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diff --git a/1089-0.txt b/1089-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2712792 --- /dev/null +++ b/1089-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5453 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1089 *** + +MOON-FACE AND OTHER STORIES + + +By Jack London + + + + +CONTENTS + + + MOON-FACE + THE LEOPARD MAN’S STORY + LOCAL COLOR + AMATEUR NIGHT + THE MINIONS OF MIDAS + THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH + ALL GOLD CANYON + PLANCHETTE + + + + +MOON-FACE + + +John Claverhouse was a moon-faced man. You know the kind, cheek-bones +wide apart, chin and forehead melting into the cheeks to complete the +perfect round, and the nose, broad and pudgy, equidistant from the +circumference, flattened against the very centre of the face like a +dough-ball upon the ceiling. Perhaps that is why I hated him, for truly +he had become an offense to my eyes, and I believed the earth to +be cumbered with his presence. Perhaps my mother may have been +superstitious of the moon and looked upon it over the wrong shoulder at +the wrong time. + +Be that as it may, I hated John Claverhouse. Not that he had done me +what society would consider a wrong or an ill turn. Far from it. The +evil was of a deeper, subtler sort; so elusive, so intangible, as to +defy clear, definite analysis in words. We all experience such things +at some period in our lives. For the first time we see a certain +individual, one who the very instant before we did not dream existed; +and yet, at the first moment of meeting, we say: “I do not like that +man.” Why do we not like him? Ah, we do not know why; we know only that +we do not. We have taken a dislike, that is all. And so I with John +Claverhouse. + +What right had such a man to be happy? Yet he was an optimist. He was +always gleeful and laughing. All things were always all right, curse +him! Ah I how it grated on my soul that he should be so happy! Other +men could laugh, and it did not bother me. I even used to laugh +myself—before I met John Claverhouse. + +But his laugh! It irritated me, maddened me, as nothing else under the +sun could irritate or madden me. It haunted me, gripped hold of me, and +would not let me go. It was a huge, Gargantuan laugh. Waking or sleeping +it was always with me, whirring and jarring across my heart-strings like +an enormous rasp. At break of day it came whooping across the fields to +spoil my pleasant morning revery. Under the aching noonday glare, when +the green things drooped and the birds withdrew to the depths of the +forest, and all nature drowsed, his great “Ha! ha!” and “Ho! ho!” rose +up to the sky and challenged the sun. And at black midnight, from the +lonely cross-roads where he turned from town into his own place, came +his plaguey cachinnations to rouse me from my sleep and make me writhe +and clench my nails into my palms. + +I went forth privily in the night-time, and turned his cattle into his +fields, and in the morning heard his whooping laugh as he drove them out +again. “It is nothing,” he said; “the poor, dumb beasties are not to be +blamed for straying into fatter pastures.” + +He had a dog he called “Mars,” a big, splendid brute, part deer-hound +and part blood-hound, and resembling both. Mars was a great delight to +him, and they were always together. But I bided my time, and one day, +when opportunity was ripe, lured the animal away and settled for him +with strychnine and beefsteak. It made positively no impression on John +Claverhouse. His laugh was as hearty and frequent as ever, and his face +as much like the full moon as it always had been. + +Then I set fire to his haystacks and his barn. But the next morning, +being Sunday, he went forth blithe and cheerful. + +“Where are you going?” I asked him, as he went by the cross-roads. + +“Trout,” he said, and his face beamed like a full moon. “I just dote on +trout.” + +Was there ever such an impossible man! His whole harvest had gone up in +his haystacks and barn. It was uninsured, I knew. And yet, in the face +of famine and the rigorous winter, he went out gayly in quest of a mess +of trout, forsooth, because he “doted” on them! Had gloom but rested, +no matter how lightly, on his brow, or had his bovine countenance grown +long and serious and less like the moon, or had he removed that smile +but once from off his face, I am sure I could have forgiven him for +existing. But no, he grew only more cheerful under misfortune. + +I insulted him. He looked at me in slow and smiling surprise. + +“I fight you? Why?” he asked slowly. And then he laughed. “You are so +funny! Ho! ho! You’ll be the death of me! He! he! he! Oh! Ho! ho! ho!” + +What would you? It was past endurance. By the blood of Judas, how I +hated him! Then there was that name—Claverhouse! What a name! Wasn’t it +absurd? Claverhouse! Merciful heaven, WHY Claverhouse? Again and again I +asked myself that question. I should not have minded Smith, or Brown, +or Jones—but CLAVERHOUSE! I leave it to you. Repeat it to +yourself—Claverhouse. Just listen to the ridiculous sound of +it—Claverhouse! Should a man live with such a name? I ask of you. “No,” + you say. And “No” said I. + +But I bethought me of his mortgage. What of his crops and barn +destroyed, I knew he would be unable to meet it. So I got a shrewd, +close-mouthed, tight-fisted money-lender to get the mortgage +transferred to him. I did not appear but through this agent I forced +the foreclosure, and but few days (no more, believe me, than the law +allowed) were given John Claverhouse to remove his goods and chattels +from the premises. Then I strolled down to see how he took it, for +he had lived there upward of twenty years. But he met me with his +saucer-eyes twinkling, and the light glowing and spreading in his face +till it was as a full-risen moon. + +“Ha! ha! ha!” he laughed. “The funniest tike, that youngster of mine! +Did you ever hear the like? Let me tell you. He was down playing by the +edge of the river when a piece of the bank caved in and splashed him. ‘O +papa!’ he cried; ‘a great big puddle flewed up and hit me.’” + +He stopped and waited for me to join him in his infernal glee. + +“I don’t see any laugh in it,” I said shortly, and I know my face went +sour. + +He regarded me with wonderment, and then came the damnable light, +glowing and spreading, as I have described it, till his face shone soft +and warm, like the summer moon, and then the laugh—“Ha! ha! That’s +funny! You don’t see it, eh? He! he! Ho! ho! ho! He doesn’t see it! Why, +look here. You know a puddle—” + +But I turned on my heel and left him. That was the last. I could stand +it no longer. The thing must end right there, I thought, curse him! The +earth should be quit of him. And as I went over the hill, I could hear +his monstrous laugh reverberating against the sky. + +Now, I pride myself on doing things neatly, and when I resolved to kill +John Claverhouse I had it in mind to do so in such fashion that I should +not look back upon it and feel ashamed. I hate bungling, and I hate +brutality. To me there is something repugnant in merely striking a man +with one’s naked fist—faugh! it is sickening! So, to shoot, or stab, +or club John Claverhouse (oh, that name!) did not appeal to me. And not +only was I impelled to do it neatly and artistically, but also in such +manner that not the slightest possible suspicion could be directed +against me. + +To this end I bent my intellect, and, after a week of profound +incubation, I hatched the scheme. Then I set to work. I bought a water +spaniel bitch, five months old, and devoted my whole attention to her +training. Had any one spied upon me, they would have remarked that this +training consisted entirely of one thing—RETRIEVING. I taught the dog, +which I called “Bellona,” to fetch sticks I threw into the water, and +not only to fetch, but to fetch at once, without mouthing or playing +with them. The point was that she was to stop for nothing, but to +deliver the stick in all haste. I made a practice of running away and +leaving her to chase me, with the stick in her mouth, till she caught +me. She was a bright animal, and took to the game with such eagerness +that I was soon content. + +After that, at the first casual opportunity, I presented Bellona to +John Claverhouse. I knew what I was about, for I was aware of a little +weakness of his, and of a little private sinning of which he was +regularly and inveterately guilty. + +“No,” he said, when I placed the end of the rope in his hand. “No, you +don’t mean it.” And his mouth opened wide and he grinned all over his +damnable moon-face. + +“I—I kind of thought, somehow, you didn’t like me,” he explained. +“Wasn’t it funny for me to make such a mistake?” And at the thought he +held his sides with laughter. + +“What is her name?” he managed to ask between paroxysms. + +“Bellona,” I said. + +“He! he!” he tittered. “What a funny name.” + +I gritted my teeth, for his mirth put them on edge, and snapped out +between them, “She was the wife of Mars, you know.” + +Then the light of the full moon began to suffuse his face, until he +exploded with: “That was my other dog. Well, I guess she’s a widow now. +Oh! Ho! ho! E! he! he! Ho!” he whooped after me, and I turned and fled +swiftly over the hill. + +The week passed by, and on Saturday evening I said to him, “You go away +Monday, don’t you?” + +He nodded his head and grinned. + +“Then you won’t have another chance to get a mess of those trout you +just ‘dote’ on.” + +But he did not notice the sneer. “Oh, I don’t know,” he chuckled. “I’m +going up to-morrow to try pretty hard.” + +Thus was assurance made doubly sure, and I went back to my house hugging +myself with rapture. + +Early next morning I saw him go by with a dip-net and gunnysack, and +Bellona trotting at his heels. I knew where he was bound, and cut out +by the back pasture and climbed through the underbrush to the top of the +mountain. Keeping carefully out of sight, I followed the crest along +for a couple of miles to a natural amphitheatre in the hills, where the +little river raced down out of a gorge and stopped for breath in a large +and placid rock-bound pool. That was the spot! I sat down on the croup +of the mountain, where I could see all that occurred, and lighted my +pipe. + +Ere many minutes had passed, John Claverhouse came plodding up the bed +of the stream. Bellona was ambling about him, and they were in high +feather, her short, snappy barks mingling with his deeper chest-notes. +Arrived at the pool, he threw down the dip-net and sack, and drew from +his hip-pocket what looked like a large, fat candle. But I knew it to +be a stick of “giant”; for such was his method of catching trout. He +dynamited them. He attached the fuse by wrapping the “giant” tightly +in a piece of cotton. Then he ignited the fuse and tossed the explosive +into the pool. + +Like a flash, Bellona was into the pool after it. I could have shrieked +aloud for joy. Claverhouse yelled at her, but without avail. He pelted +her with clods and rocks, but she swam steadily on till she got the +stick of “giant” in her mouth, when she whirled about and headed for +shore. Then, for the first time, he realized his danger, and started to +run. As foreseen and planned by me, she made the bank and took out after +him. Oh, I tell you, it was great! As I have said, the pool lay in a +sort of amphitheatre. Above and below, the stream could be crossed +on stepping-stones. And around and around, up and down and across the +stones, raced Claverhouse and Bellona. I could never have believed +that such an ungainly man could run so fast. But run he did, Bellona +hot-footed after him, and gaining. And then, just as she caught up, +he in full stride, and she leaping with nose at his knee, there was a +sudden flash, a burst of smoke, a terrific detonation, and where man and +dog had been the instant before there was naught to be seen but a big +hole in the ground. + +“Death from accident while engaged in illegal fishing.” That was the +verdict of the coroner’s jury; and that is why I pride myself on the +neat and artistic way in which I finished off John Claverhouse. There +was no bungling, no brutality; nothing of which to be ashamed in +the whole transaction, as I am sure you will agree. No more does his +infernal laugh go echoing among the hills, and no more does his fat +moon-face rise up to vex me. My days are peaceful now, and my night’s +sleep deep. + + + + +THE LEOPARD MAN’S STORY + + +He had a dreamy, far-away look in his eyes, and his sad, insistent +voice, gentle-spoken as a maid’s, seemed the placid embodiment of some +deep-seated melancholy. He was the Leopard Man, but he did not look +it. His business in life, whereby he lived, was to appear in a cage of +performing leopards before vast audiences, and to thrill those audiences +by certain exhibitions of nerve for which his employers rewarded him on +a scale commensurate with the thrills he produced. + +As I say, he did not look it. He was narrow-hipped, narrow-shouldered, +and anaemic, while he seemed not so much oppressed by gloom as by a +sweet and gentle sadness, the weight of which was as sweetly and gently +borne. For an hour I had been trying to get a story out of him, but +he appeared to lack imagination. To him there was no romance in his +gorgeous career, no deeds of daring, no thrills—nothing but a gray +sameness and infinite boredom. + +Lions? Oh, yes! he had fought with them. It was nothing. All you had to +do was to stay sober. Anybody could whip a lion to a standstill with an +ordinary stick. He had fought one for half an hour once. Just hit him +on the nose every time he rushed, and when he got artful and rushed with +his head down, why, the thing to do was to stick out your leg. When he +grabbed at the leg you drew it back and hit hint on the nose again. That +was all. + +With the far-away look in his eyes and his soft flow of words he showed +me his scars. There were many of them, and one recent one where a +tigress had reached for his shoulder and gone down to the bone. I could +see the neatly mended rents in the coat he had on. His right arm, +from the elbow down, looked as though it had gone through a threshing +machine, what of the ravage wrought by claws and fangs. But it was +nothing, he said, only the old wounds bothered him somewhat when rainy +weather came