Where the Trail Divides Part 19

"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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 furnis.h.i.+ngs, 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, vanis.h.i.+ng 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, wors.h.i.+pfully, 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 pa.s.sing 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sing 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.