Very, very long the girl sat there so; unconsciously long. With the swift reaction of youth, the scene of the excitement vanished, the personal menace gone, the impression it had made passed promptly into abeyance. As when she and the man had sat alone in the tiny room of the hotel, another consideration was too insistent, too vital, to prevent dominating the moment. Any other diversion, save absolute physical pain itself, would have been inadequate, was inadequate. Gradually, minute by minute, as the outline of the town itself had vanished, the depressing impression of that jeering frontier mob faded; and in its stead, looming bigger and bigger, advancing, enfolding like a storm cloud until it blotted out every other thought, came realisation of the thing she had done: came appreciation of its finality, its immensity. Then it was that the infinite bigness of this uninhabited wild, the sense of its infinite loneliness, pressed her close. Despite herself, against all reason, as a child is afraid of the dark there grew upon her a terror of this intangible thing called solitude that stretched out into the future endlessly. Smiling as it was this day, unchangeably smiling, she fancied a time when it would not smile, when its passive eventless monotony would be maddening. Swiftly, cumulatively as with every intense nature impressions reproduce, this one augmented. Again into the consideration intruded the absolute finality, the irrevocability of her choice. More distinctly than when she had listened to the original, memory recalled the vow of the marriage ceremony she had taken: "For better or for worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us part." No, there was no escape, no possible avenue that remained unguarded. The knowledge overwhelmed her, suffocated her. Vague possibilities, recently born, became realities. Closer and closer gripped the solitude. For the first time in her existence the dead surrounding silence became unbearable. Almost desperately she shifted back in her seat. Instinctively she sought the hand of her companion, pressed it tight. A mist came into her eyes, until the very team itself was blotted out.

"Oh, How," she confessed tensely, "I'm afraid!"

The man roused, as one recalled from reverie, as one awakened but not yet completely returned.

"Afraid, Bess? Afraid of what?"

"Of the silence, of the future; of you, a bit."

"Afraid of me, Bess?" Perplexed, wondering, the man held the team to a walk and simultaneously the side curtains ceased flapping, hung close. "I don't think I understand. Tell me why, Bess."

"I can't. A child doesn't know why it's afraid of the dark. The dark has never hurt it. It merely is."

At her side the man sat looking at her. He did not touch her, he did not move. In the time since they had come into his own a wonderful change had come into the face of this Indian man; and never was it so wonderful as at this moment. He still wore the grotesque ready-made clothes. The high collar, galling to him as a bridle to an unbroken cayuse, had made a red circle about his throat; yet of it and of them he was oblivious. Very, very young he looked at this time; fairly boyish. There was a colour in his beardless cheeks higher than the bronze of his race. The black eyes were soft as a child's, trusting as a child's. In the career of every human being there comes a time supreme, a climax, a period of exaltation to which memory will ever after recur, which serves as a standard of happiness absolute; and in the career of How Landor the hour had struck. This he knew; and yet, knowing, he could scarcely credit the truth. His cup of happiness was full, full to overflowing; yet he was almost afraid to put it to his lips for fear it would vanish, lest it should prove a myth.

Thus he sat there, this Indian man with whom fate was jesting, worshipping with a faith and love more intense than a Christian for his God; yet, with instinctive reticence, worshipping with closed lips. Thus the minutes passed; minutes of silence wherein he should have been eloquent, minutes that held an opportunity that would never be his again. Smiling, ironic, fate the satirist looked on at her handiwork, watched to the end; and then, observing that finale, laughed—and with the voice of Elizabeth Landor.

"Don't work at it any more, How," derided destiny. "You don't understand, and I can't tell you."

She straightened in her seat and shrugged her shoulders with a gesture she had never used before, that had come very lately: come concomitantly with the arrival of the woman Elizabeth. "Anyway, I think it will be all right. I at least am not afraid of your eloping with someone else." She laughed again at the thought and folded her hands carefully in her lap. "It's quite impossible to think of you interfering with the property of someone else; even though that property were a girl."

Mechanically the Indian chirruped to the team and shook the reins. On his face the look of perplexity deepened. Instinctively he realised that something was wrong; but how to set it right he did not know, and, true to his instincts, waited.

"You wouldn't be afraid in the least to do so," wandered on the girl, "even though the woman were another man's wife. You aren't afraid of anything. You'd take her from before his very eyes if you'd decided to do so, if you saw fit. It's not that. It merely would never occur to you; not even as possibility."

Still groping, the man looked at her, looked at her full; but no light came.

"Yes, you're right, Bess," he corroborated haltingly. "It would never occur to me to do so."

More ironically than before laughed fate; and again with the voice of Elizabeth Landor.

"You're humorous, How, deliciously humorous; and still you haven't the vestige of a sense of humour." She laughed again involuntarily. "I hadn't myself a few weeks ago. I think I was even more deficient than you; but now—now—" Once again the tense-strung laugh, while in her lap the crossed hands locked and grew white from mutual pressure. "Now of a sudden I seem to see humour in everything!"

More than perplexed, concerned, distressed from his very inability to fathom the new mood, the man again brought the team to a walk, fumbled with the reins impotently.

"Something's wrong, Bess," he hesitated. "Something's worrying you. Tell me what it is, won't you?"

"Wrong?" The girl returned the look fair, almost defiantly. "Wrong?" Still again the laugh; unmusical, hysterical. "Certainly nothing is wrong. What could be wrong when two people who have so much in common as you and I, who touch at so many places, are just married and alone? Wrong: the preposterous idea!"

She was silent, and of a sudden the all-surrounding stillness seemed to be intensified. For at last, at last the man understood and was looking at her; looking at her wordlessly, with an expression that was terrible in its haunting suggestion of unutterable sadness, of infinite pain. He did not say a word; he merely looked at her; but shade by shade as the seconds passed there vanished from his face to the last bit every trace of the glory that had been its predecessor. Not until it was gone did the girl realise to the full what she had done, realise the mortal stab she had inflicted; then of a sudden came realisation in a gust and contrition unspeakable. Swiftly as rain follows a thunderclap her mood changed, her own face, hysterically tense, relaxed in a flood of tears. In an abandon of remorse her arms were about him, her face was pressed close to his face.

"Forgive me, How," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm nervous and irresponsible, that's all. Please forgive me; please!"

* * * * *

At a dawdling little prairie stream, superciliously ignored by the map-maker, yet then and now travelling its aimless journey from nowhere to nowhere under the name of Mink Creek, they halted for the night.

Though they had been driving steadily all the afternoon, save once when, far to the south, they had detected the blot of a grazing herd, they had seen no sign of human presence. They saw no indication now. The short fall day was drawing to a close. The sun, red as maple leaf in autumn, was level with the earth when How Landor pulled up beside the low sloping bank, and, the girl watching from her observation seat in the old surrey, unharnessed and watered the team and hobbled them amid the tall frost-cured grass to feed.

"Now for the tent," he said on returning. "Will your highness have it face north, south, east, or west?"

"East, please, How. I want to see the sun when it first comes up in the morning."

With the methodical swiftness of one accustomed to his work the man set about his task. The tent, his own, was in the rear of the waggon box. The furnishings, likewise his own, were close packed beside. More quickly than the watcher fancied it possible the whole began to take shape. Long before the glory had left the western sky the tent itself was in place. Before the chill, which followed so inevitably and swiftly, was in the air the diminutive soft coal heater was installed and in service. Following, produced from the same receptacle as by legerdemain, vanishing mysteriously within the mushroom house, followed the blanket bed, the buffalo robes, the folding chairs and table, the frontier "grub" chest. Last of all, signal to the world that the task was complete, the battered lantern with the tin reflector was trimmed and lit and, adding the final touch of comfort and of intimacy that light alone can give, was hung from its old hook on the ridge pole. Then at last, the first shadows of night stealing over the soundless earth, the man approached the lone spectator and held out his arms for her to descend.

"Come, Bess," he said. He smiled up at her as only such a man at such a time can smile. "This is my night. I'm going to do everything; cook supper and all. Come, girlie."

* * * * *

The meal was over, and again, as on that other occasion when Colonel William Landor had called, the two people within the tent occupied the same positions. In the folding rocking chair sat the girl, the light from the single lantern playing upon her brown head and soft oval face. In the partial darkness of the corner, stretched among the buffalo robes, lay the man. His arms were locked behind his head. His face was toward her. His eyes—eyes unbelievably soft and innocent for a mature man—were upon her. As he had said, this was his night, and he was living in it to the full. Ever taciturn with her as with others, he was at this time even more silent than usual, silent in a happiness which made words seem sacrilege. He merely looked at her, wonderingly, worshipfully, with the mute devotion of a dog for its master, as a devout Catholic gazes upon the image of the Virgin Mother. Since they had entered the tent he had scarcely spoken more than a single sentence at a time. Only once had he given a glimpse of himself. Then he had apologised for the meagreness of the meal. "To-morrow," he had said, "we will have game, the country is full of it; but to-day—" he had looked down as he had spoken—"to-day I felt somehow as though I could not kill anything. Life is too good to destroy, to-day."