on. + +Suddenly his face brightened with a recollection, for he was really as +anxious to give me a story as I was to get it. + +“I suppose you’ve heard of the lion-tamer who was hated by another man?” + he asked. + +He paused and looked pensively at a sick lion in the cage opposite. + +“Got the toothache,” he explained. “Well, the lion-tamer’s big play to +the audience was putting his head in a lion’s mouth. The man who hated +him attended every performance in the hope sometime of seeing that lion +crunch down. He followed the show about all over the country. The years +went by and he grew old, and the lion-tamer grew old, and the lion grew +old. And at last one day, sitting in a front seat, he saw what he had +waited for. The lion crunched down, and there wasn’t any need to call a +doctor.” + +The Leopard Man glanced casually over his finger nails in a manner which +would have been critical had it not been so sad. + +“Now, that’s what I call patience,” he continued, “and it’s my style. +But it was not the style of a fellow I knew. He was a little, thin, +sawed-off, sword-swallowing and juggling Frenchman. De Ville, he called +himself, and he had a nice wife. She did trapeze work and used to dive +from under the roof into a net, turning over once on the way as nice as +you please. + +“De Ville had a quick temper, as quick as his hand, and his hand was as +quick as the paw of a tiger. One day, because the ring-master called him +a frog-eater, or something like that and maybe a little worse, he shoved +him against the soft pine background he used in his knife-throwing act, +so quick the ring-master didn’t have time to think, and there, before +the audience, De Ville kept the air on fire with his knives, sinking +them into the wood all around the ring-master so close that they passed +through his clothes and most of them bit into his skin. + +“The clowns had to pull the knives out to get him loose, for he was +pinned fast. So the word went around to watch out for De Ville, and no +one dared be more than barely civil to his wife. And she was a sly bit +of baggage, too, only all hands were afraid of De Ville. + +“But there was one man, Wallace, who was afraid of nothing. He was the +lion-tamer, and he had the self-same trick of putting his head into +the lion’s mouth. He’d put it into the mouths of any of them, though +he preferred Augustus, a big, good-natured beast who could always be +depended upon. + +“As I was saying, Wallace—‘King’ Wallace we called him—was afraid +of nothing alive or dead. He was a king and no mistake. I’ve seen him +drunk, and on a wager go into the cage of a lion that’d turned nasty, +and without a stick beat him to a finish. Just did it with his fist on +the nose. + +“Madame de Ville—” + +At an uproar behind us the Leopard Man turned quietly around. It was +a divided cage, and a monkey, poking through the bars and around the +partition, had had its paw seized by a big gray wolf who was trying to +pull it off by main strength. The arm seemed stretching out longer end +longer like a thick elastic, and the unfortunate monkey’s mates were +raising a terrible din. No keeper was at hand, so the Leopard Man +stepped over a couple of paces, dealt the wolf a sharp blow on the nose +with the light cane he carried, and returned with a sadly apologetic +smile to take up his unfinished sentence as though there had been no +interruption. + +“—looked at King Wallace and King Wallace looked at her, while De Ville +looked black. We warned Wallace, but it was no use. He laughed at us, +as he laughed at De Ville one day when he shoved De Ville’s head into a +bucket of paste because he wanted to fight. + +“De Ville was in a pretty mess—I helped to scrape him off; but he was +cool as a cucumber and made no threats at all. But I saw a glitter in +his eyes which I had seen often in the eyes of wild beasts, and I went +out of my way to give Wallace a final warning. He laughed, but he did +not look so much in Madame de Ville’s direction after that. + +“Several months passed by. Nothing had happened and I was beginning to +think it all a scare over nothing. We were West by that time, showing in +‘Frisco. It was during the afternoon performance, and the big tent was +filled with women and children, when I went looking for Red Denny, the +head canvas-man, who had walked off with my pocket-knife. + +“Passing by one of the dressing tents I glanced in through a hole in the +canvas to see if I could locate him. He wasn’t there, but directly in +front of me was King Wallace, in tights, waiting for his turn to go on +with his cage of performing lions. He was watching with much amusement a +quarrel between a couple of trapeze artists. All the rest of the people +in the dressing tent were watching the same thing, with the exception +of De Ville whom I noticed staring at Wallace with undisguised hatred. +Wallace and the rest were all too busy following the quarrel to notice +this or what followed. + +“But I saw it through the hole in the canvas. De Ville drew his +handkerchief from his pocket, made as though to mop the sweat from +his face with it (it was a hot day), and at the same time walked past +Wallace’s back. The look troubled me at the time, for not only did I see +hatred in it, but I saw triumph as well. + +“‘De Ville will bear watching,’ I said to myself, and I really breathed +easier when I saw him go out the entrance to the circus grounds and +board an electric car for down town. A few minutes later I was in the +big tent, where I had overhauled Red Denny. King Wallace was doing +his turn and holding the audience spellbound. He was in a particularly +vicious mood, and he kept the lions stirred up till they were all +snarling, that is, all of them except old Augustus, and he was just too +fat and lazy and old to get stirred up over anything. + +“Finally Wallace cracked the old lion’s knees with his whip and got him +into position. Old Augustus, blinking good-naturedly, opened his mouth +and in popped Wallace’s head. Then the jaws came together, CRUNCH, just +like that.” + +The Leopard Man smiled in a sweetly wistful fashion, and the far-away +look came into his eyes. + +“And that was the end of King Wallace,” he went on in his sad, low +voice. “After the excitement cooled down I watched my chance and bent +over and smelled Wallace’s head. Then I sneezed.” + +“It ... it was...?” I queried with halting eagerness. + +“Snuff—that De Ville dropped on his hair in the dressing tent. Old +Augustus never meant to do it. He only sneezed.” + + + + +LOCAL COLOR + + +“I do not see why you should not turn this immense amount of unusual +information to account,” I told him. “Unlike most men equipped with +similar knowledge, YOU have expression. Your style is—” + +“Is sufficiently—er—journalese?” he interrupted suavely. + +“Precisely! You could turn a pretty penny.” + +But he interlocked his fingers meditatively, shrugged his shoulders, and +dismissed the subject. + +“I have tried it. It does not pay.” + +“It was paid for and published,” he added, after a pause. “And I was +also honored with sixty days in the Hobo.” + +“The Hobo?” I ventured. + +“The Hobo—” He fixed his eyes on my Spencer and ran along the titles +while he cast his definition. “The Hobo, my dear fellow, is the name for +that particular place of detention in city and county jails wherein are +assembled tramps, drunks, beggars, and the riff-raff of petty offenders. +The word itself is a pretty one, and it has a history. Hautbois—there’s +the French of it. Haut, meaning high, and bois, wood. In English +it becomes hautboy, a wooden musical instrument of two-foot tone, I +believe, played with a double reed, an oboe, in fact. You remember in +‘Henry IV’— + + “‘The case of a treble hautboy + Was a mansion for him, a court.’ + +“From this to ho-boy is but a step, and for that matter the English +used the terms interchangeably. But—and mark you, the leap paralyzes +one—crossing the Western Ocean, in New York City, hautboy, or ho-boy, +becomes the name by which the night-scavenger is known. In a way one +understands its being born of the contempt for wandering players and +musical fellows. But see the beauty of it! the burn and the brand! +The night-scavenger, the pariah, the miserable, the despised, the man +without caste! And in its next incarnation, consistently and logically, +it attaches itself to the American outcast, namely, the tramp. Then, +as others have mutilated its sense, the tramp mutilates its form, and +ho-boy becomes exultantly hobo. Wherefore, the large stone and brick +cells, lined with double and triple-tiered bunks, in which the Law is +wont to incarcerate him, he calls the Hobo. Interesting, isn’t it?” + +And I sat back and marvelled secretly at this encyclopaedic-minded man, +this Leith Clay-Randolph, this common tramp who made himself at home in +my den, charmed such friends as gathered at my small table, outshone me +with his brilliance and his manners, spent my spending money, smoked my +best cigars, and selected from my ties and studs with a cultivated and +discriminating eye. + +He absently walked over to the shelves and looked into Loria’s “Economic +Foundation of Society.” + +“I like to talk with you,” he remarked. “You are not indifferently +schooled. You’ve read the books, and your economic interpretation of +history, as you choose to call it” (this with a sneer), “eminently fits +you for an intellectual outlook on life. But your sociologic judgments +are vitiated by your lack of practical knowledge. Now I, who know the +books, pardon me, somewhat better than you, know life, too. I have lived +it, naked, taken it up in both my hands and looked at it, and tasted it, +the flesh and the blood of it, and, being purely an intellectual, I have +been biased by neither passion nor prejudice. All of which is necessary +for clear concepts, and all of which you lack. Ah! a really clever +passage. Listen!” + +And he read aloud to me in his remarkable style, paralleling the text +with a running criticism and commentary, lucidly wording involved and +lumbering periods, casting side and cross lights upon the subject, +introducing points the author had blundered past and objections he had +ignored, catching up lost ends, flinging a contrast into a paradox +and reducing it to a coherent and succinctly stated truth—in short, +flashing his luminous genius in a blaze of fire over pages erstwhile +dull and heavy and lifeless. + +It is long since that Leith Clay-Randolph (note the hyphenated surname) +knocked at the back door of Idlewild and melted the heart of Gunda. Now +Gunda was cold as her Norway hills, though in her least frigid moods she +was capable of permitting especially nice-looking tramps to sit on the +back stoop and devour lone crusts and forlorn and forsaken chops. But +that a tatterdemalion out of the night should invade the sanctity of her +kitchen-kingdom and delay dinner while she set a place for him in the +warmest corner, was a matter of such moment that the Sunflower went +to see. Ah, the Sunflower, of the soft heart and swift sympathy! Leith +Clay-Randolph threw his glamour over her for fifteen long minutes, +whilst I brooded with my cigar, and then she fluttered back with vague +words and the suggestion of a cast-off suit I would never miss. + +“Surely I shall never miss it,” I said, and I had in mind the dark gray +suit with the pockets draggled from the freightage of many books—books +that had spoiled more than one day’s fishing sport. + +“I should advise you, however,” I added, “to mend the pockets first.” + +But the Sunflower’s face clouded. “N—o,” she said, “the black one.” + +“The black one!” This explosively, incredulously. “I wear it quite +often. I—I intended wearing it to-night.” + +“You have two better ones, and you know I never liked it, dear,” the +Sunflower hurried on. “Besides, it’s shiny—” + +“Shiny!” + +“It—it soon will be, which is just the same, and the man is really +estimable. He is nice and refined, and I am sure he—” + +“Has seen better days.” + +“Yes, and the weather is raw and beastly, and his clothes are +threadbare. And you have many suits—” + +“Five,” I corrected, “counting in the dark gray fishing outfit with the +draggled pockets.” + +“And he has none, no home, nothing—” + +“Not even a Sunflower,”—putting my arm around her,—“wherefore he is +deserving of all things. Give him the black suit, dear—nay, the best +one, the very best one. Under high heaven for such lack there must be +compensation!” + +“You ARE a dear!” And the Sunflower moved to the door and looked back +alluringly. “You are a PERFECT dear.” + +And this after seven years, I marvelled, till she was back again, timid +and apologetic. + +“I—I gave him one of your white shirts. He wore a cheap horrid cotton +thing, and I knew it would look ridiculous. And then his shoes were so +slipshod, I let him have a pair of yours, the old ones with the narrow +caps—” + +“Old ones!” + +“Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did.” + +It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. + +And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did +not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an +erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk +who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, +he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And +without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away +into that great mysterious underworld he called “The Road.” + +“I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the +open hand and heart,” he said, on the night he donned my good black +suit. + +And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and +saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly +and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known +better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a +transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on +equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended +upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for +many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus +the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from +brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with +barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying +him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him +for the Son of Anak’s sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for +myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, +of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the +Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that +he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And +he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from +emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him +once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with +the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a +sense-delight for the problem’s sake? + +He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic +and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in +speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and +polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But +there was something glimmering; there which I never caught—flashes +of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could +grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man +behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never +knew. + +“But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?” I +asked. “Never mind Loria. Tell me.” + +“Well, if I must.” He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh. + +“In a town that shall be nameless,” he began, “in fact, a city of fifty +thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and +women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as +fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once +entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that +they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific +satire—” + +I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. + +“I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the +genesis of the action,” he explained. “However, the idea came. What +was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The +Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit +the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high +places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me +into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, +guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, +Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. + +“‘Pale youth,’ quoth I, ‘I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, +to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.’ + +“He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. + +“‘G’wan an’ see the janitor. I don’t know nothin’ about the gas.’ + +“‘Nay, my lily-white, the editor.’ + +“‘Wich editor?’ he snapped like a young bullterrier. ‘Dramatic? +Sportin’? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? +Editorial? Wich?’ + +“Which, I did not know. ‘THE Editor,’ I proclaimed stoutly. ‘The ONLY +Editor.’ + +“‘Aw, Spargo!’ he sniffed. + +“‘Of course, Spargo,’ I answered. ‘Who else?’ + +“‘Gimme yer card,’ says he. + +“‘My what?’ + +“‘Yer card—Say! Wot’s yer business, anyway?’ + +“And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I +reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre +chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but +he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the +hand. + +“‘I am the census-taker Time,’ I boomed in sepulchral tones. ‘Beware +lest I knock too loud.’ + +“‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he sneered. + +“Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. + +“‘Well, whatcher want?’ he wheezed with returning breath. + +“‘I want Spargo, the only Spargo.’ + +“‘Then leave go, an’ I’ll glide an’ see.’ + +“‘No you don’t, my lily-white.’ And I took a tighter grip on his collar. +‘No bouncers in mine, understand! I’ll go along.’” + +Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. +“Do you know, Anak, you can’t appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, +playing the clown. You couldn’t do it if you wished. Your pitiful little +conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to +turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of +any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder +and law-respecting citizen. + +“However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, +red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his +desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into +a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and +the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me +expectantly. + +“‘You are a very busy man,’ I said. + +“He jerked a nod with his head, and waited. + +“‘And after all, is it worth it?’ I went on. ‘What does life mean that +it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now +look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin—’ + +“‘Who are you? What are you?’ he bellowed with a suddenness that was, +well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone. + +“‘A very pertinent question, sir,’ I acknowledged. ‘First, I am a +man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither +profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. +My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the +dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology +addressed to your understanding, a tramp.’ + +“‘What the hell—?’ + +“‘Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements +and multifarious—’ + +“‘Quit it!’ he shouted. ‘What do you want?’ + +“‘I want money.’ + +“He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed +a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, ‘This is no bank.’ + +“‘Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your +leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how +does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you +open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can +they be happy without it?’ + +“I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the +unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I +liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he’d do +business with me. + +“‘But mind you,’ he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into +my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, ‘mind you, I won’t +stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have +a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of +sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social +strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go +and life, crisp and crackling and interesting—tumble?’ + +“And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. + +“‘Don’t forget the local color!’ he shouted after me through the door. + +“And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. + +“The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. ‘Got the bounce, +eh?’ + +“‘Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,’ I chortled, waving the copy paper; +‘not the bounce, but a detail. I’ll be City Editor in three months, and +then I’ll make you jump.’ + +“And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair +of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage +consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck +and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him +close.” + +“But how could you, Leith,” I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad +strong before me, “how could you treat him so barbarously?” + +Leith laughed dryly. “My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you +your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master +you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational +judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, +a dim-pulsing and dying organism—pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of +breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. +There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never +arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem—” + +“But the local color?” I prodded him. + +“That’s right,” he replied. “Keep me in the running. Well, I took my +handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), +dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a +box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant +and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my +social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the +average citizen. + +“From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was +particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good +people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs +the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, +than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best +hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable +fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was +convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion +which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the +system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The +good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to +riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures +so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke +two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, +and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay +for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events +proved, it made the taxpayers wince. + +“One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain +Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the +seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious +in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying +reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name +or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of +way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local +color. + +“Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest +against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits +of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the +sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, +and the rhetoric—say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration: + +“‘So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John +Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our +ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are +different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a +crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And +well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: “Our pride it is +to know no spur of pride.” Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; +only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our +distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.’ + +“Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. +A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like +this: ‘This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy’; ‘this civic sinner, this +judicial highwayman’; ‘possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an +honor which thieves’ honor puts to shame’; ‘who compounds criminality +with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and +impecunious to rotting cells,’—and so forth and so forth, style +sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a +dissertation on ‘Surplus Value,’ or ‘The Fallacies of Marxism,’ but just +the stuff the dear public likes. + +“‘Humph!’ grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. ‘Swift gait +you strike, my man.’ + +“I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his +superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or +thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said +nothing till he had finished. + +“‘Where’d you work, you pencil-pusher?’ he asked. + +“‘My maiden effort,’ I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly +simulating embarrassment. + +“‘Maiden hell! What salary do you want?’ + +“‘Nay, nay,’ I answered. ‘No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I +am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is +his.’ + +“‘Save John Law,’ he chuckled. + +“‘Save John Law,’ said I. + +“‘How did you know I was bucking the police department?’ he demanded +abruptly. + +“‘I didn’t know, but I knew you were in training,’ I answered. +‘Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three +biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all +wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because +the Cowbell’s candidate for chief of police had been turned down. +Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two +and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police +commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new +chief of police means Cowbell’s candidate; ergo, your turn to play.’ + +“He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I +put them away and puffed on the old one. + +“‘You’ll do,’ he jubilated. ‘This stuff’ (patting my copy) ‘is the first +gun of the campaign. You’ll touch off many another before we’re done. +I’ve been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.’ + +“But I shook my head. + +“‘Come, now!’ he admonished sharply. ‘No shenanagan! The Cowbell must +have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won’t be happy till it +gets you. What say?’ + +“In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half +an hour the only Spargo gave it up. + +“‘Remember,’ he said, ‘any time you reconsider, I’m open. No matter +where you are, wire me and I’ll send the ducats to come on at once.’ + +“I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy—dope, he called it. + +“‘Oh, regular routine,’ he said. ‘Get it the first Thursday after +publication.’ + +“‘Then I’ll have to trouble you for a few scad until—’ + +“He looked at me and smiled. ‘Better cough up, eh?’ + +“‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.’ + +“And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear +Anak), and I pulled my freight ... eh?—oh, departed. + +“‘Pale youth,’ I said to Cerberus, ‘I am bounced.’ (He grinned with +pallid joy.) ‘And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive +this little—’ (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to +guard his head from the expected blow)—‘this little memento.’ + +“I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, +he was too quick for me. + +“‘Aw, keep yer dirt,’ he snarled. + +“‘I like you still better,’ I said, adding a second fiver. ‘You grow +perfect. But you must take it.’ + +“He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what +little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two +fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two +coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. +As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and +caught them. The elevator boy’s eyes bulged. + +“‘It’s a way I have,’ I said, pocketing them. + +“‘Some bloke’s dropped ‘em down the shaft,’ he whispered, awed by the +circumstance. + +“‘It stands to reason,’ said I. + +“‘I’ll take charge of ‘em,’ he volunteered. + +“‘Nonsense!’ + +“‘You’d better turn ‘em over,’ he threatened, ‘or I stop the works.’ + +“‘Pshaw!’ + +“And stop he did, between floors. + +“‘Young man,’ I said, ‘have you a mother?’ (He looked serious, as though +regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right +sleeve with greatest care.) ‘Are you prepared to die?’ (I got a stealthy +crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) ‘But a minute, a brief minute, +stands between you and eternity.’ (Here I crooked my right hand into a +claw and slid the other foot up.) ‘Young man, young man,’ I trumpeted, +‘in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and +stoop to hear you shriek in hell.’ + +“It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the +drag. You see, Anak, it’s a habit I can’t shake off of leaving vivid +memories behind. No one ever forgets me. + +“I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my +shoulder: + +“‘Hello, Cinders! Which way?’ + +“It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a +freight in Jacksonville. ‘Couldn’t see ‘em fer cinders,’ he described +it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp +nickname. + +“‘Bound south,’ I answered. ‘And how’s Slim?’ + +“‘Bum. Bulls is horstile.’ + +“‘Where’s the push?’ + +“‘At the hang-out. I’ll put you wise.’ + +“‘Who’s the main guy?’ + +“‘Me, and don’t yer ferget it.’” + +The lingo was rippling from Leith’s lips, but perforce I stopped him. +“Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner.” + +“Certainly,” he answered cheerfully. “Slim is in poor luck. Bull means +policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, +the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where +the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that +distinction. + +“Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was +the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a +little purling stream. + +“‘Come on, you mugs!’ Slim addressed them. ‘Throw yer feet! Here’s +Cinders, an’ we must do ‘em proud.’ + +“All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some +lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to +the fold after a year’s separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent +several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, +Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It’s amazing +the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing +the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer +and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the +blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great—an orgy under the sky, a +contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is +something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president +I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It +would beat the books and compete with the laboratory. + +“All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, +early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming +array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten +o’clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the +twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a +Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart. + +“‘John Ambrose!’ the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of +long practice, stood up. + +“‘Vagrant, your Honor,’ the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not +deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, ‘Ten days,’ and Chi Slim sat +down. + +“And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the +man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like +marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the +judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? +Superb! + +“Chi Slim nudged me. ‘Give’m a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.’ + +“I shook my head. + +“‘G’wan,’ he urged. ‘Give ‘m a ghost story The mugs’ll take it all +right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.’ + +“‘L. C. Randolph!’ the clerk called. + +“I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to +the judge, and the bailiff smiled. + +“‘You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?’ his Honor +remarked sweetly. + +“It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the +excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the +pit I had digged. + +“‘That’s yer graft. Work it,’ Slim prompted. + +“‘It’s all over but the shouting,’ I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of +the article, was puzzled. + +“‘Your Honor,’ I answered, ‘when I can get work, that is my occupation.’ + +“‘You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.’ (Here his Honor +took up the morning’s Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I +knew was mine.) ‘Color is good,’ he commented, an appreciative twinkle +in his eyes; ‘pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like +effects. Now this ... this judge you have depicted ... you, ah, draw from +life, I presume?’ + +“‘Rarely, your I Honor,’ I answered. ‘Composites, ideals, rather ... er, +types, I may say.’ + +“‘But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,’ he continued. + +“‘That is splashed on afterward,’ I explained. + +“‘This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to +believe?’ + +“‘No, your Honor.’ + +“‘Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?’ + +“‘Nay, more, your Honor,’ I said boldly, ‘an ideal.’ + +“‘Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to +ask how much you received for this bit of work?’ + +“‘Thirty dollars, your Honor.’ + +“‘Hum, good!’ And his tone abruptly changed. ‘Young man, local color is +a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days’ +imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.’ + +“‘Alas!’ said I, ‘I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.’ + +“‘And thirty days more for wasting your substance.’ + +“‘Next case!’ said his Honor to the clerk. + +“Slim was stunned. ‘Gee!’ he whispered. ‘Gee the push gets ten days and +you get sixty. Gee!’” + +Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his +knees. “Returning to the original conversation, don’t you find, +Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with +scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely—” + +“Yes,” I said absently; “yes.” + + + + +AMATEUR NIGHT + + +The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he +had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little +cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, +on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were +gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes +was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an +observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, +he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied +the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen +sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her +sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street. + +There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather +than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the +wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an +impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of +a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with +head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and +moulded and made her to be a doer of things. + +But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. “I can guess what you +would tell me,” the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy +preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. “And you +have told me enough,” he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as +she went over the conversation in its freshness). “You have done no +newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. +You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off +with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your +friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, +and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you +want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If +you knew how crowded—” + +“But if there are no openings,” she had interrupted, in turn, “how did +those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get +in?” + +“They made themselves indispensable,” was the terse response. “Make +yourself indispensable.” + +“But how can I, if I do not get the chance?” + +“Make your chance.” + +“But how?” she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a +most unreasonable man. + +“How? That is your business, not mine,” he said conclusively, rising +in token that the interview was at an end. “I must inform you, my dear +young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young +ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and +every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly +that of instructor in a school of journalism.” + +She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had +conned the conversation over and over again. “But how?” she repeated to +herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where +she and her sister “bach’ed.” “But how?” And so she continued to put the +interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed +from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was +need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up +from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John +Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his +acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for +themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand +and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for +the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but +successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and +typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. +Edna’s secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a +clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which +to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But +the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or +her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent +remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. +And it was a slim little hoard by now. + +“There’s Max Irwin,” Letty said, talking it over. “He’s a journalist +with a national reputation. Go and see him, Ed. He knows how, and he +should be able to tell you how.” + +“But I don’t know him,” Edna objected. + +“No more than you knew the editor you saw to-day.” + +“Y-e-s,” (long and judicially), “but that’s different.” + +“Not a bit different from the strange men and women you’ll interview +when you’ve learned how,” Letty encouraged. + +“I hadn’t looked at it in that light,” Edna conceded. “After all, +where’s the difference between interviewing Mr. Max Irwin for some +paper, or interviewing Mr. Max Irwin for myself? It will be practice, +too. I’ll go and look him up in the directory.” + +“Letty, I know I can write if I get the chance,” she announced +decisively a moment later. “I just FEEL that I have the feel of it, if +you know what I mean.” + +And Letty knew and nodded. “I wonder what he is like?” she asked softly. + +“I’ll make it my business to find out,” Edna assured her; “and I’ll let +you know inside forty-eight hours.” + +Letty clapped her hands. “Good! That’s the newspaper spirit! Make it +twenty-four hours and you are perfect!” + + * * * + +“—and I am very sorry to trouble you,” she concluded the statement of +her case to Max Irwin, famous war correspondent and veteran journalist. + +“Not at all,” he answered, with a deprecatory wave of the hand. “If you +don’t do your own talking, who’s to do it for you? Now I understand your +predicament precisely. You want to get on the Intelligencer, you want +to get in at once, and you have had no previous experience. In the first +place, then, have you any pull? There are a dozen men in the city, a +line from whom would be an open-sesame. After that you would stand or +fall by your own ability. There’s Senator Longbridge, for instance, +and Claus Inskeep the street-car magnate, and Lane, and McChesney—” He +paused, with voice suspended. + +“I am sure I know none of them,” she answered despondently. + +“It’s not necessary. Do you know any one that knows them? or any one +that knows any one else that knows them?” + +Edna shook her head. + +“Then we must think of something else,” he went on, cheerfully. “You’ll +have to do something yourself. Let me see.” + +He stopped and thought for a moment, with closed eyes and wrinkled +forehead. She was watching him, studying him intently, when his blue +eyes opened with a snap and his face suddenly brightened. + +“I have it! But no, wait a minute.” + +And for a minute it was his turn to study her. And study her he did, +till she could feel her cheeks flushing under his gaze. + +“You’ll do, I think, though it remains to be seen,” he said +enigmatically. “It will show the stuff that’s in you, besides, and it +will be a better claim upon the Intelligencer people than all the lines +from all the senators and magnates in the world. The thing for you is to +do Amateur Night at the Loops.” + +“I—I hardly understand,” Edna said, for his suggestion conveyed no +meaning to her. “What are the ‘Loops’? and what is ‘Amateur Night’?” + +“I forgot you said you were from the interior. But so much the better, +if you’ve only got the journalistic grip. It will be a first impression, +and first impressions are always unbiased, unprejudiced, fresh, vivid. +The Loops are out on the rim of the city, near the Park,—a place of +diversion. There’s a scenic railway, a water toboggan slide, a concert +band, a theatre, wild animals, moving pictures, and so forth and so +forth. The common people go there to look at the animals and enjoy +themselves, and the other people go there to enjoy themselves +by watching the common people enjoy themselves. A democratic, +fresh-air-breathing, frolicking affair, that’s what the Loops are. + +“But the theatre is what concerns you. It’s vaudeville. One turn follows +another—jugglers, acrobats, rubber-jointed wonders, fire-dancers, +coon-song artists, singers, players, female impersonators, sentimental +soloists, and so forth and so forth. These people are professional +vaudevillists. They make their living that way. Many are excellently +paid. Some are free rovers, doing a turn wherever they can get an +opening, at the Obermann, the Orpheus, the Alcatraz, the Louvre, and +so forth and so forth. Others cover circuit pretty well all over the +country. An interesting phase of life, and the pay is big enough to +attract many aspirants. + +“Now the management of the Loops, in its bid for popularity, instituted +what is called ‘Amateur Night’; that is to say, twice a week, after +the professionals have done their turns, the stage is given over to +the aspiring amateurs. The audience remains to criticise. The populace +becomes the arbiter of art—or it thinks it does, which is the same +thing; and it pays its money and is well pleased with itself, and +Amateur Night is a paying proposition to the management. + +“But the point of Amateur Night, and it is well to note it, is that +these amateurs are not really amateurs. They are paid for doing their +turn. At the best, they may be termed ‘professional amateurs.’ It stands +to reason that the management could not get people to face a rampant +audience for nothing, and on such occasions the audience certainly goes +mad. It’s great fun—for the audience. But the thing for you to do, and +it requires nerve, I assure you, is to go out, make arrangements for two +turns, (Wednesday and Saturday nights, I believe), do your two turns, +and write it up for the Sunday Intelligencer.” + +“But—but,” she quavered, “I—I—” and there was a suggestion of +disappointment and tears in her voice. + +“I see,” he said kindly. “You were expecting something else, something +different, something better. We all do at first. But remember the +admiral of the Queen’s Na-vee, who swept the floor and polished up +the handle of the big front door. You must face the drudgery of +apprenticeship or quit right now. What do you say?” + +The abruptness with which he demanded her decision startled her. As she +faltered, she could see a shade of disappointment beginning to darken +his face. + +“In a way it must be considered a test,” he added encouragingly. “A +severe one, but so much the better. Now is the time. Are you game?” + +“I’ll try,” she said faintly, at the same time making a note of the +directness, abruptness, and haste of these city men with whom she was +coming in contact. + +“Good! Why, when I started in, I had the dreariest, deadliest details +imaginable. And after that, for a weary time, I did the police and +divorce courts. But it all came well in the end and did me good. You +are luckier in making your start with Sunday work. It’s not particularly +great. What of it? Do it. Show the stuff you’re made of, and you’ll get +a call for better work—better class and better pay. Now you go out this +afternoon to the Loops, and engage to do two turns.” + +“But what kind of turns can I do?” Edna asked dubiously. + +“Do? That’s easy. Can you sing? Never mind, don’t need to sing. Screech, +do anything—that’s what you’re paid for, to afford amusement, to give +bad art for the populace to howl down. And when you do your turn, take +some one along for chaperon. Be afraid of no one. Talk up. Move about +among the amateurs waiting their turn, pump them, study them, photograph +them in your brain. Get the atmosphere, the color, strong color, lots of +it. Dig right in with both hands, and get the essence of it, the spirit, +the significance. What does it mean? Find out what it means. That’s what +you’re there for. That’s what the readers of the Sunday Intelligencer +want to know. + +“Be terse in style, vigorous of phrase, apt, concretely apt, in +similitude. Avoid platitudes and commonplaces. Exercise selection. Seize +upon things salient, eliminate the rest, and you have pictures. Paint +those pictures in words and the Intelligencer will have you. Get hold +of a few back numbers, and study the Sunday Intelligencer feature story. +Tell it all in the opening paragraph as advertisement of contents, and +in the contents tell it all over again. Then put a snapper at the end, +so if they’re crowded for space they can cut off your contents anywhere, +reattach the snapper, and the story will still retain form. There, +that’s enough. Study the rest out for yourself.” + +They both rose to their feet, Edna quite carried away by his enthusiasm +and his quick, jerky sentences, bristling with the things she wanted to +know. + +“And remember, Miss Wyman, if you’re ambitious, that the aim and end of +journalism is not the feature article. Avoid the rut. The feature is a +trick. Master it, but don’t let it master you. But master it you must; +for if you can’t learn to do a feature well, you can never expect to do +anything better. In short, put your whole self into it, and yet, outside +of it, above it, remain yourself, if you follow me. And now good luck to +you.” + +They had reached the door and were shaking hands. + +“And one thing more,” he interrupted her thanks, “let me see your +copy before you turn it in. I may be able to put you straight here and +there.” + +Edna found the manager of the Loops a full-fleshed, heavy-jowled +man, bushy of eyebrow and generally belligerent of aspect, with an +absent-minded scowl on his face and a black cigar stuck in the midst +thereof. Symes was his name, she had learned, Ernst Symes. + +“Whatcher turn?” he demanded, ere half her brief application had left +her lips. + +“Sentimental soloist, soprano,” she answered promptly, remembering +Irwin’s advice to talk up. + +“Whatcher name?” Mr. Symes asked, scarcely deigning to glance at her. + +She hesitated. So rapidly had she been rushed into the adventure that +she had not considered the question of a name at all. + +“Any name? Stage name?” he bellowed impatiently. + +“Nan Bellayne,” she invented on the spur of the moment. +“B-e-l-l-a-y-n-e. Yes, that’s it.” + +He scribbled it into a notebook. “All right. Take your turn Wednesday +and Saturday.” + +“How much do I get?” Edna demanded. + +“Two-an’-a-half a turn. Two turns, five. Getcher pay first Monday after +second turn.” + +And without the simple courtesy of “Good day,” he turned his back on her +and plunged into the newspaper he had been reading when she entered. + +Edna came early on Wednesday evening, Letty with her, and in a telescope +basket her costume—a simple affair. A plaid shawl borrowed from the +washerwoman, a ragged scrubbing skirt borrowed from the charwoman, and a +gray wig rented from a costumer for twenty-five cents a night, completed +the outfit; for Edna had elected to be an old Irishwoman singing +broken-heartedly after her wandering boy. + +Though they had come early, she found everything in uproar. The main +performance was under way, the orchestra was playing and the audience +intermittently applauding. The infusion of the amateurs clogged the +working of things behind the stage, crowded the passages, dressing +rooms, and wings, and forced everybody into everybody else’s way. +This was particularly distasteful to the professionals, who carried +themselves as befitted those of a higher caste, and whose behavior +toward the pariah amateurs was marked by hauteur and even brutality. And +Edna, bullied and elbowed and shoved about, clinging desperately to her +basket and seeking a dressing room, took note of it all. + +A dressing room she finally found, jammed with three other amateur +“ladies,” who were “making up” with much noise, high-pitched voices, and +squabbling over a lone mirror. Her own make-up was so simple that it was +quickly accomplished, and she left the trio of ladies holding an armed +truce while they passed judgment upon her. Letty was close at her +shoulder, and with patience and persistence they managed to get a nook +in one of the wings which commanded a view of the stage. + +A small, dark man, dapper and debonair, swallow-tailed and top-hatted, +was waltzing about the stage with dainty, mincing steps, and in a thin +little voice singing something or other about somebody or something +evidently pathetic. As his waning voice neared the end of the lines, a +large woman, crowned with an amazing wealth of blond hair, thrust rudely +past Edna, trod heavily on her toes, and shoved her contemptuously to +the side. “Bloomin’ hamateur!” she hissed as she went past, and the next +instant she was on the stage, graciously bowing to the audience, while +the small, dark man twirled extravagantly about on his tiptoes. + +“Hello, girls!” + +This greeting, drawled with an inimitable vocal caress in every +syllable, close in her ear, caused Edna to give a startled little jump. +A smooth-faced, moon-faced young man was smiling at her good-naturedly. +His “make-up” was plainly that of the stock tramp of the stage, though +the inevitable whiskers were lacking. + +“Oh, it don’t take a minute to slap’m on,” he explained, divining the +search in her eyes and waving in his hand the adornment in question. +“They make a feller sweat,” he explained further. And then, “What’s yer +turn?” + +“Soprano—sentimental,” she answered, trying to be offhand and at ease. + +“Whata you doin’ it for?” he demanded directly. + +“For fun; what else?” she countered. + +“I just sized you up for that as soon as I put eyes on you. You ain’t +graftin’ for a paper, are you?” + +“I never met but one editor in my life,” she replied evasively, “and I, +he—well, we didn’t get on very well together.” + +“Hittin’ ‘m for a job?” + +Edna nodded carelessly, though inwardly anxious and cudgelling her +brains for something to turn the conversation. + +“What’d he say?” + +“That eighteen other girls had already been there that week.” + +“Gave you the icy mit, eh?” The moon-faced young man laughed and slapped +his thighs. “You see, we’re kind of suspicious. The Sunday papers ‘d +like to get Amateur Night done up brown in a nice little package, and +the manager don’t see it that way. Gets wild-eyed at the thought of it.” + +“And what’s your turn?” she asked. + +“Who? me? Oh, I’m doin’ the tramp act to-night. I’m Charley Welsh, you +know.” + +She felt that by the mention of his name he intended to convey to her +complete enlightenment, but the best she could do was to say politely, +“Oh, is that so?” + +She wanted to laugh at the hurt disappointment which came into his face, +but concealed her amusement. + +“Come, now,” he said brusquely, “you can’t stand there and tell me +you’ve never heard of Charley Welsh? Well, you must be young. Why, I’m +an Only, the Only amateur at that. Sure, you must have seen me. I’m +everywhere. I could be a professional, but I get more dough out of it by +doin’ the amateur.” + +“But what’s an ‘Only’?” she queried. “I want to learn.” + +“Sure,” Charley Welsh said gallantly. “I’ll put you wise. An ‘Only’ is +a nonpareil, the feller that does one kind of a turn better’n any other +feller. He’s the Only, see?” + +And Edna saw. + +“To get a line on the biz,” he continued, “throw yer lamps on me. I’m +the Only all-round amateur. To-night I make a bluff at the tramp act. +It’s harder to bluff it than to really do it, but then it’s acting, it’s +amateur, it’s art. See? I do everything, from Sheeny monologue to team +song and dance and Dutch comedian. Sure, I’m Charley Welsh, the Only +Charley Welsh.” + +And in this fashion, while the thin, dark man and the large, blond woman +warbled dulcetly out on the stage and the other professionals followed +in their turns, did Charley Welsh put Edna wise, giving her much +miscellaneous and superfluous information and much that she stored away +for the Sunday Intelligencer. + +“Well, tra la loo,” he said suddenly. “There’s his highness chasin’ +you up. Yer first on the bill. Never mind the row when you go on. Just +finish yer turn like a lady.” + +It was at that moment that Edna felt her journalistic ambition departing +from her, and was aware of an overmastering desire to be somewhere else. +But the stage manager, like an ogre, barred her retreat. She could hear +the opening bars of her song going up from the orchestra and the noises +of the house dying away to the silence of anticipation. + +“Go ahead,” Letty whispered, pressing her hand; and from the other side +came the peremptory “Don’t flunk!” of Charley Welsh. + +But her feet seemed rooted to the floor, and she leaned weakly against +a shift scene. The orchestra was beginning over again, and a lone voice +from the house piped with startling distinctness: + +“Puzzle picture! Find Nannie!” + +A roar of laughter greeted the sally, and Edna shrank back. But the +strong hand of the manager descended on her shoulder, and with a quick, +powerful shove propelled her out on to the stage. His hand and arm +had flashed into full view, and the audience, grasping the situation, +thundered its appreciation. The orchestra was drowned out by the +terrible din, and Edna could see the bows scraping away across the +violins, apparently without sound. It was impossible for her to begin +in time, and as she patiently waited, arms akimbo and ears straining for +the music, the house let loose again (a favorite trick, she afterward +learned, of confusing the amateur by preventing him or her from hearing +the orchestra). + +But Edna was recovering her presence of mind. She became aware, pit to +dome, of a vast sea of smiling and fun-distorted faces, of vast roars of +laughter, rising wave on wave, and then her Scotch blood went cold and +angry. The hard-working but silent orchestra gave her the cue, and, +without making a sound, she began to move her lips, stretch forth her +arms, and sway her body, as though she were really singing. The noise in +the house redoubled in the attempt to drown her voice, but she serenely +went on with her pantomime. This seemed to continue an interminable +time, when the audience, tiring of its prank and in order to hear, +suddenly stilled its clamor, and discovered the dumb show she had been +making. For a moment all was silent, save for the orchestra, her lips +moving on without a sound, and