The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 44

"I thought, perhaps, you'd prefer driving out beyond the suburbs," he had explained. "There's a good trail up to the hog's back opposite the _Brule_."

They watched her leap down from the buckboard and mount the saddle, a little awkward at first whether to put the right knee fore or aft, from her Eastern training to a side saddle; and side saddles in the range country are rare as low neck gowns and tuxedo coats; but once she had caught the far stirrup, riding was riding. She had the pace, and the two figures loped off up the burn for the hill known as the _Brule_, Wayland turning and waving his hat.

"Now the Lord have mercy on your soul, Williams. This ride will settle it; an' A'm not darin' t' hope which way it goes! A 'm not keen to go back empty-handed with yon little old lady payin' m' expenses heavy an'

generous; but yet--but yet--"

"Yet what?" asked Mrs. Williams, leaning forward between the two men.

"Th' great joy comes only once; an' when it cam' t' me, A put a handspike thro' it, an' kept it."

He had come to her that morning with a look on his face that she had not dreamed a human face could wear. She wondered if all men crucified for right won such joy. And he did not tread earth. He trod air.

Eleanor could not trust her eyes to meet his. She felt their light burning to the centre of her soul. What was it? Was it renunciation?

The thought turned her faint. Her determination to break his resolution seemed the cheap obtrusion of egotism on the great mission of a devoted life. Then, going up the hog's back trail along the rim of the Ridge, they were facing the Holy Cross Mountain. The glint of the morning sun on the far snows shone like diamonds, a tiared jeweled thing poised in mid-heaven like a crown held by invisible hands; the base of the lower mountain outlines melting and losing edge in the purple shadows; the crown only, s.h.i.+ning diademed, winged with opal light.

"Look d.i.c.k," she said pointing with her riding crop, "do you remember the night on the Ridge? Do you remember about the snow flakes ma.s.sing to the avalanche? It has--hasn't it? The Nation has wakened up."

Wayland looked ahead. He couldn't answer. 'Remember the night on the Ridge?' He had a lump in his throat and an ache at his heart from never letting himself remember it. By that strange perversity, which we all know in ourselves, he couldn't talk. The hundred and one things he had wanted to ask, died on his lips in a dumbness of gladness. Of course, you, dear reader, on the return of a husband or wife (prospective or present), on the sudden appearance of friend or kith have never been similarly affected. You didn't forget the questions you had meant to ask till thousands of miles again separated you.

It was good to leave the Valley road and go into seclusion and shelter on the Forest trail; for a hurricane September wind was blowing, the kind of Western wind that the Eastern woman with a big hat thinks is possessed by ten thousand devils; the kind of wind that the Eastern office man with sensitive eyes curses with tears that are not grief; the kind of wind that makes the Westerner put screw nails in _his_ hat and look out for the fire guard round wheat, stock and timber.

Such a different home-going he had planned from this visitation of dumb devils that obsessed them both! He used to dream at night in the Desert of the day, perhaps, coming when they should set out together adventuring a life joy in the Forests; _his_ Forests; when he would show her the golden cottonwoods and the pale birches nursing the pineries to strong maturity; and the fire blisters on the firs; and the sugar blisters on the sugar pines; and the rain of green-gray tempered light from the under side of the funereal hemlocks; and the park like glades of the wonderfully straight and serried soldier ranks of the engleman spruce and the lodge-pole pines; and the larches yellow as gold dust to the touch of the alchemist autumn. He wanted to bring out his violin some day with her and see if they could catch the exact tone and pitch of the pines, when they began harping those age-old melodies of Pan: they were harping them to-day in the high wind; he was sure it was the same as the ba.s.s undertone of a big orchestra. Had she ever noticed the way the seeds came fluffing out of the cinnamon cones and the asters and the golden rod and the fire flower in September, for all the world like fairies sailing pixie parachutes? People said that autumn was sad, it presaged death! Did it? A Forester did not see it so; he saw the triumphal procession of the years lighted to its consummation by the flaming torches of ten thousand golden twinkling gay, recklessly gay flowers and trees--the cottonwood and the poplar and the larch, the cone flower and the golden rod and the aster! But to-day, he could not say a word. They were no longer _his_ Forests.

He had been cast out from his life work--the continuity of a National Life Work broken--because he had dared to interfere with the petty plans of peanut politicians and public plunderers.

"It is level here! Let us gallop out of this bare burn to the shelter of the evergreens," she said. "I don't mind wind, but I'd just as soon get under cover where it couldn't lash us so."

And the horses came chugging and breathing hard up on the sheltered trail below the evergreens. She reined her horse to the slowest of walks.

"Did you see the news editor before you left town?" she asked.

"Yes, he came over to my hotel last night about twelve o'clock. He had the biggest fool-scheme you ever heard of my running for Congress and buying a paper to boost out the Ring and all that! Thunder, I don't want to run! I've no ax to grind! I prefer to stay a free lance in the fighting ranks!"

"And do you think the fellows, who want to run and have an ax to grind, do best for the Nation?" asked Eleanor. "Why wouldn't you run if the people demanded it?"