Thus he lay there now, motionless, wordless, oblivious of passing time; and now and then in her place the girl's eyes lifted, found him gazing at her—and each time looked away. For some reason she could not return that look. For some reason as each time she caught it, read its meaning, her brown face grew darker. As truly as out there on the prairie she was afraid of the infinite solitude, she was afraid now of the worship that gaze implied. She had awakened, had Elizabeth Landor; and in the depths of her own soul she knew she was not worthy of such love, such confidence absolute. She expected it, she wanted it—and still she did not want it. She longed for oblivion such as his, oblivion of all save the passing minute; and it was not hers. Prescience, without a reason therefor which she would admit, prevented forgetfulness. She tried to shake the impression off; but it clung tenaciously. Instinctively, almost under compulsion, she even went ahead to meet it, to prepare the way.

"You mustn't look at me that way, How," she laughed at last forcedly. "It makes me afraid of myself—afraid of dropping. Supposing I should fall, from up in the sky where you fancy I am! No one, not even you, could ever put the pieces together."

"Fall," smiled the man, "you fall? You wouldn't; but if you did, I'd be there to catch you."

"Then you, too, would be in fragments. I'm very, very far above earth, you know."

"I'd want to be so, if you fell," said the man. "You're all there is in the world, all there is in life, for me. I'd want to be annihilated, too, then."

The girl's hands folded in her lap; as they had done that afternoon, very carefully.

"You don't know me even yet, How," she guided on. "You think I'm perfect, but I'm not. I know I'm very, very human, very—bad at times."

The other smiled; that was all.

"I'm liable to do anything, be anything. I'm liable to even fancy I don't like you and run away."

"If you did you'd return very soon."

"Return?" She looked at him fully. "You think so?"

"I know so."

"Why, How?"

"Because you care for me."

"But it would be because I didn't care for you that I'd go, you know."

"You'd find your mistake and come back."

The clasped hand locked, as once before they had done.

"And when I did—come back—you'd forgive me, How?"

"There'd be nothing to forgive."

"It wouldn't be wrong—to leave you that way?"

"To me you could do no wrong, Bess."

"Not if I did anything, if I—ran away with another man?"

The listener smiled, until the beardless face was very, very boyish.

"I can't imagine the impossible, Bess."

"But just supposing I should?" insistently. "You'd take me back, no matter what I'd done, and forgive me?"

For a half minute wherein the smile slowly vanished from his face the man did not answer, merely looked at her; then for the first time since they had been speaking his eyes dropped.

"I could forgive you anything, Bess; but to take you back, to have everything go on as before—I am human. I could not."

A moment longer the two remained so, each staring at their feet; then of a sudden, interrupting, the girl laughed, unmusically, hysterically.

"I'm glad you said that, How," she exulted; "glad I compelled you to say it. As you confess, it makes you seem more human. A god shouldn't marry a mortal, you know."

The man looked up gravely, but he said nothing.

"I'm going to make you answer me just one more thing," rushed on the girl, "and then I'm satisfied. You'd forgive me, you say, forgive me anything; but how about the other man, the one who had induced me to run away? Would you forgive him, too?"

Silence, dead silence; but this time the Indian's eyes did not drop.

"You may as well tell me, How. I'm irresponsible to-night and I won't give you any peace until you do. Would you forgive the other man, too?"

Once more for seconds there was a lapse; then slowly the Indian lifted in his place, lifted until he was sitting, lifted until his face stood out clear in the light like the carving of a master.

"Forgive him, Bess?" A pause. "Do you think I am a god?"

That was all, neither an avowal nor a denial; yet no human being looking at the speaker that moment would have pressed the query farther, no human being could have misread the answer. With the same little hysterical, unnatural laugh the girl sank back in her seat. The tense hands went lax.

"I'll be good now, How," she said dully. "One isn't married every day, you know, and it's got on my nerves. I'm finding out a lot of things lately, and that's one of them: that I have nerves. I never supposed before that I possessed them."

Deliberately, without a shade of hesitation or of uncertainty, the man arose. As deliberately he walked over and very, very gently lifted the girl to her feet.

"Bess," he said low, "there's something that's troubling you, something you'd feel better to tell me. Don't you trust me enough to tell me now, girlie?"

Very long they stood so, face to face. For a time the girl did not look up, merely stood there, her fingers locked behind her back, her long lashes all but meeting; then of a sudden, swiftly as the passing shadow of an April cloud, the mood changed, she glanced up.

"I thought I could scare you, How," she joyed softly, "and I have." She smiled straight into his eyes. "I wanted to see how much you cared for me, was all. I've found out. There's absolutely nothing to tell, How, man; absolutely nothing."

For another half minute the man looked at her deeply, silently; but, still smiling, she answered him back, and with a last lingering grip that was a caress his hands dropped.

"I trust you, Bess, completely," he said. "It makes me unhappy to feel that you are unhappy, is all."

"I know, How." Tears were on the long lashes now, tears that came so easily. "I'll try not to be bad again." She touched his sleeve. "I'm very tired now and sleepy. You'll forgive me this once again, won't you?"

"Forgive you!—Bess!" She was in his arms, pressed close to his breast, the presence of her, intense, feminine, intoxicating him, bearing him as the fruit of the poppy to oblivion. "God, girl, if you could only realise how I love you. I can't tell you; I can't say things; but if you could only realise!"

Passionate, throbbing, the girl's face lifted. Her great brown eyes, sparkling wet, glorious, looked into his eyes. Her lips parted.

"Say that again, How," she whispered, "only say that again. Tell me that you love me. Tell me! tell me!"



CHAPTER XIV

FATE, THE SATIRIST

Four months drifted by. The will of Colonel William Landor had been read and executed. According to its provisions the home ranch with one-tenth of the herd, divided impartially as they filed past the executor, were left to Mary Landor; in event of her death to descend to "an only nephew, Clayton Craig by name." A second fraction of the great herd, a tenth of the remainder, selected in the same manner, reverted at once "unqualifiedly and with full title to hold or to sell to the aforementioned sole blood relative, Clayton Craig." All of the estate not previously mentioned, the second ranch whereon How Landor had builded, various chattels enumerated, a small sum of money in a city bank, and the balance of the herd, whose number the testator himself could not give with certainty, were willed likewise unqualifiedly to "my adopted daughter, Elizabeth Landor." That was all. A single sheet of greasy note paper, a collection of pedantic antiquated phrases, penned laboriously with the scrawling hand of one unused to writing; but incontrovertible in its laconic directness. Save these three no other names were mentioned. So far as the Indian Ma-wa-cha-sa, commonly called How Landor, was concerned he might never have existed. In a hundred words the labour was complete; and at its end, before the single sheet was covered, sprawling, characteristic, was the last signature of him who at the time was the biggest cattleman west of the river: William Landor of the Buffalo Butte.

Craig himself did not appear, either at the reading or the execution. Instead a dapper city attorney with a sarcastic tongue and an isolated manner was present to conserve his interests; and, satisfied on that score, and ere the supply of Havanas in a beautifully embossed leather case was exhausted, in fact, to quote his own words, "as quickly as a kind Providence would permit," he vanished into the unknown from whence he came. Following, on the next train, came a big-voiced, red-bearded Irishman who proclaimed himself the new foreman and immediately took possession. Simultaneously there disappeared from the scene the Buffalo Butte ranch and the brand by which it had been known; and in its place upon the flank of every live thing controlled, stared forth a C locked to a C (C-C): the heraldry of the new master, Clayton Craig.

Likewise the long-planned wedding journey had taken place and become a memory. Into the silent places they went, this new-made man and wife—and no one was present at the departure to bid them adieu. Back from the land of nothingness they came—and again no one was at hand to welcome their return. In but one respect did the accomplishment of that plan alter from the prearranged; and that one item was the consideration of time. They did not stay away until winter, as the girl had announced. Starting in November, they did not complete the month. Nor did they stay for more than a day in any one spot. Like the curse of the Wandering Jew, a newborn restlessness in the girl kept calling "On, on." Battle against it as she might, she was powerless under its dominance. She knew not from whence had come the change, nor why; but that in the last weeks she had altered fundamentally, unbelievably, she could not question. The very first night out, ere they had slept, she had begun to talk of change on the morrow. The next day it was the same—and the next. When they were moving the morbid restlessness gradually wore away; for the time being she became her old careless-happy self; and in sympathy her companion opened as a flower to the sun. Then would come a pause; and the morbid, dogging spirit of unrest would close upon her anew. Thus day by day passed until a week had gone by. Then one morning when camp was struck, instead of advancing farther, the man had faced back the way they had come. He made no comment, nor did she. Neither then nor in days that followed did he once allude to the reason that had caused the change of plan. When the girl was gay, he was gay likewise. When she lapsed listlessly into the slough of silence and despond, he went on precisely as though unconscious of a change. His acting, for acting it was, even the girl could not but realise at that time, was masterly. What he was thinking no human being ever knew, no human being could ever know; for he never gave the semblance of a hint. Probably not since man and woman began under the sanction of law and of clergy to mate, had there been such a honeymoon. Probably never will there be such another. That the whole expedition was a piteous, dreary failure neither could have doubted ere the first week dragged by. That the marriage journey which it ushered in was to be a failure likewise, neither could have questioned, ere the second week, which brought them home, had passed. The Garden of Eden was there, there as certainly in its frost-brown sun-blessed perfection as though spread luxuriously within the tropics. Adam was there, Adam prepared to accept it as normally content as the first man; but Eve was not satisfied. Within the garden the serpent had shown his face and tempted her. For very, very long she would not admit the fact even to herself, deluded herself by the belief that this newborn discontent was but temporary; yet bald, unaltering as the prairie itself, the truth stood forth. Thus they went, and thus they returned. Thus again thereafter the days went monotonously by.