then the audience realized that it had +been sold, and broke out afresh, this time with genuine applause in +acknowledgment of her victory. She chose this as the happy moment for +her exit, and with a bow and a backward retreat, she was off the stage +in Letty’s arms. + +The worst was past, and for the rest of the evening she moved about +among the amateurs and professionals, talking, listening, observing, +finding out what it meant and taking mental notes of it all. Charley +Welsh constituted himself her preceptor and guardian angel, and so well +did he perform the self-allotted task that when it was all over she felt +fully prepared to write her article. But the proposition had been to do +two turns, and her native pluck forced her to live up to it. Also, in +the course of the intervening days, she discovered fleeting impressions +that required verification; so, on Saturday, she was back again, with +her telescope basket and Letty. + +The manager seemed looking for her, and she caught an expression of +relief in his eyes when he first saw her. He hurried up, greeted her, +and bowed with a respect ludicrously at variance with his previous +ogre-like behavior. And as he bowed, across his shoulders she saw +Charley Welsh deliberately wink. + +But the surprise had just begun. The manager begged to be introduced +to her sister, chatted entertainingly with the pair of them, and strove +greatly and anxiously to be agreeable. He even went so far as to give +Edna a dressing room to herself, to the unspeakable envy of the three +other amateur ladies of previous acquaintance. Edna was nonplussed, +and it was not till she met Charley Welsh in the passage that light was +thrown on the mystery. + +“Hello!” he greeted her. “On Easy Street, eh? Everything slidin’ your +way.” + +She smiled brightly. + +“Thinks yer a female reporter, sure. I almost split when I saw’m layin’ +himself out sweet an’ pleasin’. Honest, now, that ain’t yer graft, is +it?” + +“I told you my experience with editors,” she parried. “And honest now, +it was honest, too.” + +But the Only Charley Welsh shook his head dubiously. “Not that I care +a rap,” he declared. “And if you are, just gimme a couple of lines of +notice, the right kind, good ad, you know. And if yer not, why yer all +right anyway. Yer not our class, that’s straight.” + +After her turn, which she did this time with the nerve of an old +campaigner, the manager returned to the charge; and after saying nice +things and being generally nice himself, he came to the point. + +“You’ll treat us well, I hope,” he said insinuatingly. “Do the right +thing by us, and all that?” + +“Oh,” she answered innocently, “you couldn’t persuade me to do another +turn; I know I seemed to take and that you’d like to have me, but I +really, really can’t.” + +“You know what I mean,” he said, with a touch of his old bulldozing +manner. + +“No, I really won’t,” she persisted. “Vaudeville’s too—too wearing on +the nerves, my nerves, at any rate.” + +Whereat he looked puzzled and doubtful, and forbore to press the point +further. + +But on Monday morning, when she came to his office to get her pay for +the two turns, it was he who puzzled her. + +“You surely must have mistaken me,” he lied glibly. “I remember saying +something about paying your car fare. We always do this, you know, but +we never, never pay amateurs. That would take the life and sparkle out +of the whole thing. No, Charley Welsh was stringing you. He gets paid +nothing for his turns. No amateur gets paid. The idea is ridiculous. +However, here’s fifty cents. It will pay your sister’s car fare also. +And,”—very suavely,—“speaking for the Loops, permit me to thank you +for the kind and successful contribution of your services.” + +That afternoon, true to her promise to Max Irwin, she placed her +typewritten copy into his hands. And while he ran over it, he nodded his +head from time to time, and maintained a running fire of commendatory +remarks: “Good!—that’s it!—that’s the stuff!—psychology’s all +right!—the very idea!—you’ve caught it!—excellent!—missed it a +bit here, but it’ll go—that’s vigorous!—strong!—vivid!—pictures! +pictures!—excellent!—most excellent!” + +And when he had run down to the bottom of the last page, holding out +his hand: “My dear Miss Wyman, I congratulate you. I must say you have +exceeded my expectations, which, to say the least, were large. You are +a journalist, a natural journalist. You’ve got the grip, and you’re sure +to get on. The Intelligencer will take it, without doubt, and take you +too. They’ll have to take you. If they don’t, some of the other papers +will get you.” + +“But what’s this?” he queried, the next instant, his face going serious. +“You’ve said nothing about receiving the pay for your turns, and that’s +one of the points of the feature. I expressly mentioned it, if you’ll +remember.” + +“It will never do,” he said, shaking his head ominously, when she had +explained. “You simply must collect that money somehow. Let me see. Let +me think a moment.” + +“Never mind, Mr. Irwin,” she said. “I’ve bothered you enough. Let me use +your ‘phone, please, and I’ll try Mr. Ernst Symes again.” + +He vacated his chair by the desk, and Edna took down the receiver. + +“Charley Welsh is sick,” she began, when the connection had been made. +“What? No I’m not Charley Welsh. Charley Welsh is sick, and his sister +wants to know if she can come out this afternoon and draw his pay for +him?” + +“Tell Charley Welsh’s sister that Charley Welsh was out this morning, +and drew his own pay,” came back the manager’s familiar tones, crisp +with asperity. + +“All right,” Edna went on. “And now Nan Bellayne wants to know if she +and her sister can come out this afternoon and draw Nan Bellayne’s pay?” + +“What’d he say? What’d he say?” Max Irwin cried excitedly, as she hung +up. + +“That Nan Bellayne was too much for him, and that she and her sister +could come out and get her pay and the freedom of the Loops, to boot.” + +“One thing, more,” he interrupted her thanks at the door, as on her +previous visit. “Now that you’ve shown the stuff you’re made of, I +should esteem it, ahem, a privilege to give you a line myself to the +Intelligencer people.” + + + + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS + + +Wade Atsheler is dead—dead by his own hand. To say that this was +entirely unexpected by the small coterie which knew him, would be to say +an untruth; and yet never once had we, his intimates, ever canvassed +the idea. Rather had we been prepared for it in some incomprehensible +subconscious way. Before the perpetration of the deed, its possibility +is remotest from our thoughts; but when we did know that he was dead, it +seemed, somehow, that we had understood and looked forward to it all the +time. This, by retrospective analysis, we could easily explain by the +fact of his great trouble. I use “great trouble” advisedly. Young, +handsome, with an assured position as the right-hand man of Eben Hale, +the great street-railway magnate, there could be no reason for him to +complain of fortune’s favors. Yet we had watched his smooth brow furrow +and corrugate as under some carking care or devouring sorrow. We had +watched his thick, black hair thin and silver as green grain under +brazen skies and parching drought. Who can forget, in the midst of the +hilarious scenes he toward the last sought with greater and greater +avidity—who can forget, I say, the deep abstractions and black moods +into which he fell? At such times, when the fun rippled and soared from +height to height, suddenly, without rhyme or reason, his eyes would turn +lacklustre, his brows knit, as with clenched hands and face overshot +with spasms of mental pain he wrestled on the edge of the abyss with +some unknown danger. + +He never spoke of his trouble, nor were we indiscreet enough to ask. +But it was just as well; for had we, and had he spoken, our help +and strength could have availed nothing. When Eben Hale died, whose +confidential secretary he was—nay, well-nigh adopted son and full +business partner—he no longer came among us. Not, as I now know, that +our company was distasteful to him, but because his trouble had so grown +that he could not respond to our happiness nor find surcease with us. +Why this should be so we could not at the time understand, for when Eben +Hale’s will was probated, the world learned that he was sole heir to +his employer’s many millions, and it was expressly stipulated that this +great inheritance was given to him without qualification, hitch, or +hindrance in the exercise thereof. Not a share of stock, not a penny +of cash, was bequeathed to the dead man’s relatives. As for his direct +family, one astounding clause expressly stated that Wade Atsheler was to +dispense to Eben Hale’s wife and sons and daughters whatever moneys his +judgement dictated, at whatever times he deemed advisable. Had there +been any scandal in the dead man’s family, or had his sons been wild +or undutiful, then there might have been a glimmering of reason in +this most unusual action; but Eben Hale’s domestic happiness had been +proverbial in the community, and one would have to travel far and wide +to discover a cleaner, saner, wholesomer progeny of sons and daughters. +While his wife—well, by those who knew her best she was endearingly +termed “The Mother of the Gracchi.” Needless to state, this inexplicable +will was a nine day’s wonder; but the expectant public was disappointed +in that no contest was made. + +It was only the other day that Eben Hale was laid away in his stately +marble mausoleum. And now Wade Atsheler is dead. The news was printed +in this morning’s paper. I have just received through the mail a letter +from him, posted, evidently, but a short hour before he hurled himself +into eternity. This letter, which lies before me, is a narrative in +his own handwriting, linking together numerous newspaper clippings and +facsimiles of letters. The original correspondence, he has told me, +is in the hands of the police. He has begged me, also, as a warning to +society against a most frightful and diabolical danger which threatens +its very existence, to make public the terrible series of tragedies in +which he has been innocently concerned. I herewith append the text in +full: + +It was in August, 1899, just after my return from my summer vacation, +that the blow fell. We did not know it at the time; we had not yet +learned to school our minds to such awful possibilities. Mr. Hale opened +the letter, read it, and tossed it upon my desk with a laugh. When I had +looked it over, I also laughed, saying, “Some ghastly joke, Mr. Hale, +and one in very poor taste.” Find here, my dear John, an exact duplicate +of the letter in question. + +OFFICE OF THE M. OF M. August 17, 1899. + +MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron: + +Dear Sir,—We desire you to realize upon whatever portion of your vast +holdings is necessary to obtain, IN CASH, twenty millions of dollars. +This sum we require you to pay over to us, or to our agents. You will +note we do not specify any given time, for it is not our wish to hurry +you in this matter. You may even, if it be easier for you, pay us +in ten, fifteen, or twenty instalments; but we will accept no single +instalment of less than a million. + +Believe us, dear Mr. Hale, when we say that we embark upon this course +of action utterly devoid of animus. We are members of that intellectual +proletariat, the increasing numbers of which mark in red lettering the +last days of the nineteenth century. We have, from a thorough study +of economics, decided to enter upon this business. It has many merits, +chief among which may be noted that we can indulge in large and +lucrative operations without capital. So far, we have been fairly +successful, and we hope our dealings with you may be pleasant and +satisfactory. + +Pray attend while we explain our views more fully. At the base of the +present system of society is to be found the property right. And this +right of the individual to hold property is demonstrated, in the last +analysis, to rest solely and wholly upon MIGHT. The mailed gentlemen of +William the Conqueror divided and apportioned England amongst themselves +with the naked sword. This, we are sure you will grant, is true of +all feudal possessions. With the invention of steam and the Industrial +Revolution there came into existence the Capitalist Class, in the modern +sense of the word. These capitalists quickly towered above the ancient +nobility. The captains of industry have virtually dispossessed the +descendants of the captains of war. Mind, and not muscle, wins in +to-day’s struggle for existence. But this state of affairs is none the +less based upon might. The change has been qualitative. The old-time +Feudal Baronage ravaged the world with fire and sword; the modern +Money Baronage exploits the world by mastering and applying the world’s +economic forces. Brain, and not brawn, endures; and those best fitted to +survive are the intellectually and commercially powerful. + +We, the M. of M., are not content to become wage slaves. The great +trusts and business combinations (with which you have your rating) +prevent us from rising to the place among you which our intellects +qualify us to occupy. Why? Because we are without capital. We are of the +unwashed, but with this difference: our brains are of the best, and we +have no foolish ethical nor social scruples. As wage slaves, toiling +early and late, and living abstemiously, we could not save in threescore +years—nor in twenty times threescore years—a sum of money sufficient +successfully to cope with the great aggregations of massed capital which +now exist. Nevertheless, we have entered the arena. We now throw down +the gage to the capital of the world. Whether it wishes to fight or not, +it shall have to fight. + +Mr. Hale, our interests dictate us to demand of you twenty millions of +dollars. While we are considerate enough to give you reasonable time in +which to carry out your share of the transaction, please do not delay +too long. When you have agreed to our terms, insert a suitable notice +in the agony column of the “Morning Blazer.” We shall then acquaint you +with our plan for transferring the sum mentioned. You had better do this +some time prior to October 1st. If you do not, in order to show that +we are in earnest we shall