"There is the plain brutal fact that it takes money," explained Wayland. "I haven't the ambition; and I have less money. I haven't more than will set me up on some little one-horse irrigation farm. Oh, I know some fool had been filling him up about my having rich friends East, who would put up money for this campaign and finance a new kind of newspaper for the Valley! I'd like to knock the fool's head off who told him that! It's all a lie! Of course, I knew lots of moneyed chaps at Yale; but thunderation, I'd have to want public office a good deal harder than I do to go round cap in hand! Why, Eleanor, a fellow who would do that wouldn't be worth shucks to represent the people."

"Did you tell him that?" asked Eleanor.

"Yes and more! I told him he was clean plumb fool-crazy! Why, Eleanor, when that fellow was fired out of his job yesterday morning, he hadn't ten dollars ahead in the world! I'm not a bank, myself; but then I haven't a wife and kiddies. Do you know, Eleanor, that fellow had more pluck than I would have had under the same circ.u.mstances? I couldn't let the results of this kind of a fight come down on a woman."

"What did he say when you told him he was crazy?"

"Oh, went locoed clean out of his head, kicked my hat off the bed post, took out a fiver, said, 'Wayland, that's my last! I'll bet it a hundred odd you do the very thing I'm outlining tonight.'"

"It was a safe bet," said Eleanor. "He had come to see me before he went to you! I was the person, who told him you had a friend, who would put up the money. I didn't tell him who the friend was; for it happens to be myself. No: you needn't blow up, d.i.c.k; or drop dead of apoplexy! He didn't come to tell me, or ask a woman's money! He had come hunting you; and I pumped it out of him. He's a brick not to mention my name to you. I like that in a man; and I am going to do it, d.i.c.k; and you needn't blow up with rage! You can swear if it would relieve pressure; but I am going to do it! I am going to do it at once! Don't you see what a cowardly foolish thing it would be of you to give up and slink into a hole just because you're defeated? It's just what you said would happen that night on the Ridge. Don't you remember, you said it was bound to be a losing fight; and I said it didn't matter a bit if a man were crucified long as the cause won out?

Well, you sent me the note saying you had set out on the Trail and would never quit till you got the Man Higher Up. How are you going to get the Man Higher Up if you don't go right after him in the House and the Senate? They've crucified you; and it's going to be the making of you. Men don't destroy an opponent unless they fear him! If he's a fool, they give him rope enough to hang himself; but if they fear him, they slander him and blacken him and misrepresent him and try to destroy him! Well, they've done all that to you and tried to destroy you; and instead of destroying you, they've only made the people call on you for a leader! Don't you see what a cowardly thing it would be to slink away now because you are defeated? Why, that's the very time a man can't afford to quit, and still call himself a man. No, don't try to stop me! I lay awake all last night thinking it out! They'll not have a chance to call you a woman-made man! I'll place a certain amount with my lawyer for Mr. Williams. You know my father always helped the Mission School more or less; and a woman is supposed to be soft on Missions. Mr. Williams will loan it to the news editor. Only, I may as well tell you, d.i.c.k, you are not going to be allowed to stop now! You wrote me that a person couldn't stab certain things to life and then expect them to lie quiet as if nothing had happened. That cuts both ways. Men are pretty good egotists; but I wonder if you ever thought what that means with me, with the people you have prodded up to resent the Ring in the Valley here. Do you know d.i.c.k, if you would quit now, I'd despise myself for ever having loved you."

Wayland could not answer. His eyes had filled. He rode with his hand on the pommel of the saddle. Her words had fallen like whiplashes. It was true. You could not cut out and disconnect with life. He had dreamed of this last ride as a sort of mid-heaven ecstasy; and behold, instead of love's dream, the lifting kick to a limp spine. If only one's friends would oftener give us that lifting kick instead of the softening sympathy! If only they would brace our back bone instead of our wish bone!

Then, she turned to him with a sudden tenderness: "What a beast I am to speak so to you when you've just had the blow of public dismissal on top of five years' continuous grilling," and he saw that the flame in her cheeks, in her eyes, was not anger but a gust of pa.s.sionate love.

"I can't thank you Eleanor," he said. "This is beyond thanks."

"And your old editor man was so funny about it," she went on. "You know d.i.c.k, I think he had really come round to the hotel to have a consolation drink with you; and he almost let it out; but just at the last moment he changed the word and said he'd come 'to shake' with you on being dismissed together."

"When do you leave?" asked Wayland dully.

"I don't leave! I haven't the slightest intention of ever leaving this Valley! Why, d.i.c.k, would you have me exchange this splendid big free new life where men and women do things, for a parish existence--working slippers for a curate and talking dress, d.i.c.k--dress like the Colonel's wife, and chronicling what Shakespeare calls 'small beer'? I don't intend ever to leave the Valley! Tennyson sung of 'the federation of the world,' d.i.c.k! You and I are seeing it in the making! Think of the fun of my staying and seeing it and having a finger in the making, just a little quiet finger that n.o.body knows about but you and me! United States of the World, d.i.c.k; and you are going after the Man Higher Up just as you went after those blackguards into the Desert." She laughed joyously, joyous as a child, swinging out her arms to the sweep of the roaring Forest wind. "Don't look shocked. I'll not stay on alone at the Ranch House for the Rookery to talk about! I'll insist on the foreman marrying an aged house keeper for me; or I'll move over to the Mission School; or--Oh, I'll plan out something; but I am not going to leave the West."