One bright spot, and one alone, appeared on their firmament; and that was the opening of the new house. This was to be a surprise, a climax boyishly reserved by its builder for their return. The man had intentionally so arranged that the start should be from the old ranch, and in consequence the girl had never seen either the new or its furnishings, until the November day when the overloaded surrey drew up in the dooryard, and the journey was complete. Pathetic, indescribable, in the light of the past, in the memory of the solitary hours that frontier nest represented, the moment must have been to the man when he led the way to the entrance and turned the key. Yet he smiled as he threw open the door; and, standing there, ere she entered, he kissed her.

"It isn't much, but it was mine, Bess, and now it's yours," he said, and, her hand in his, he crossed the threshold.

A moment the girl stood staring around her. Crude as everything was, and cheap in aggregate, it spoke a testimony that was overwhelming. Never before, not even that first night they had been alone, had the girl realised as at this moment what she meant to this solitary, impassive human. Never before until these mute things he had fashioned with his own hands stood before her eyes did she realise fully his love. With the knowledge now came a flood of repentance and of appreciation. Her arms flew about his neck. Her wet face was hid.

"How you love me, man," she voiced. "How you love me!"

"Yes, Bess," said the other simply; and that was all.

For that day, and the next, and the next, the mood lasted, an awakening the girl began to fancy permanent; then inevitably came the reaction. The man took up his duties where he had laid them down: the supervision of a herd scattered of necessity to the winds, the personal inspection of a range that stretched away for miles. Soon after daylight, his lunch for the day packed in the pouch he slung over his shoulder, he left astride the mouse-coloured, saddleless broncho; not to return until dark or later, tired and hungry, but ever smiling at the home-coming, ever considerate. Thus the third night he returned to find the house dark and the fire in the soft coal stove dead; to find this and the girl stretched listless on the bed against the wall, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.

"I was tired and resting, How," she had explained penitently, and gone about the task of preparing supper; but the man was not deceived, and that moment, if not before, he recognised the inevitable.

Yet even then he made no comment, nor altered in the minutest detail his manner. If ever a human being played the game, it was How Landor. With a blindness that was masterly, that was all but fatuous, he ignored the obvious. His equanimity and patience were invulnerable. Silent by nature, he grew fairly loquacious in an effort to be companionable. Probably no white man alive would have done as he did, would have borne what he did; perhaps it would have been better had he done differently; but he was as he was. Day after day he endured the galling starched linen and unaccustomed clothing, making long journeys to the distant town to keep his wardrobe clean and replenished. Day after day he polished his boots and struggled with his cravat. Puerile unqualifiedly an observer would have characterised this repeated farce; but to one who knew the tale in its entirety, it would have seemed very far from humorous. All but sacrilege, it is to tell of this starved human's doing at this time. The sublime and the ridiculous ever elbow so closely in this life and jostled so continuously in those stormy hours of How Landor's chastening. Suffice it to repeat that every second through it all he played the game; played it with a smiling face, and the ghost of a jest ever trembling on his lips. Played it from the moment he entered his house until the moment he daily disappeared, astride the vixenish undersized cayuse. Then when he was alone, when there were no human eyes to observe, to pity perchance, then—But let it pass what he did then. It is another tale and extraneous.

Thus drifted by the late fall and early winter. Bit by bit the days grew shorter; and then as a pendulum vibrates, lengthened shade by shade. No human being came their way, nor wild thing, save roving murderers on pillage bent. Even the cowmen he employed, the old hands he and Bess had both known for years, avoided him obviously, stubbornly. After the execution of the will he had built them another ranch house at a distance on the range, and there they congregated and clung. They accepted his money and obeyed his orders unquestioningly; but further than that—they were white and he was red. Howard, the one man with whom he had been friendly, had grown restless and drifted on—whither no one knew. Save for the Irish overseer and one other cowboy, the old Buffalo Butte ranch was deserted. Locally, there neither was nor had been any outward manifestation of hostility, nor even gossip. But the olden times when the hospitable ranch house of Colonel William Landor was the meeting point of ranchers within a radius of fifty miles were gone. They did not persecute the new master or his white wife; they did a subtler, crueller thing: they ignored them. To the Indian's face, when by infrequent chance they met, they were affable, obliging. His reputation had spread too far for them to appear otherwise; but, again, they were white and he was red—and between them the chasm yawned.

Thus passed the months. Winter, dead and relentless, held its sway. It was a normal winter; but ever in this unprotected land the period was one of inevitable decimation, of a weeding out of the unfit. Here and there upon the range, dark against the now background of universal white, stared forth the carcass of a weakling. Over it for a few nights the coyotes and grey wolves howled and fought; then would come a fresh layer of white, and the spot where it had been would merge once more into the universal colour scheme. Even the prairie chickens vanished, migrated to southern lands where corn was king. No more at daylight or at dusk could one hear the whistle of their passing wings, or the booming of their rallying call. Magnificent in any season, this impression of the wild was even more pronounced now. The thought of God is synonymous with immensity; and so being, Deity was here eternally manifest, ubiquitous. The human mind could not conceive a more infinite bigness than this gleaming frost-bound waste stretched to the horizon beneath the blazing winter sun. Magnificent it was beyond the power of words to describe; but lonely, lonely. Within the tiny cottage, the girl, Bess, drew the curtains tight over the single window and for days at a time did not glance without.

Then at last, for to all things there is an end, came spring. Long before it arrived the Indian knew it was coming, read incontestably its advance signs. No longer, as the mouse-coloured cayuse bore him over the range, was there the mellow crunch of snow underfoot. Instead the sound was crisp and sharp: the crackling of ice where the snow had melted and frozen again. Distinct upon the record of the bleak prairie page appeared another sign infallible. Here and there, singly and en masse, wherever the herds had grazed, appeared oblong brown blots the size of an animal's body. The cattle were becoming weak under the influence of prolonged winter, and lay down frequently to rest, their warm bodies branding the evidence with melted snow. The jack rabbits, ubiquitous on the ranges, that sprang daily almost from beneath the pony's feet, were changing their winter's dress, were becoming darker; almost as though soiled by a muddy hand. Here and there on the high places the sparkling white was giving way to a dull, lustreless brown. Gradually, day by day, as though they were a pestilence, they expanded, augmented until they, and not the white, became the dominant tone. The sun was high in the sky now. At noontime the man's shadow was short, scarcely extended back of his pony's feet. Mid-afternoons, in the low places when he passed through, there was a spattering of snow water collected in tiny puddles. After that there was no need of signs. Realities were everywhere. Dips in the rolling land, mere dry runs save at this season, became creeks; flushed to their capacity and beyond, sang softly all the day long. Not only the high spots, but even the north slopes lost their white blankets, surrendered to the conquering brown. Migratory life, long absent, returned to its own. Prairie kites soared far overhead on motionless wings. Meadow larks, cheeriest of heralds, practised their five-toned lay. Here and there, to the north of prairie boulders, appeared tufts of green; tufts that, like the preceding brown, grew and grew and grew until they dominated the whole landscape. Then at last, the climax, the finale of the play, came life, animal and vegetable, with a rush. Again at daylight and at dusk swarms of black dots on whistling wings floated here and there, descended to earth; and, following, indefinite as to location, weird, lonely, boomed forth in their mating songs. Transient, shallow, miniature lakes swarmed with their new-come denizens. Last of all, final assurance of a new season's advent, by day and by night, swelling, diminishing, unfailingly musical as distant chiming bells, came the sound of all most typical of prairie and of spring. From high overhead in the blue it came, often so high that the eye could not distinguish its makers; yet alway distinctive, alway hauntingly mysterious. "Honk! honk! honk!" sounded and echoed and re-echoed that heraldry over the awakened land. "Honk! honk! honk!" it repeated; and listening humans smiled and commented unnecessarily each to the other: "Spring is not coming. It is here."



CHAPTER XV

THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

A shaggy grey wolf, a baby no longer but practically full grown, swung slowly along the beaten trail connecting the house and the barn as the stranger appeared. He did not run, he did not glance behind, he made no sound. With almost human dignity he vacated the premises to the newcomer. Not until he reached his destination, the ill-lighted stable, did curiosity get the better of prudence; then, safe within the doorway, he wheeled about, and with forelegs wide apart stood staring out, his long, sensitive nose taking minutest testimony.

The newcomer, a well-proportioned, smooth-faced man in approved riding togs, halted likewise and returned the look; equally minutely, equally suspiciously. The horse he rode was one of a kind seldom seen on the ranges: a thoroughbred with slender legs and sensitive ears. The rider sat his saddle well; remarkably well for one obviously from another life. Both the horse and man were immaculately groomed. At a distance they made a pleasant picture, one fulfilling adequately the adjective "smart." Not until an observer was near, very near, could the looseness of the skin beneath the man's eyelids, incongruous with his general youth, and the abnormal nervous twitching of a muscle here and there, have been noted. For perhaps a minute he sat so, taking in every detail of the commonplace surroundings. Then, apparently satisfied, he dismounted and, tying the animal to the wheel of an old surrey drawn up in the yard, he approached the single entrance of the house and rapped.