on that date kill a man on East Thirty-ninth +Street. He will be a workingman. This man you do not know; nor do we. +You represent a force in modern society; we also represent a force—a +new force. Without anger or malice, we have closed in battle. As you +will readily discern, we are simply a business proposition. You are the +upper, and we the nether, millstone; this man’s life shall be ground +out between. You may save him if you agree to our conditions and act in +time. + +There was once a king cursed with a golden touch. His name we have taken +to do duty as our official seal. Some day, to protect ourselves against +competitors, we shall copyright it. + +We beg to remain, + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS. + +I leave it to you, dear John, why should we not have laughed over such +a preposterous communication? The idea, we could not but grant, was well +conceived, but it was too grotesque to be taken seriously. Mr. Hale said +he would preserve it as a literary curiosity, and shoved it away in a +pigeonhole. Then we promptly forgot its existence. And as promptly, on +the 1st of October, going over the morning mail, we read the following: + +OFFICE OF THE M. OF M., October 1, 1899. + +MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron: + +Dear Sir,—Your victim has met his fate. An hour ago, on East +Thirty-ninth Street, a workingman was thrust through the heart with a +knife. Ere you read this his body will be lying at the Morgue. Go and +look upon your handiwork. + +On October 14th, in token of our earnestness in this matter, and in case +you do not relent, we shall kill a policeman on or near the corner of +Polk Street and Clermont Avenue. + +Very cordially, + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS. + +Again Mr. Hale laughed. His mind was full of a prospective deal with a +Chicago syndicate for the sale of all his street railways in that city, +and so he went on dictating to the stenographer, never giving it a +second thought. But somehow, I know not why, a heavy depression +fell upon me. What if it were not a joke, I asked myself, and turned +involuntarily to the morning paper. There it was, as befitted an obscure +person of the lower classes, a paltry half-dozen lines tucked away in a +corner, next a patent medicine advertisement: + +Shortly after five o’clock this morning, on East Thirty-ninth Street, +a laborer named Pete Lascalle, while on his way to work, was stabbed to +the heart by an unknown assailant, who escaped by running. The police +have been unable to discover any motive for the murder. + +“Impossible!” was Mr. Hale’s rejoinder, when I had read the item aloud; +but the incident evidently weighed upon his mind, for late in the +afternoon, with many epithets denunciatory of his foolishness, he asked +me to acquaint the police with the affair. I had the pleasure of being +laughed at in the Inspector’s private office, although I went away with +the assurance that they would look into it and that the vicinity of Polk +and Clermont would be doubly patrolled on the night mentioned. There it +dropped, till the two weeks had sped by, when the following note came to +us through the mail: + +OFFICE OF THE M. OF M. October 15, 1899. + +MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron: + +Dear Sir,—Your second victim has fallen on schedule time. We are in no +hurry; but to increase the pressure we shall henceforth kill weekly. To +protect ourselves against police interference we shall hereafter inform +you of the event but a little prior to or simultaneously with the deed. +Trusting this finds you in good health, + +We are, + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS. + +This time Mr. Hale took up the paper, and after a brief search, read to +me this account: + +A DASTARDLY CRIME + +Joseph Donahue, assigned only last night to special patrol duty in the +Eleventh Ward, at midnight was shot through the brain and instantly +killed. The tragedy was enacted in the full glare of the street lights +on the corner of Polk Street and Clermont Avenue. Our society is indeed +unstable when the custodians of its peace are thus openly and wantonly +shot down. The police have so far been unable to obtain the slightest +clue. + +Barely had he finished this when the police arrived—the Inspector +himself and two of his keenest sleuths. Alarm sat upon their faces, and +it was plain that they were seriously perturbed. Though the facts were +so few and simple, we talked long, going over the affair again and +again. When the Inspector went away, he confidently assured us that +everything would soon be straightened out and the assassins run to +earth. In the meantime he thought it well to detail guards for the +protection of Mr. Hale and myself, and several more to be constantly on +the vigil about the house and grounds. After the lapse of a week, at one +o’clock in the afternoon, this telegram was received: + +OFFICE OF THE M. OF M. October 21, 1899. + +MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron: + +Dear Sir,—We are sorry to note how completely you have misunderstood +us. You have seen fit to surround yourself and household with armed +guards, as though, forsooth, we were common criminals, apt to break in +upon you and wrest away by force your twenty millions. Believe us, this +is farthest from our intention. + +You will readily comprehend, after a little sober thought, that your +life is dear to us. Do not be afraid. We would not hurt you for the +world. It is our policy to cherish you tenderly and protect you from all +harm. Your death means nothing to us. If it did, rest assured that we +would not hesitate a moment in destroying you. Think this over, +Mr. Hale. When you have paid us our price, there will be need of +retrenchment. Dismiss your guards now, and cut down your expenses. + +Within minutes of the time you receive this a nurse-girl will have +been choked to death in Brentwood Park. The body may be found in +the shrubbery lining the path which leads off to the left from the +band-stand. + +Cordially yours, + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS. + +The next instant Mr. Hale was at the telephone, warning the Inspector of +the impending murder. The Inspector excused himself in order to call +up Police Sub-station F and despatch men to the scene. Fifteen minutes +later he rang us up and informed us that the body had been discovered, +yet warm, in the place indicated. That evening the papers teemed with +glaring Jack-the-Strangler headlines, denouncing the brutality of +the deed and complaining about the laxity of the police. We were also +closeted with the Inspector, who begged us by all means to keep the +affair secret. Success, he said, depended upon silence. + +As you know, John, Mr. Hale was a man of iron. He refused to surrender. +But, oh, John, it was terrible, nay, horrible—this awful something, +this blind force in the dark. We could not fight, could not plan, could +do nothing save hold our hands and wait. And week by week, as certain as +the rising of the sun, came the notification and death of some person, +man or woman, innocent of evil, but just as much killed by us as +though we had done it with our own hands. A word from Mr. Hale and the +slaughter would have ceased. But he hardened his heart and waited, the +lines deepening, the mouth and eyes growing sterner and firmer, and +the face aging with the hours. It is needless for me to speak of my +own suffering during that frightful period. Find here the letters and +telegrams of the M. of M., and the newspaper accounts, etc., of the +various murders. + +You will notice also the letters warning Mr. Hale of certain +machinations of commercial enemies and secret manipulations of stock. +The M. of M. seemed to have its hand on the inner pulse of the business +and financial world. They possessed themselves of and forwarded to us +information which our agents could not obtain. One timely note from +them, at a critical moment in a certain deal, saved all of five millions +to Mr. Hale. At another time they sent us a telegram which probably was +the means of preventing an anarchist crank from taking my employer’s +life. We captured the man on his arrival and turned him over to the +police, who found upon him enough of a new and powerful explosive to +sink a battleship. + +We persisted. Mr. Hale was grit clear through. He disbursed at the rate +of one hundred thousand per week for secret service. The aid of the +Pinkertons and of countless private detective agencies was called in, +and in addition to this thousands were upon our payroll. Our agents +swarmed everywhere, in all guises, penetrating all classes of society. +They grasped at a myriad clues; hundreds of suspects were jailed, and at +various times thousands of suspicious persons were under surveillance, +but nothing tangible came to light. With its communications the M. of +M. continually changed its method of delivery. And every messenger +they sent us was arrested forthwith. But these inevitably proved to be +innocent individuals, while their descriptions of the persons who had +employed them for the errand never tallied. On the last day of December +we received this notification: + +OFFICE OF THE M. OF M., December 31, 1899. + +MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron: + +Dear Sir,—Pursuant of our policy, with which we flatter ourselves you +are already well versed, we beg to state that we shall give a passport +from this Vale of Tears to Inspector Bying, with whom, because of our +attentions, you have become so well acquainted. It is his custom to be +in his private office at this hour. Even as you read this he breathes +his last. + +Cordially yours, + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS. + +I dropped the letter and sprang to the telephone. Great was my relief +when I heard the Inspector’s hearty voice. But, even as he spoke, his +voice died away in the receiver to a gurgling sob, and I heard faintly +the crash of a falling body. Then a strange voice hello’d me, sent me +the regards of the M. of M., and broke the switch. Like a flash I called +up the public office of the Central Police, telling them to go at once +to the Inspector’s aid in his private office. I then held the line, and +a few minutes later received the intelligence that he had been +found bathed in his own blood and breathing his last. There were no +eyewitnesses, and no trace was discoverable of the murderer. + +Whereupon Mr. Hale immediately increased his secret service till a +quarter of a million flowed weekly from his coffers. He was determined +to win out. His graduated rewards aggregated over ten millions. You have +a fair idea of his resources and you can see in what manner he drew upon +them. It was the principle, he affirmed, that he was fighting for, not +the gold. And it must be admitted that his course proved the nobility of +his motive. The police departments of all the great cities cooperated, +and even the United States Government stepped in, and the affair became +one of the highest questions of state. Certain contingent funds of +the nation were devoted to the unearthing of the M. of M., and every +government agent was on the alert. But all in vain. The Minions of Midas +carried on their damnable work unhampered. They had their way and struck +unerringly. + +But while he fought to the last, Mr. Hale could not wash his hands of +the blood with which they were dyed. Though not technically a murderer, +though no jury of his peers would ever have convicted him, none the less +the death of every individual was due to him. As I said before, a word +from him and the slaughter would have ceased. But he refused to give +that word. He insisted that the integrity of society was assailed; that +he was not sufficiently a coward to desert his post; and that it was +manifestly just that a few should be martyred for the ultimate welfare +of the many. Nevertheless this blood was upon his head, and he sank into +deeper and deeper gloom. I was likewise whelmed with the guilt of an +accomplice. Babies were ruthlessly killed, children, aged men; and +not only were these murders local, but they were distributed over +the country. In the middle of February, one evening, as we sat in the +library, there came a sharp knock at the door. On responding to it I +found, lying on the carpet of the corridor, the following missive: + +OFFICE OF THE M. OF M., February 15, 1900. + +MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron: + +Dear Sir,—Does not your soul cry out upon the red harvest it is +reaping? Perhaps we have been too abstract in conducting our business. +Let us now be concrete. Miss Adelaide Laidlaw is a talented young woman, +as good, we understand, as she is beautiful. She is the daughter of your +old friend, Judge Laidlaw, and we happen to know that you carried her in +your arms when she was an infant. She is your daughter’s closest friend, +and at present is visiting her. When your eyes have read thus far her +visit will have terminated. + +Very cordially, + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS. + +My God! did we not instantly realize the terrible import! We rushed +through the dayrooms—she was not there—and on to her own apartments. +The door was locked, but we crashed it down by hurling ourselves against +it. There she lay, just as she had finished dressing for the opera, +smothered with pillows torn from the couch, the flush of life yet on her +flesh, the body still flexible and warm. Let me pass over the rest of +this horror. You will surely remember, John, the newspaper accounts. + +Late that night Mr. Hale summoned me to him, and before God did pledge +me most solemnly to stand by him and not to compromise, even if all kith +and kin were destroyed. + +The next day I was surprised at his cheerfulness. I had thought he would +be deeply shocked by this last tragedy—how deep I was soon to learn. +All day he was light-hearted and high-spirited, as though at last he had +found a way out of the frightful difficulty. The next morning we +found him dead in his bed, a peaceful smile upon his careworn +face—asphyxiation. Through the connivance of the police and the +authorities, it was given out to the world as heart disease. We deemed +it wise to withhold the truth; but little good has it done us, little +good has anything done us. + +Barely had I left that chamber of death, when—but too