Wayland suddenly wheeled his horse across her way and faced her. "So you've been trouncing the hide off my back for an hour or more to make me believe all this doesn't mean renunciation? They splashed their filthy hogwash on your skirts to foil me; and _that_ was nothing! The fight was to go on just the same. I was not to stop because of any injury that came to you. Then, they a.s.sa.s.sinated your father; and you know as well as I do he was shot down by that drunken Shanty Town sot in mistake for me; but the fight is to go on just the same. _That_, too, is nothing if the cause be won. Now, you take a slice of your fortune and slam it into the cause, backing me; and you renounce everything that gives meaning to life for a woman, pretending that renunciation is a privilege--"

"It is," interrupted Eleanor, "if it weaves the thing worth while into the warp and woof of your life so it can never be anything but a part of you! Turn your broncho round here and ride along side of me. Look at our Mountain ahead! It isn't a Cross: it's a Crown! Do you think I'm going to push a crown away from myself for the sake of having a lot of flunkeys in a land I don't know bending themselves in their middle at me all my life?" She laughed joyously, flinging her arms wide to the drive and toss of the rolling wind tunneling up the trail on their backs. She had pulled off her hat and the wind tossed forward her hair in a frame of curls round an enamel miniature that always haunted Wayland. "I love it," she said, "the harder it blows, the harder I want to ride! You remember that night coming down the Ridge in the storm? It was like Love and Life! And smell the air, d.i.c.k! It has all the sunbeams of the summer imprisoned, done up in balsam fir and balm of gilead and spices! Exchange _this_ life in the open, here, in the very thick of things doing, for that ancient tapestry plush upholstery blue-book existence?"

"I can't ask you, Eleanor! I haven't a thing on earth to offer but a broken reputation and a lot of plans in the ditch! I ought never to have let you know I loved you! I ought never to have let you care for me! You know what you think and you know what I think of a man who lets a woman give all. He isn't worthy of her. You know you have never been out of my thoughts day or night since I met you, dear! I couldn't have come through that Desert thing alive without you; and I'll hold you in my heart every day of my life till I die." He had taken off his hat and kicked the stirrups free and was riding with loose rein.

When a man tells a woman that he is down and out financially and dare not ask her to marry him, do you think there is an end of it, dear reader? Do you think a Silenus would hesitate and stickle and scruple over a point of honor; though some of us have seen Silenus blunder into a paradise which he promptly transformed into a sty? And do you think the descendant of the Man of the Iron Hand thought anything less of her lover for refusing to accept renunciation as his right? If Wayland could have trusted himself to look at her, he would have seen that she was riding with a whimsical smile. They came to a bend in the upward climbing trail that overlooked the Valley and faced the opal s.h.i.+ning peak.

"There goes the buckboard," remarked Wayland.

"d.i.c.k," she said, "I'll write my lawyer about placing the loan in the bank at once. You need not lose any time."

"But, I can't take that, Eleanor! I haven't any security on earth to offer you."

"Oh, yes you have! I've thought all that out, too. You have the very best security I ever want."

"What?" asked Wayland incredulously. "Do you mean you trust to my honesty? Good intentions aren't usually a banking proposition--"

"You will do as security," she said.

Was it the old mountain talking again; or was it the break in her voice? Their eyes met. He had slipped from his horse.

"Don't," she cried averting her eyes with a tremor in her voice. "I couldn't bear This to be of Self! If I were a man, you'd shake hands with me and call it a bargain. Look d.i.c.k! We're in the light of the Cross! Shake hands with me! Is it a bargain?"

His hands closed over both of hers. There were tears in his eyes. He did not break out with any of the wild terms that had clamored and clamored for utterance these weeks past. He did not say any of the things that men and women say at such times in books and plays. They paused so, she on horseback, he standing at her side, on the crest of the Ridge gazing down on the Valley in the light of the Cross.

"So my old Mountain is talking to you, too?" she said. "Do you remember, d.i.c.k?"

"It's so G.o.d-blessed beautiful, Eleanor," he answered. "I can't thank you! If I lived a thousand years, I couldn't live out my thanks. I could only put up a bluff of trying."

"d.i.c.k the nth," she laughed whimsically, "d.i.c.k the nth for the United States of the World."

Suddenly he looked up at her. The lashes did not veil quick enough.

He caught the veil wide open. He had thought he knew before. Now, he knew that he had but touched the outer margin of her love, of the wealth of her nature, of the reach and grasp of her spirit. She felt the grip of the strong hands closed over hers.

"Mine alder-liefest," he whispered in the old clean unused phrase.

"Is it a bargain?"