To the doorway came Elizabeth Landor; her sleeves rolled to the elbow, a frilled apron that reached to the chin protecting a plain gingham gown. A moment they looked at each other; then the man's riding cap came off with a sweep and he held out his hand.

"Bess!" he said intimately; and for another moment that was all. Then he looked her fair between the eyes. "I came to see your husband," he exclaimed. "Is he at home?"

The girl showed no surprise, ignored the out-stretched hand.

"I was expecting you," she said. "How told me last night that you had returned."

A shade of colour stole into the man's blonde cheeks and his hand dropped; but his eyes held their place.

"Yes. I only came yesterday," he returned. "I've a little business to talk over with How. That's why I'm here this morning. Is he about?"

Just perceptibly the girl smiled; but she made no answer.

"Don't you wish to be friends, Bess?" persisted the man. "Aren't we to be even neighbourly?"

"Neighbourly, certainly. I have no desire to be otherwise."

"Why don't you answer me, then?" The red shading was becoming positive now, telltale. "Tell me why, please."

"Answer?" The girl rolled down one sleeve deliberately. "Answer?" She undid its mate. "Do you really fancy, cousin by courtesy, that after I've lived the last four months I'm still such a child as that? Do you really wish me to answer, Neighbour Craig?"

For the first time the man's eyes dropped. Some silver coins in his trousers pocket jingled as he fingered them nervously. Then again he looked up.

"I beg your pardon, Bess," he said. "I saw your husband leave an hour ago. I knew he wasn't here." He looked her straight. "It was you I came to see. May I stay?"

Again the girl ignored the question.

"You admit then," she smiled, "that if How were here you wouldn't have come, that nothing you know of could have made you come? Let's understand each other in the beginning. You admit this?"

"Yes," steadily, "I admit it. May I stay?"

The smile left the girl's lips. She looked him fair in the eyes; silently, deliberately, with an intensity the other could not fathom, could not even vaguely comprehend. Then as deliberately she released him, looked away.

"Yes, you may stay," she consented, "if you wish."

"If I wish!" Craig looked at her meaningly; then with an obvious effort he checked himself "Thank you," he completed repressedly.

This time the girl did not smile.

"Don't you realise yet that sort of thing is useless?" she queried unemotionally.

It was the man this time who was silent.

"If you wish to stay," went on the girl monotonously, "do so; but for once and all do away with acting. We're neither of us good, we're both living a lie; but at least we understand each other. Let's not waste energy in pretending—when there's no one to be deceived."

Just for a second the man stiffened. The histrionic was too much a part of his life to shake off instantly. Then he laughed.

"All right, Bess. I owe you another apology, I suppose. Anyway be it so. And now, that I'm to stay—" A meaning glance through the open door. "You were working, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"Go ahead, then, and I'll find something to sit on and watch. You remember another morning once before, don't you—a morning before you grew up—"

"Perfectly."

"We'll fancy we're back there again, then. Come."

"I am quite deficient in imagination."

"At least, though, dishes must be washed."

"Not necessarily—this moment at least. They have waited before."

"But, Bess, on the square, I don't wish to intrude or interfere."

"You're not interfering. I've merely chosen to rest a bit and enjoy the sun." She indicated the step. "Won't you be seated? They're clean, I know. I scrubbed them this very morning myself."

The man hesitated. Then he sat down.

"Bess," he said, "you've been pretty frank with me and I'm going to return the privilege. I don't understand you a bit—the way you are now. You've changed terribly."

"Changed? On the contrary I'm very normal. I've been precisely as I am this moment for—a lifetime."

"For—how long, Bess?"

"A lifetime, I think."

"For four months, you mean."

"Perhaps—it's all the same."

"Since you did a foolish thing?"

"I have done many such."

"Since the last, I mean."

"No." Just perceptibly the lids over the brown eyes tightened. "The last was when I asked you to sit down. I have not changed in the smallest possible manner since then."

The man inspected his boots.

"Aren't you, too, going to be seated?" he suggested at length.

"Yes, certainly. To tell the truth I thought I was." She took a place beside him. "I had forgotten."

They sat so, the man observing her narrowly, in real perplexity.

"Bess," he initiated baldly at last, "you're unhappy."

"I have not denied it," evenly.

The visitor caught his breath. He thought he was prepared for anything; but he was finding his mistake.

"This life you've—selected, is wearing on you," he added. "Frankly, I hardly recognise you, you used to be so careless and happy."

"Frankly," echoed the girl, "you, too, have altered, cousin mine. You're dissipating. Even here one grows to recognise the signs."

The man flushed. It is far easier in this world to give frank criticism than to receive it.

"I won't endeavour to justify myself, Bess," he said intimately, "nor attempt to deny it. There is a reason, however."

"I've noticed," commented his companion, "that there usually is an explanation for everything we do in this life."

"Yes. And in this instance you are the reason, Bess."

"Thank you." A pause. "I suppose I should take that as a compliment."

"You may if you wish. Leastways it's the truth."

The girl locked her fingers over her knees and leaned back against the lintel of the door. She looked very young that moment—and very old.

"And your reason?" persisted the man. "You know now my explanation for being—as I am. What is yours?"

"Do you wish a compliment, also, Clayton Craig?"

"I wish to know the reason."

"Unfortunately you know it already. Otherwise you would not be here."

"You mean it is this lonely life, this man of another race you have married?"

"No. I mean the thing that led me away from this life, and—the man you have named."

"I don't believe I understand, Bess."

"You ought to. You drank me dry once, every drop of confidence I possessed, for two weeks."

"You mean I myself am the cause," said the man low.

"I repeat you have the compliment—if you consider it such."

Again there was silence. Within the stable door, during all the time, the grey wolf had not stirred. He was observing them now, steadily, immovably. Though it was bright sunlight without, against the background of the dark interior his eyes shone as though they were afire.

"Honestly, Bess," said the man, low as before, "I'm sorry if I have made you unhappy."

"I thought we had decided to be truthful for once," answered a voice.

"You're unjust, horribly unjust!"

"No. I merely understand you—now. You're not sorry, because otherwise you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't dare to be here—even though my husband were away."

Again instinctively the man's face reddened. It was decidedly a novelty in his life to be treated as he was being treated this day. Ordinarily glib of speech, for some reason in the face of this newfound emotionless characterisation, he had nothing to say. It is difficult to appear what one is not in the blaze of one's own fireside. It was impossible under the scrutiny of this wide-eyed girl, with the recollection of events gone by.

"All right, Bess," he admitted at last, with an effort, "we've got other things more interesting than myself to discuss anyway." He looked at her openly, significantly. "Your own self, for instance."

"Yes?"

"I'm listening. Tell me everything."

"You really fancy I will after—the past?"

"Yes."

"And why, please?"

"You've already told me why."

"That's right," meditatively. "I'd forgotten. We were going to be ourselves, our natural worst selves, to-day."

"I'm still listening."

"You're patient. What do you most wish to know?"

"Most? The thing most essential, of course. Do you love your husband? You're unhappy, I know. Is that the reason?"

The girl looked out, out over the prairies, meditatively, impassively. Far in the distance, indistinguishable to an untrained eye, a black dot stood out above the horizon line. Her eyes paused upon it.

"You'll never tell anyone if I answer?" she asked suddenly.

"Never, Bess."

"You swear it?"

"I swear."

Just perceptibly the girl's lips twitched.

"Thanks. I merely wished to find out if you would still perjure yourself. To answer your question, I really don't know."

"Bess!" The man was upon his feet, his face twitching. "I'll stand a lot from you, but there's a limit—"

"Sit down, please," evenly. "It's wasted absolutely. There's not a soul but myself to see; and I'm not looking. Please be seated."

From his height the man looked down at her; at first angrily, resentfully—then with an expression wherein surprise and unbelief were mingled. He sat down.

The girl's eyes left the dot on the horizon, moved on and on.

"As I was saying," she continued, "I don't know. I'd give my soul, if I have one, to know; but I have no one with whom to make the exchange, no one who can give me light. Does that answer your question?"

Her companion stared at her, and forgot himself.

"Yes, it answers the now. But why did you marry him?"

"You really wish to know?" Again the lips were twitching.

"Yes."

"You're very hungry for compliments. You yourself are why."

No answer, only silence.

"You've seen a coursing, haven't you?" wandered on the girl. "A little tired rabbit with a great mongrel pack in pursuit? You're not plural, but nevertheless you personified that pack. You and the unknown things you represented were pressing me close. I was confused and afraid. I was a babe four months ago. I was not afraid of How, I had loved him—at least I thought I had, I'm sure of nothing now—and, as I say, I was afraid of you—then."

"And now—"

Just for a second the girl glanced at the questioner, then she looked away.

"I'm not in the least afraid of you now—or of anything."

"Not even of your husband?"

"No," unemotionally. "I leave that to you."

Again the man's face twitched, but he was silent.

"I said afraid of nothing," retracted the girl swiftly. "I made a mistake." Of a sudden her face grew old and tense. "I am afraid of something; horribly afraid. I'm as afraid, as you are of death, of this infinite eventless monotony." She bit her lip deep, unconsciously. "I sometimes think the old fear of everything were preferable, were the lesser of the two evils."

Just perceptibly the figure of the man grew alert. The loose skin under his eyes drew tight as the lids partially closed.

