotters. Dogs trotted about with their tails in the air, sniffing, quivering; there was a warm, cutting smell of harness, axle-grease, horse-flesh. The sun beat down upon it all and into it till the whole scene hung electrified, etched out in light, a supreme moment on the very top of Canaan's history.

Then a young boy, with a red sash strapped over his right shoulder and under his left arm, cantered up on a pony, pony and boy both tremendously important.

"Piney's marshal er the day," said a big man, laughing indulgently.

"D'you know the Steerin's air sendin' that tramp-scamp to Italy?" called another man with a bewildered, incredulous inflection in his voice.

"Well he cand go fer all me. You couldn' pull me aouter Mizzourah with pothooks these days," declared the big man earnestly. "What's that the tramp-boy's sayin' naow?"

The tramp-boy was making a trumpet of his hands. "All ready!" he shouted, with one of his high, musical yodels, "Le's start!"

The lesser activities of stowing away hampers, locking store doors, wiping children's noses, broadened quickly into a wide concerted movement. Everybody was picking up his reins. Everybody was clucking to his horse. Every horse was starting. Everybody was gone. Canaan was deserted.

A long irregular cavalcade crept out across the country toward Razor Ridge. And as it went it was constantly augmented at the cross-roads by farmers from We-all and Big Wheat and Pewee, until waggons and surreys and buckboards and buggies and horseback riders stretched out endlessly, the balloons of the children, the red neckties of the young men, the gaily flowered hats of the girls making the spectacle joyous. Then, too, everybody was laughing, everybody was glad about something.

When the cavalcade began to defile past Madeira Place, wild cheers rang out. Samson at the side of the big house, inspanning the Kentucky blacks, took the demonstration to himself with hysterical joy, bowing and gesticulating, doubling over and holding his stomach, while he danced up and down, his white teeth showing, his eyes rolling.

"Hurrah furrum! Hurrah furrum!" came in a great rollicking volume of sound from the road.

"Thass all ri'. Yesseh! Thanky! Thass all ri'. Yasseh! You bet!" yelled Samson up by the house.

A girl in a gauzy black gown and a drooping black hat came out on the front porch of the house and waved to the passing people.

"We'll be along! Yes, we are coming! Yes, we'll hurry!" There were bright tears in the girl's eyes. A man came out of the house and stood behind her, his arm on the door post, his face smiling. She turned to him, the tears in her eyes, the smile on her lips.

"Aren't they pretty splendid?" she cried, a fine enthusiasm on her face as she watched the people, "Look at them! There's something in them! There's the best of all America in them! And they will have their chance now."

For answer the man put his arm about her. "Greatest State in the Union, this Missouri," he said with tremendous conviction. "Where's Uncle Bernique?"

"Gone an hour ago."

"Well then, can't we start, too?"

The same tingle of impatience seemed to reach both at once. They ran back into the house.

The cavalcade wound on up Ridge Road toward the Tigmores. At its far-away end now trotted the Kentucky blacks, drawing a light trap. The man on the box-seat was a big, deep-chested man, long and powerful of forearm. He held the exuberant, snorting blacks easily with one hand. The woman beside him was a good mate for him, firmly knit, strong in her movements. Under her black hat the burnish of her hair and skin made her look gold-dusted.

They were high up Razor Ridge. Below the Ridge, Big Wheat Valley and We-all Prairie stretched away from the Tigmore foot-hills in broad strips of harvest gold. The sky was brilliantly blue; even Choke Gulch's glooms were flecked with light. The scrub-oak, the dog-wood, the chinca-pin, the walnut, the hickory, sumach and sassafras trailed over the Tigmores like a giant green veil. On beyond the Tigmores the pale wide Di ran slowly, goldenly, a molten river.