"You've been a bit slow about it, Bess," he said, "but I think you've gotten down to realities at last." He likewise looked away; but unseeingly. The mind of Clayton Craig was not on the landscape that spring morning. "I even fancy that at last you realise what a mess you've made of your life."

The girl showed no resentment, no surprise.

"Yes, I think I do," she said.

"You are perhaps even prepared to admit that I wasn't such a brute after all in attempting to prevent your doing as you did."

"No," monotonously. "You could have prevented it if you hadn't been a brute."

Again the man looked at her, unconscious of self.

"You mean that you did really and truly care for me, then, Bess? Cared for me myself?"

"Yes."

"And that I frightened you back here?"

"Yes."

Unconsciously the man swallowed. His throat was very dry.

"And now that you're no longer afraid of me, how about it now?"

The girl looked away in silence.

"Tell me, Bess," pleaded the man, "tell me!"

"I can't tell you. I don't know."

"Don't know?"

"No. I don't seem to be sure of anything now-a-days—anything except that I'm afraid."

"Of the future?"

"Yes—and of myself."

For once at least in his life Clayton Craig was wise. He said nothing. A long silence fell between them. It was the girl herself who broke it.

"I sometimes think a part of me is dead," she said slowly, and the voice was very weary. "I think it was buried in Boston with Uncle Landor."

"Was I to blame, Bess?"

"Yes. You were the grave digger. You covered it up."

"Then I'm the one to bring it to life again."

The girl said nothing.

"You admit," pressed Craig, "that I'm the only person who can restore the thing you have lost, the thing whose lack is making you unhappy?"

"Yes. I admit it."

The man took a deep breath, as one arousing from reverie.

"Won't you let me give it you again, Bess?" he asked low.

"You won't do it," listlessly. "You could, but you won't. You're too selfish."

"Bess!" The man's hand was upon her arm.

"Don't do that, please," said the girl quietly.

The man's face twitched; but he obeyed.

"You're maddening, Bess," he flamed. "Positively maddening!"

"Perhaps," evenly. "I warned you that if you stayed we'd be ourselves to-day. I merely told you things as they are."

Craig opened his lips to speak; but closed them again in silence. One of his hands, long fingered, white as a woman's, lay in his lap. Against his will now and then a muscle contracted nervously; and of a sudden he thrust the telltale member deep into his trousers pocket.

"But the future, Bess," he challenged, "your future. You can't go on this way indefinitely. What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

"Haven't you ever thought of it?"

"It seems to me I've thought of nothing else—for an age."

"And you've decided nothing?"

"Absolutely nothing."

Again the man drew a long breath; but even thereafter his voice trembled.

"Let me decide for you then, Bess," he said.

"You?" The girl inspected him slowly through level eyes. "By what right should you be permitted to decide?"

The man returned her look. Of a sudden he had become calm. His eyes were steady. Deep down in his consciousness he realised that he would win, that the moment was his moment.

"The right is mine because I love you, Bess Landor," he said simply.

"Love me, after what you have done?"

"Yes. I have been mad—and done mad things. But I've discovered my fault. That's why I've come back; to tell you so—and to make amends."

Intensely, desperately intensely, the girl continued her look; but the man was master of himself now, sure of himself, so sure that he voiced a challenge.

"And you, Bess Landor, love me. In spite of the fact that you ran away, in spite of the fact that you are married, you love me!"

Into the girl's brown face there crept a trace of colour; her lips parted, but she said no word.

"You can't deny it," exulted the man. "You can't—because it is true."

A moment longer they sat so, motionless; then for a second time that day Clayton Craig did a wise thing, inspiration wise. While yet he was master of the situation, while yet the time was his, he arose.

"I'm going now, Bess," he said, "but I'll come again." He looked at her deeply, meaningly. "I've said all there is to say, for I've told you that I love you. Good-bye for now, and remember this: If I've stolen your happiness, I'll give it all back. As God is my witness, I'll give it all back with interest." Swiftly, before she could answer, he turned away and strode toward the impatient thoroughbred. Equally swiftly he undid the tie strap and mounted. Without another word, or a backward glance, he rode away; the galloping hoofs of his mount muffled in the damp spring earth.

Equally silent, the girl sat looking after him. She did not move. She did not make a sound. Not until the horse turned in at the C-C ranch house, until the buildings hid the owner from view, did her eyes leave him. Then, as if compelled by an instinct, she looked away over the prairie, away where the last time she had glanced a tiny black dot stood out against the intense blue sky. But look as she might she could not find it. It was there no more. It had been for long; but now was not. Clean as though drawn by a crayon on a freshly washed blackboard, the unbroken horizon line stretched out in a great circle before her eyes. With no watcher save the grey wolf staring forth from the stable doorway, she was alone with her thoughts.



CHAPTER XVI

THE RECKONING

It was later than usual when How Landor returned that evening, and as he came up the path that led from the stable, he shuffled his feet as one unconsciously will when very weary. He was wearing his ready-made clothes and starched collar; but the trousers were deplorably baggy at the knees from much riding, and his linen and polished shoes were soiled with the dust of the prairie.

Supper was waiting for him, a supper hot and carefully prepared. Serving it was a young woman he had not seen for long, a young woman minus the slightest trace of listlessness, with a dash of red ribbon at belt and throat, and a reflection of the same colour burning on either cheek. A young woman, moreover, who anticipated his slightest wish, who took his hat and fetched his moccasins, and when the meal was over brought the buffalo robes and stretched them carefully on the gently sloping terrace just outside the ranch house door. Meanwhile she chatted bubblingly, continuously; with a suggestion of the light-hearted gaiety of a year before. To one less intimately acquainted with her than the man, her companion, she would have seemed again her old girlish self, returned, unchanged; but to him who knew her as himself there was now and then a note that rang false, a hint of suppressed excitement in the unwonted colour, an abnormal energy bordering on the feverish in her every motion. Not in the least deceived was this impassive, all-observing human, not in the least in doubt as to the cause of the transformation: yet through it all he gave no intimation of consciousness of the unusual, through it all he smiled, and smiled and smiled again. Never was there a more appreciative diner than he, never a more attentive, sympathetic listener. He said but little; but that was not remarkable. He had never done so except when she had not. When he looked at her there was an intensity that was almost uncanny in his gaze; but that also was not unusual. There was ever a mystery in the depths of his steady black eyes. Never more himself, never outwardly more unsuspicious was the man than on this occasion; even when, the meal complete, the girl had led him hand in hand out of doors, out into the soft spring night, out under the stars where she had stretched the two robes intimately close.

Thus, side by side, but not touching, they lay there, the soft south breeze fanning their faces, whispering wordless secrets in their ears; about them the friendly enveloping darkness, in their nostrils the subtle, indescribable fragrance of awakening earth and of growing things. But not even then could the girl be still. Far too full of this day's revelation and of anticipation of things to come was she to be silent. The mood of her merely changed. The chatter, heretofore aimless, ceased. In its place came a definite intent, a motive that prompted a definite question. She was lying stretched out like a child, her crossed arms pillowing her head, her eyes looking up into the great unknown, when she gave it voice. Even when she had done so, she did not alter her position.

"I wonder," she said, "whether if one has made a mistake, it were better to go on without acknowledging it, living a lie and dying so, or to admit it and make another, who is innocent, instead of one's self, pay the penalty?" She paused for breath after the long sentence. "What do you think, How?"

In the semi-darkness the man looked at her. Against the lighter sky her face stood out distinct, clear-cut as a silhouette.

"I do not think it ever right to live a lie, Bess," he answered.

"Not even to keep another, who is innocent, from suffering?"

"No," quickly, "not even to keep another from suffering."

The girl shifted restlessly, repressedly.

"But supposing one's acknowledging the lie and living the truth makes one, according to the world, bad. Would that make any difference, How?"

The Indian did not stir, merely lay there looking at her with his steady eyes.

"There are some things one has to decide for one's self," he said. "I think this is one of them."

Again the arms beneath the girl's head shifted unconsciously.

"Others judge us after we do decide, though," she objected.

"What they think doesn't count. We're good or bad, as we're honest with ourselves or not."

"You think that, really?"

"I know it, Bess. There's no room for doubt."

Silence fell, and in it the girl's mind wandered on and on. At last, abrupt as before, abstractedly as before, came a new thought, a new query.

"Is happiness, after all, the chief end of life, How?" she questioned.

"Happiness, Bess?" He halted. "Happiness?" repeated; but there was no irony in the voice, only, had the girl noticed, a terrible mute pain. "How should I know what is best in life, I, who have never known life at all?"

Blind in her own abstraction, the girl had not read beneath the words themselves, did not notice the thinly veiled inference.

"But you must have an idea," she pressed. "Tell me."

This time the answer was not concealed. It stood forth glaring, where the running might read.

"Yes, I have an idea—and more," he said. "Happiness, your happiness, has always been the first thing in my life."

Again silence walled them in, a longer silence than before. Step by step, gropingly, the girl was advancing on her journey. Step by step she was drawing away from her companion; yet though, wide-eyed, he watched her every motion, felt the distance separating grow wider and wider, he made no move to prevent, threw no obstacle in her path. Deliberately from his grip, from beneath his very eyes, fate, the relentless, was filching his one ewe lamb; yet he gave no sign of the knowledge, spoke no word of unkindness or of hate. Nature, the all-observing, could not but have admired her child that night.

One more advance the girl made; and that was the last. Before she had walked gropingly, as though uncertain of her pathway. Now there was no hesitation. The move was deliberate; even certain.

"I know you'll think I'm foolish, How," she began swiftly, "but I haven't much to think about, and so little things appeal to me." She paused and again her folded arms reversed beneath her head. "I've been watching 'Shaggy,' the wolf here, since he grew up; watched him become restless week by week. Last night,—you didn't notice, but I did,—I heard another wolf call away out on the prairie, and I got up to see what Shaggy would do. Somehow I seemed to understand how he'd feel, and I came out here, out where we are now, and looked down toward the barn. It was moonlight last night, and I could see everything clearly, almost as clearly as day. There hadn't been a sound while I was getting up; but all at once as I stood watching the call was repeated from somewhere away off in the distance. Before, Shaggy hadn't stirred. He was standing there, where you had chained him, just outside the door; but when that second call came, it was too much. He started to go, did go as far as he could; then the collar choked him and he realised where he was. He didn't make a sound, he didn't fight or rebel against something he couldn't help; but the way he looked, there in the moonlight, with the chain stretched across his back—" She halted abruptly, of a sudden sat up. "I know it's childish, but promise me, How, you'll let him go," she pleaded. "He's wild, and the wild was calling to him. Please promise me you'll let him go!"

Not even then did the man stir or his eyes leave her face.

"Did I ever tell you, Bess," he asked, "that it was to save Shaggy's life I brought him here? Sam Howard dug his mother out of her den and shot her, and was going to kill the cub, too, when I found him."

"No." A hesitating pause. "But anyway," swiftly, "that doesn't make any difference. He's wild, and it's a prison to him here."

Deliberately, ignoring the refutation, the man went on with the argument.

"Again, if Shaggy returns," he said, "the chances are he won't live through a year. The first cowboy who gets near enough will shoot him on sight."

"He'll have to take his chance of that, How," countered the girl. "We all have to take our chances in this life."

For the second time the Indian ignored the interruption.

"Last of all, he's a murderer, Bess. If he were free he'd kill the first animal weaker than himself he met. Have you thought of that?"

The girl looked away into the infinite abstractedly.

"Yes. But again that makes no difference. Neither you nor I made him as he is, nor Shaggy himself. He's as God meant him to be; and if he's bad, God alone is to blame." Her glance returned, met the other fair. "I wish you'd let him go, How."

The man made no answer.

"Won't you promise me you'll let him go?"

"You really wish it, Bess?"

"Yes, very much."

Still for another moment the man made no move; then of a sudden he arose.

"Come, Bess," he said.

Wondering, the girl got to her feet; wondering still more, followed his lead down the path to the stable. At the door the Indian whistled. But there was no response, no shaggy grey answering shadow. A lantern hung from a nail near at hand. In silence the man lit it and again led the way within. The mouse-coloured broncho and its darker mate were asleep, but at the interruption they awoke and looked about curiously. Otherwise there was no move. Look where one would within the building, there was no sign of another live thing. Still in silence the Indian led the way outside, made the circuit of the stable, paused at the south end where a chain hung loose from a peg driven into the wall. A moment he stood there, holding the light so the girl could see; then, impassive as before, he extinguished the blaze and returned the lantern to its place.

They were half way back to the house before the girl spoke; then, detainingly, she laid her hand upon his arm.

"You mean you've let him go already, How?" she asked.

"Yes. I didn't fasten him this evening."

They walked on so.

"You wanted him to go?"

No answer.

"Tell me, How, did you want him to leave?"

"No, Bess."

Again they advanced, until they reached the house door.

"Why did you let him go, then?" asked the girl tensely.

For the second time there was no answer.

"Tell me, How," she repeated insistently.

"I heard you get up last night, Bess," said a voice. "I thought I—understood."

For long they stood there, the girl's hand on the man's arm, but neither stirring; then with a sound perilously near a sob, the hand dropped.

"I think I'll go to bed now, How," she said.

Deliberately, instinctively, the man's arms folded across his chest. That was all.

The girl mounted the single step, paused in the doorway.

"Aren't you coming, too, How?" she queried.

"No, Bess."

A sudden suspicion came to the girl, a sudden terror.

"You aren't angry with me, are you?" she trembled.

"No, Bess," repeated.

"But still you're not coming?"

"No."

Swift as a lightning flash suspicion became certainty.

"You mean you're not going to come with me to-night?" She scarcely recognised her own voice. "You're never going to be with me again?"

"Never?" A long, long pause. "God alone knows about that, Bess." A second halt. "Not until things between us are different, at least."

"How!" Blindly, weakly, the girl threw out her hand, grasped the casing of the door. "Oh, How! How!"

No answer, not the twitching of a muscle, nor the whisper of a breath; just that dread, motionless silence. A moment the girl stood it, hoping against hope, praying for a miracle; then she could stand it no longer. Gropingly clutching at every object within reach, she made her way into the dark interior; flung herself full dressed onto the bed, her face buried desperately among the covers.

All the night which followed a sentinel paced back and forth in front of the ranch house door; back and forth like an automaton, back and forth in a motion that seemed perpetual. Within the tiny low-ceiled room, in the fulness of time, the girl sobbed herself into a fitful sleep; but not once did the sentinel pause to rest, not once in those dragging hours before day did he relax. With the coming of the first trace of light he halted, and on silent moccasined feet stole within. But again he only remained for moments, and when he returned it was merely to stride away to the stable. Within the space of minutes, before the east had fairly begun to grow red, silently as he did everything, he rode away astride the mouse-coloured cayuse into the darkness to the west.

* * * * *

It was broad day when the girl awoke, and then with a vague sense of depression and of impending evil. The door was open and the bright morning light flooded the room. Beyond the entrance stretched the open prairie: an endless sea of green with a tiny brown island, her own dooryard, in the foreground. With dull listlessness, the girl propped herself up in bed and sat looking about her. Absently, aimlessly, her eyes passed from one familiar object to another. Without any definite conception of why or of where, she was conscious of an impression of change in the material world about her, a change that corresponded to the mental crisis that had so recently taken place. Glad as was the sunshine without this morning, in her it aroused no answering joy. Ubiquitous as was the vivid surrounding life, its message passed her by. Like a haze enveloping, dulling all things, was a haunting memory of the past night and of what it had meant. As a traveller lost in this fog, she lay staring about, indecisive which way to move, idly waiting for light. Ordinarily action itself would have offered a solution of the problem, would have served at least as a diversion; but this morning she was strangely listless, strangely indifferent. There seemed to her no adequate reason for rising, no definite object in doing anything more than she was doing. In conformity she pulled the pillow higher and, lifting herself wearily, dropped her chin into her palm and lay with wide-open eyes staring aimlessly away.

Just how long she remained there so, she did not know. The doorway faced south, and bit by bit the bar of sunlight that had entered therein began moving to the left across the floor. Unconsciously, for the lack of anything better to do, she watched its advance. It fell upon a tiny shelf against the wall, littered with a collection of papers and magazines; and the reflected light from the white sheets glared in her eyes. It came to the supper table of the night before, the table she had not cleared, and like an accusing hand, lay directed at the evidence of her own slothfulness. On it went with the passing time, on and on; crossed a bare spot on the uncarpeted floor, and like a live thing, began climbing the wall beyond.

Deliberately, with a sort of fascination now, the girl watched its advance. Her nerves were on edge this morning, and in its relentless stealth it began to assume an element of the uncanny. Like a hostile alien thing, it seemed searching here and there in the tiny room for something definite, something it did not find. Fatuous as it may seem, the impression grew upon her, augmented until in its own turn it became a dominant influence. Her glance, heretofore absent, perfunctory, became intense. The glare was well above the floor by this time and climbing higher and higher. Answering the mythical challenge, of a sudden she sat up free in bed and, as though at a spoken injunction, looked about her fairly.

The place where she glanced, the point toward which the light was mounting, was beside her own bed and where, from rough-fashioned wooden pegs, hung the Indian's pathetically scant wardrobe. At first glance there seemed to the girl nothing unusual revealed thereon, nothing significant; and, restlessly observant, the inspection advanced. Then, ere the mental picture could vanish, ere a new impression could take its place, in a flash of tardy recollection and of understanding came realisation complete, and her eyes returned. For perhaps a minute thereafter she sat so, her great eyes unconsciously opening wider and wider, her brown skin shading paler second by second. A minute so, a minute of nerve-tense inaction; then with a little gesture of weariness and of abandon absolute, she dropped back in her place, and covered her face from sight.



CHAPTER XVII

SACRIFICE

A week had gone by. Each day of the seven the thoroughbred with the slender legs and the tiny sensitive ears had stood in the barren dooryard before Elizabeth Landor's home. Moreover, with each repetition the arrival had been earlier, the halt longer. Though the weather was perfect, nevertheless the beast had grown impatient under the long waits, and telltale, a glaring black mound had come into being where he had pawed his displeasure. At first Craig on departing had carefully concealed the testimony of his presence beneath a sprinkling of dooryard litter; but at last he had ceased to do so, and bit by bit the mound had grown. Day had succeeded day, and no one had appeared to question the visitor's right of coming or of going. Even the wolf was no longer present to stare his disapproval. Verily, unchallenged, the king had come into his own in this realm of one; and as a monarch absolute ever rules, Clayton Craig had reigned, was reigning now.

For he no longer halted perforce at the doorstep. He had never been invited to enter, yet he had entered—and the girl had spoken no word to prevent. Not by request were his cap and riding stick hanging from a peg beside the few belongings of How Landor; yet, likewise unchallenged, they were there. Not by the girl's solicitation was he lounging intimately in the single rocker the room boasted; yet once again the bald fact remained that though it was not yet nine by the clock, he was present, his legs comfortably crossed, his eyes, beneath drooping lids, whimsically observing the girl as she went about the perfunctory labour of putting the place to rights.

"I say, Bess," he remarked casually at length, "you've dusted that unoffending table three times by actual count since I've been watching. Wouldn't it be proper to rest a bit now and entertain your company?"

The girl did not smile.

"Perhaps." She put away the cloth judicially. "I fancied you were tolerably amused as it was. However, if you prefer—" She drew another chair opposite, and, sitting down, folded her hands in her lap.

A moment longer the man sat smiling at her; then shade by shade the whimsical expression vanished, and the normal proprietary look he had grown to assume in her presence took its place.

"By the way, Bess," he commented, "isn't it about time to drop sarcasm when you and I are together? I know I've been a most reprehensible offender, but haven't I been punished enough?"

"Punished?" There was just the ghost of a smile. "Is this your idea of punishment?"

The man flushed involuntarily. His face had cleared remarkably in the past week of abstinence, and through the fair skin the colour showed plain.

"Well, perhaps punishment is a little too severe. Leastways you've held me at arm's length until I'm beginning to despair."

"Despair?" Again the ghost smiled forth. "Do you fancy I'm so dull that I don't realise what I'm doing, what you've done?"

For the second time the involuntary colour appeared; but the role that the man was playing, the role of the injured, was too effective to abandon at once.

"You can't deny that you've held me away all this last week, Bess," he objected. "You've permitted me to call and call again; but that is all. Otherwise we're not a bit nearer than we were when I first returned."

"Nearer?" This time the smile did not come. Even the ghost refused to appear. "I wonder if that's true." A pause. "At least I've gotten immeasurably farther away from another."

"Your husband you mean?"

"I mean How. There are but you and he in my life."

The pose was abandoned. It was useless now.

"Tell me, Bess," said the man intimately. "You and I mean too much to each other not to know everything there is to know."

"There's nothing to tell." The girl did not dissimulate now. The inevitable was in sight, approaching swiftly—and she herself had chosen. "He's merely given me up."

"He knows, Bess?" Blank unbelief was on the questioner's face, something else as well, something akin to exultation.

"Yes," repressedly. "He's known since that first night."

"And he hasn't objected, hasn't done anything at all?"

Just for an instant, ere came second thought, the old defiance, the old pride, broke forth.

"Do you fancy you would be here now, that you wouldn't have known before this if he objected?" she flamed.

"Bess!"

"I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that." Already the blaze had died, never to be rekindled. "Forget that I said that. I didn't mean to."

The man did not answer, he scarcely heard. Almost as by a miracle, the last obstacle had been removed from his way. He had counted upon blindness, the unsuspicion of perfect confidence; but a passive, conscious conformity such as this—The thing was unbelievable, providential, too unnaturally good to last. The present was a strategic moment, the time for immediate, irrevocable action, ere there came a change of heart. It had not been a part of Clayton Craig's plans to permit a meeting between himself and the Indian. As a matter of fact he had taken elaborate, and, as it proved, unnecessary precautions to avoid such a consummation. Even now, the necessity passed, he did not alter his plans. Not that he was afraid of the red man. He had proven to himself by an incontrovertible process of reasoning that such was not the case. It was merely to avoid unpleasantness for himself and for the girl—particularly for the latter. Moreover, no possible object could be gained by such a meeting. Things were as they were and inevitable. He merely decided to hasten the move. It was the forming of this decision that had held him silent. It was under its influence that he spoke.

"When is it to be, Bess," he asked abruptly, "the final break, I mean?"

"It has already been, I tell you. It's all over."

"The new life, then," guided the man. "You can't go on this way any longer. It's intolerable for both of us."

"Yes," dully, "it's intolerable for all of us."

Craig arose and, walking to the door, looked out. In advance he had imagined that the actual move, when all was ready, would be easy. Now that the time had really arrived, he found it strangely difficult. He hardly knew how to begin.

"Bess." Of a sudden he had returned swiftly and, very erect, very dominant, stood looking down at her. "Bess," repeated, "we've avoided the obvious long enough, too long. As I said, you've succeeded in keeping me at arm's length all the last week; but I won't be denied any longer. I'm willing to take all the blame of the past, and all the responsibility of the future. I love you, Bess. I've told you that before, but I repeat it now. I want you to go away with me, away from this God-cursed land that's driving us both mad—at least leave for a time. After a while, when we both feel different, we can come back if we wish; but for the present—I can't stand this uncertainty another week, another day." He paused for breath, came a step nearer.

"Your marrying this Indian was a hideous mistake," he rushed on; "but we can't help that now. All we can do is to get away and forget it." He cleared his throat needlessly. "It's this getting away that I've arranged for since I've been here. I've not been entirely idle the last week, and every detail is complete. There are three relays of horses waiting between here and the railroad. One team is all ready at the ranch house the minute I give the signal. They'll get us to town before morning. You've only to say the word, and I'll give the sign." Again, nervously, shortly, he repeated the needless rasp, "How may, as you say, not interfere; but it's useless, to take any chances. There's been enough tragedy already between you two, without courting more. Besides, the past is dead; dead as though it had never been. My lawyer is over at the ranch house now. He'll straighten out everything after we're gone. Things here are all in your name; you can do as you please with them. There's no possible excuse for delay." He bent over her, his hands on her shoulders, his eyes looking into hers compellingly. "God knows you've been buried here long enough, girl. I'll teach you to live; to live, do you hear? We'll be very happy together, you and I, Bess; happier than you ever dreamed of being. Will you come?"

He was silent, and of a sudden the place became very still; still as the dead past the man had suggested. Wide-eyed, motionless, the girl sat looking up at him. She did not speak; she scarcely seemed to breathe. As she had chosen, so had it come to pass; yet involuntarily she delayed. Deliverance from the haunting solitude that had oppressed her like an evil dream was beckoning; yet impotent, she held back. Of a sudden, within her being, something she had fancied dormant had awakened. The instinct of convention, fundamental, inbred, more vital to a woman than life itself, intruded preventingly, fair in her path. Warning, pleading, distinct as a spoken admonition, its voice sounded a negative in her ears. She tried to silence it, tried to overwhelm it with her newborn philosophy; but it was useless. Fear of the future, as she had said, she had none. Good or bad as the man might be, she had chosen. With full knowledge of his deficiencies she had chosen. But to go away with him so, without sanction of law or of clergy; she, Bess Landor, who was a wife—.

The hands on her shoulders tightened insistently, the compelling face drew nearer.

"Answer me, Bess," demanded a tense voice; "don't keep me in suspense. Will you go?"

With the motion of a captured wild thing, the girl arose, drew back until she was free.

"Don't," she pleaded. "Don't hurry me so. Give me a little time to think." She caught her breath from the effort. "I'll go with you, yes; but to-day, now—I can't. We must see How first. He must know, must consent—"

"See How!" The man checked himself. "You must be mad," he digressed. "I can't see How, nor won't. I tell you it's between How and myself you must choose. I love you, Bess. I'm proving I love you; but I'm not insane absolutely. I ask you again: will you come?"

The girl shook her head, nervously, jerkily.

"I can't now, as things are."

"And why not?" passionately. "Haven't you said you care for me?"

For answer the red lower lip trembled. That was all.

The man came a step forward, and another.

"Tell me, Bess," he demanded. "Don't you love me?"

"I have told you," said a low voice.

Answering, coercing, swift as the swoop of a prairie hawk, as a human being in abandon, the man's arms were about her. Ere the girl could move or resist, his lips were upon her lips. "You must go then," he commanded. "I'll compel you to go." He kissed her again, hungrily, irresistibly. "I won't take no for an answer. You will go."

"Don't, please," pleaded a voice, breathless from its owner's impotent effort to be free. "You must not, we must not—yet. I'm bad, I know, but not wholly. Please let me go."

Unconscious of time, unconscious of place, oblivious to aught save the moment, the man held his ground, joying in his victory, in her effort to escape. Save that one casual glance long before, he had not looked out of doors. Had he done so, had he seen—.

But he had forgotten that a world existed without those four walls. His back was toward the door. His own great shoulders walled the girl in. Neither he nor she dreamed of a dark figure that had drifted from out the prairie swiftly into the dooryard, dreamed that that same all-knowing shadow, on soundless moccasined feet, had advanced to the doorway, stood silent, watching therein. As the first man and the first woman were alone, they fancied themselves alone. As the first man might have exulted over his mate, Clayton Craig exulted now.

"Let you go, Bess," he baited, "let you go now that I've just gotten you?" He laughed passionately. "You must think that I'm made of clay and not of flesh and blood." He drew her closer and closer, until she could no longer struggle, until she lay still in his arms. "I'll never let you go again, girl, not if God himself were to demand your release. You're mine, Bess, mine by right of capture, mine—"

The sentence halted midway; halted in a gasp and an unintelligible muttering in the throat. Of a sudden, darkening, ominous, fateful, the shadow within the entrance had silently advanced until it stood beside them, paused so with folded arms. Simultaneously the wife and the invader saw, realised. Instantly, instinctively, like similar repellent poles, they sprang apart. Enveloped in a maze of surging divergent passions, the two guilty humans stood silent so, staring at the intruder in breathless expectation, breathless fascination.

* * * * *

While an observer could have counted ten slowly, and repeated the count, the three remained precisely as they were. While the same mythical spectator could have counted ten more, the silence held; but inaction had ceased. While time, the relentless, checked off another measure, there was still no interruption; then of a sudden, desperately tense, desperately challenging, a voice sounded: the voice of Clayton Craig.

"Well," he queried, "why don't you do something?" He moistened his lips and shuffled his feet restlessly. "You've seen enough to understand, I guess. What are you going to do about it?"

The Indian had not been looking at him. Since that first moment when the two had sprang separate he had not even appeared conscious of his presence. Nor did he alter now. Erect as a maize plant, dressed once more in the flannels and corduroys of his station, as tall and graceful, he merely stood there with folded arms, looking down on the girl. More maddening than an execration, than physical menace itself, was that passionless, ignoring isolation to the other man. Answering, the hot blood flooded his blonde face, swelled the arteries of his throat until his collar choked him. Involuntarily his hand went to his neckband, tugged until it was free. Equally involuntarily he took a step forward menacingly.

"Curse you, How Landor," he blazed, "you've learned at last, perhaps, not to dare me to take something of yours away from you." Word by word his voice had risen until he fairly shouted. "You've lost, fool; lost, lost! Are you blind that you can't see? You've lost, I say!"

From pure inability to articulate more, the white man halted; and that instant the room became deathly still.

A second, or the fraction of a second thereof, it remained so; then, white-faced, apprehensive, the girl sprang between the two, paused so, motionless:—for of a sudden a voice, an even, passionless voice, was speaking.

"You don't know me even yet, do you, Elizabeth?" it chided. Just a step the speaker moved backward, and for the first time he recognised the white man's presence. His eyes were steady and level. His voice, unbelievably low in contrast to that of the other, when he spoke was even as before.

"I won't forgive you for what you've just done, Mr. Craig," he said. "I'll merely forget that you've done anything at all. One thing I expect, however, and that is that you'll not interrupt again. You may listen or not, as you wish. Later, I may have a word to say to you; but now there is nothing to be said." Just a moment longer the look held, a moment wherein the other man felt his tongue grow dumb; then with the old impassivity, the old isolation, the black eyes shifted until they rested on the face of the girl.

But for still another moment—he was as deliberate as nature herself, this man—he stood so, looking down. Always slender, he had grown more so these last weeks. Moreover, he had the look of one weary unto death. His black eyes were bright, mysteriously bright, and on his thin hands, folded across his chest, the veins stood out full and prominent; but look where one would on the lithe body, the muscles lay distinct beneath the close-fitting clothes, distinct to emaciation. Standing there now, very grave, very repressed, there was nevertheless no reproach in his expression, no trace of bitterness; only a haunting tenderness, infinite in its pathos. When he spoke the same incredible tolerance throbbed in the low-pitched voice.

"I've just a few things I wish to say to you, Bess," he began, "and a request to make—and that is all. I didn't come back so, unexpectedly, to be unpleasant, or to interfere with what you wish to do. I came because I fancied you were going to do an unwise thing: because I had reason to believe you were going to run away." Unconsciously, one of the folded hands loosened, passed absently over his forehead; then returned abruptly to its place. "Perhaps I was mistaken. If so I beg your pardon for the suspicion; but at least, if I can prevent, I don't want you to do so. It's this I came to tell you." Again the voice halted, and into it there came a new note: a self-conquered throb that lingered in the girl's recollection while memory lasted.

"It's useless to talk of yourself and of myself, Bess," he went on. "Things are as they are—and final. I don't judge you, I—understand. Above everything else in life, I wish you to be happy; and I realise now I can't make you so. Another perhaps can; I hope so and trust so. At least I shall not stand in your way any longer. It is that I came to tell you. It is I who shall leave and not you, Bess." Of a sudden he stepped back and lifted one hand free, preventingly. "Just a moment, please," he requested. "Don't interrupt me until I say what I came to say." His arms folded back as before, his eyes held hers compellingly.

"I said I had a request to make. This is it—that you don't leave until you are married again. You won't have to wait long if I leave. I have inquired and found out. A few days, a few weeks at the longest, and you will be free. Meanwhile stay here. Everything is yours. I never owned anything except the house, and that is yours also." For the last time he halted; then even, distinct, came the question direct. "Will you promise me this, Bess?" he asked.

Save once, when she had tried to interrupt, the girl had listened through it all without a move, without a sound. Now that he was silent, and it was her turn to speak, she still stood so, passive, waiting. Ever in times of stress his will had dominated her will; and the present was no exception. There was an infinity of things she might have said. A myriad which she should have spoken, would occur to her when he was gone. But at the present, when the opportunity was hers, there seemed nothing to offer; nothing to gainsay. She even forgot that she was expected to answer at all, that he had asked a question.

"Won't you promise me this one thing, Bess?" repeated the voice gently. "I've never made a request of you before, and I probably never shall again."

At last the girl aroused; and of a sudden she realised that her lips were very dry and hot. She moistened them with her tongue.

"Yes, How," she said dully, "I promise."

Silence fell, a silence deathly in its significance, in its finality; but the girl did not break it, said no more—and forever the moment, her moment, vanished into the past.

"Thank you, Bess," acknowledged the man monotonously. Slowly, strangely different from his usual alert certainty, he moved across the room. "There are just a few things here I'd like to take with me," he explained apologetically. "They'd only be in your way if I left them."

With a hand that fumbled a bit, he took down a battered telescope satchel from a peg on the wall and began packing. He moved about slowly here and there, his moccasined feet patting dully on the bare floor. No one offered to assist him, no one interrupted; and in dead silence, except for the sound he himself made, he went about his work. Into the satchel went a few books from the shelf on the wall: an old army greatcoat that had been Colonel William Landor's: a weather-stained cap which had been a present likewise: a handful of fossils he had gathered in one of his journeys to the Bad Lands: an inexpensive trinket here and there, that the girl herself had made for him. The satchel was small, and soon, pitifully soon, it was full. A moment thereafter he stood beside it, looking about him; then with an effort he put on the cover and began tightening the straps. The leather was old and the holes large, but he found difficulty even then in fastening the buckles. At last, though, it was done, and he straightened. Both the white man and the girl were watching him; but no one spoke. For the second time, the last time, the Indian stood so while his intense black eyes shifted from nook to nook, taking in every detail of the place that had once been his heaven, his nest, but now his no more; then of a sudden he lifted his burden and started to leave. Opposite the girl he paused and held out his hand.

"Good-bye, Bess," he said. He looked her deep in the eyes, deep into her very soul. "If I knew what religion is, I'd say God bless you, girl; but I don't, so I'll only say good-bye—and—I wish you happiness." Just a moment longer he remained so; then at something he saw, he dropped her hand and drew away swiftly, preventingly.

"Don't, Bess," he pleaded, "don't say it—as you cared for me once. Don't make things any harder—make them impossible!" Desperately, without another pause, ere she could disobey, he started for the door. Beside the entrance—for he was not watching these last minutes—stood the white man; and just for a moment at his side the Indian halted. Despite the will of Clayton Craig, their eyes met. For an instant, wherein time lapsed, they stood face to face; then swiftly as he did everything, now the Indian spoke: and, as once before in his life, those words and the look that accompanied them went with the alien to his grave.

"As for you, Mr. Craig," said the voice, "I have one thing only to say. Make Bess happy. There's nothing in the world to prevent your doing so, if you will. If you do not—" a pause of horrible ice-cold menace—"if you do not," repeated, "suicide." Just for the fraction of a second not a civilised man but a savage stared the listener in the face. "I shall know if you fail, and believe me, it were better, a thousand times better, if you do as I say."

Again, as beside the girl, there was a mute, throbbing lapse; then, similarly before there could be an answer, upon the tense silence there broke the swift pat of moccasined feet, and he was gone.



CHAPTER XVIII

REWARD

The month was late September. The time, evening. The place, the ranch house of a rawboned Yankee named Hawkins. Upon the scene at the hour the supper table was spread appeared a traveller in an open road waggon. The vehicle was covered with dust. The team which drew it were dust-stained likewise, and in addition, on belly and legs, were covered with a white powder-like frost where the sweat had oozed to the hair tips and dried. Without announcing his arrival or deigning the formality of asking permission, the newcomer unhitched and put his team in the barn. From a convenient bin he took out a generous feed, and from a stack beside the eaves he brought them hay for the night. This done, he started for the house. A minute later, again without form of announcement or seeking permission, he opened the ranch house door and stepped inside.

Within the room, beside a table with an oilcloth cover, four men were eating. A fifth, a dark-skinned Mexican, was standing by a stove in one corner baking pancakes. All looked up as the door opened.

Then, curiosity satisfied, the eyes of all save one, the proprietor, Hawkins, returned to their plates, and the rattle of steel on heavy queensware proceeded.