late—the +following extraordinary letter was received: + +OFFICE OF THE M. of M., February 17, 1900. + +MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron: + +Dear Sir,—You will pardon our intrusion, we hope, so closely upon the +sad event of day before yesterday; but what we wish to say may be of +the utmost importance to you. It is in our mind that you may attempt +to escape us. There is but one way, apparently, as you have ere this +doubtless discovered. But we wish to inform you that even this one +way is barred. You may die, but you die failing and acknowledging your +failure. Note this: WE ARE PART AND PARCEL OF YOUR POSSESSIONS. WITH +YOUR MILLIONS WE PASS DOWN TO YOUR HEIRS AND ASSIGNS FOREVER. + +We are the inevitable. We are the culmination of industrial and +social wrong. We turn upon the society that has created us. We are the +successful failures of the age, the scourges of a degraded civilization. + +We are the creatures of a perverse social selection. We meet force with +force. Only the strong shall endure. We believe in the survival of the +fittest. You have crushed your wage slaves into the dirt and you have +survived. The captains of war, at your command, have shot down like +dogs your employees in a score of bloody strikes. By such means you have +endured. We do not grumble at the result, for we acknowledge and have +our being in the same natural law. And now the question has arisen: +UNDER THE PRESENT SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT, WHICH OF US SHALL SURVIVE? We +believe we are the fittest. You believe you are the fittest. We leave +the eventuality to time and law. + +Cordially yours, + +THE MINIONS OF MIDAS. + +John, do you wonder now that I shunned pleasure and avoided friends? +But why explain? Surely this narrative will make everything clear. Three +weeks ago Adelaide Laidlaw died. Since then I have waited in hope and +fear. Yesterday the will was probated and made public. To-day I was +notified that a woman of the middle class would be killed in Golden Gate +Park, in faraway San Francisco. The despatches in to-night’s papers give +the details of the brutal happening—details which correspond with those +furnished me in advance. + +It is useless. I cannot struggle against the inevitable. I have been +faithful to Mr. Hale and have worked hard. Why my faithfulness should +have been thus rewarded I cannot understand. Yet I cannot be false to my +trust, nor break my word by compromising. Still, I have resolved that +no more deaths shall be upon my head. I have willed the many millions I +lately received to their rightful owners. Let the stalwart sons of Eben +Hale work out their own salvation. Ere you read this I shall have passed +on. The Minions of Midas are all-powerful. The police are impotent. +I have learned from them that other millionnaires have been likewise +mulcted or persecuted—how many is not known, for when one yields to the +M. of M., his mouth is thenceforth sealed. Those who have not yielded +are even now reaping their scarlet harvest. The grim game is being +played out. The Federal Government can do nothing. I also understand +that similar branch organizations have made their appearance in Europe. +Society is shaken to its foundations. Principalities and powers are as +brands ripe for the burning. Instead of the masses against the classes, +it is a class against the classes. We, the guardians of human progress, +are being singled out and struck down. Law and order have failed. + +The officials have begged me to keep this secret. I have done so, but +can do so no longer. It has become a question of public import, fraught +with the direst consequences, and I shall do my duty before I leave this +world by informing it of its peril. Do you, John, as my last request, +make this public. Do not be frightened. The fate of humanity rests in +your hand. Let the press strike off millions of copies; let the electric +currents sweep it round the world; wherever men meet and speak, let them +speak of it in fear and trembling. And then, when thoroughly aroused, +let society arise in its might and cast out this abomination. + +Yours, in long farewell, + +WADE ATSHELER. + + + + +THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH + + +When I look back, I realize what a peculiar friendship it was. First, +there was Lloyd Inwood, tall, slender, and finely knit, nervous and +dark. And then Paul Tichlorne, tall, slender, and finely knit, nervous +and blond. Each was the replica of the other in everything except color. +Lloyd’s eyes were black; Paul’s were blue. Under stress of excitement, +the blood coursed olive in the face of Lloyd, crimson in the face of +Paul. But outside this matter of coloring they were as like as two peas. +Both were high-strung, prone to excessive tension and endurance, and +they lived at concert pitch. + +But there was a trio involved in this remarkable friendship, and the +third was short, and fat, and chunky, and lazy, and, loath to say, it +was I. Paul and Lloyd seemed born to rivalry with each other, and I to +be peacemaker between them. We grew up together, the three of us, and +full often have I received the angry blows each intended for the other. +They were always competing, striving to outdo each other, and when +entered upon some such struggle there was no limit either to their +endeavors or passions. + +This intense spirit of rivalry obtained in their studies and their +games. If Paul memorized one canto of “Marmion,” Lloyd memorized two +cantos, Paul came back with three, and Lloyd again with four, till each +knew the whole poem by heart. I remember an incident that occurred +at the swimming hole—an incident tragically significant of the +life-struggle between them. The boys had a game of diving to the bottom +of a ten-foot pool and holding on by submerged roots to see who could +stay under the longest. Paul and Lloyd allowed themselves to be bantered +into making the descent together. When I saw their faces, set and +determined, disappear in the water as they sank swiftly down, I felt +a foreboding of something dreadful. The moments sped, the ripples died +away, the face of the pool grew placid and untroubled, and neither black +nor golden head broke surface in quest of air. We above grew anxious. +The longest record of the longest-winded boy had been exceeded, and +still there was no sign. Air bubbles trickled slowly upward, showing +that the breath had been expelled from their lungs, and after that the +bubbles ceased to trickle upward. Each second became interminable, and, +unable longer to endure the suspense, I plunged into the water. + +I found them down at the bottom, clutching tight to the roots, their +heads not a foot apart, their eyes wide open, each glaring fixedly at +the other. They were suffering frightful torment, writhing and twisting +in the pangs of voluntary suffocation; for neither would let go and +acknowledge himself beaten. I tried to break Paul’s hold on the root, +but he resisted me fiercely. Then I lost my breath and came to the +surface, badly scared. I quickly explained the situation, and half a +dozen of us went down and by main strength tore them loose. By the +time we got them out, both were unconscious, and it was only after much +barrel-rolling and rubbing and pounding that they finally came to their +senses. They would have drowned there, had no one rescued them. + +When Paul Tichlorne entered college, he let it be generally understood +that he was going in for the social sciences. Lloyd Inwood, entering +at the same time, elected to take the same course. But Paul had had +it secretly in mind all the time to study the natural sciences, +specializing on chemistry, and at the last moment he switched over. +Though Lloyd had already arranged his year’s work and attended the first +lectures, he at once followed Paul’s lead and went in for the natural +sciences and especially for chemistry. Their rivalry soon became a noted +thing throughout the university. Each was a spur to the other, and they +went into chemistry deeper than did ever students before—so deep, in +fact, that ere they took their sheepskins they could have stumped any +chemistry or “cow college” professor in the institution, save “old” + Moss, head of the department, and even him they puzzled and edified more +than once. Lloyd’s discovery of the “death bacillus” of the sea toad, +and his experiments on it with potassium cyanide, sent his name and that +of his university ringing round the world; nor was Paul a whit +behind when he succeeded in producing laboratory colloids exhibiting +amoeba-like activities, and when he cast new light upon the processes +of fertilization through his startling experiments with simple sodium +chlorides and magnesium solutions on low forms of marine life. + +It was in their undergraduate days, however, in the midst of their +profoundest plunges into the mysteries of organic chemistry, that Doris +Van Benschoten entered into their lives. Lloyd met her first, but within +twenty-four hours Paul saw to it that he also made her acquaintance. +Of course, they fell in love with her, and she became the only thing in +life worth living for. They wooed her with equal ardor and fire, and so +intense became their struggle for her that half the student-body took +to wagering wildly on the result. Even “old” Moss, one day, after an +astounding demonstration in his private laboratory by Paul, was +guilty to the extent of a month’s salary of backing him to become the +bridegroom of Doris Van Benschoten. + +In the end she solved the problem in her own way, to everybody’s +satisfaction except Paul’s and Lloyd’s. Getting them together, she said +that she really could not choose between them because she loved them +both equally well; and that, unfortunately, since polyandry was not +permitted in the United States she would be compelled to forego the +honor and happiness of marrying either of them. Each blamed the other +for this lamentable outcome, and the bitterness between them grew more +bitter. + +But things came to a head enough. It was at my home, after they had +taken their degrees and dropped out of the world’s sight, that the +beginning of the end came to pass. Both were men of means, with little +inclination and no necessity for professional life. My friendship and +their mutual animosity were the two things that linked them in any +way together. While they were very often at my place, they made it +a fastidious point to avoid each other on such visits, though it was +inevitable, under the circumstances, that they should come upon each +other occasionally. + +On the day I have in recollection, Paul Tichlorne had been mooning all +morning in my study over a current scientific review. This left me +free to my own affairs, and I was out among my roses when Lloyd Inwood +arrived. Clipping and pruning and tacking the climbers on the porch, +with my mouth full of nails, and Lloyd following me about and lending a +hand now and again, we fell to discussing the mythical race of invisible +people, that strange and vagrant people the traditions of which have +come down to us. Lloyd warmed to the talk in his nervous, jerky fashion, +and was soon interrogating the physical properties and possibilities of +invisibility. A perfectly black object, he contended, would elude and +defy the acutest vision. + +“Color is a sensation,” he was saying. “It has no objective reality. +Without light, we can see neither colors nor objects themselves. All +objects are black in the dark, and in the dark it is impossible to see +them. If no light strikes upon them, then no light is flung back from +them to the eye, and so we have no vision-evidence of their being.” + +“But we see black objects in daylight,” I objected. + +“Very true,” he went on warmly. “And that is because they are not +perfectly black. Were they perfectly black, absolutely black, as it +were, we could not see them—ay, not in the blaze of a thousand suns +could we see them! And so I say, with the right pigments, properly +compounded, an absolutely black paint could be produced which would +render invisible whatever it was applied to.” + +“It would be a remarkable discovery,” I said non-committally, for the +whole thing seemed too fantastic for aught but speculative purposes. + +“Remarkable!” Lloyd slapped me on the shoulder. “I should say so. Why, +old chap, to coat myself with such a paint would be to put the world at +my feet. The secrets of kings and courts would be mine, the machinations +of diplomats and politicians, the play of stock-gamblers, the plans +of trusts and corporations. I could keep my hand on the inner pulse of +things and become the greatest power in the world. And I—” He broke +off shortly, then added, “Well, I have begun my experiments, and I don’t +mind telling you that I’m right in line for it.” + +A laugh from the doorway startled us. Paul Tichlorne was standing there, +a smile of mockery on his lips. + +“You forget, my dear Lloyd,” he said. + +“Forget what?” + +“You forget,” Paul went on—“ah, you forget the shadow.” + +I saw Lloyd’s face drop, but he answered sneeringly, “I can carry a +sunshade, you know.” Then he turned suddenly and fiercely upon him. +“Look here, Paul, you’ll keep out of this if you know what’s good for +you.” + +A rupture seemed imminent, but Paul laughed good-naturedly. “I wouldn’t +lay fingers on your dirty pigments. Succeed beyond your most sanguine +expectations, yet you will always fetch up against the shadow. You can’t +get away from it. Now I shall go on the very opposite tack. In the very +nature of my proposition the shadow will be eliminated—” + +“Transparency!” ejaculated Lloyd, instantly. “But it can’t be achieved.” + +“Oh, no; of course not.” And Paul shrugged his shoulders and strolled +off down the briar-rose path. + +This was the beginning of it. Both men attacked the problem with all +the tremendous energy for which they were noted, and with a rancor and +bitterness that made me tremble for the success of either. Each trusted +me to the utmost, and in the long weeks of experimentation that followed +I was made a party to both sides, listening to their theorizings and +witnessing their demonstrations. Never, by word or sign, did I convey to +either the slightest hint of the other’s progress, and they respected me +for the seal I put upon my lips. + +Lloyd Inwood, after prolonged and unintermittent application, when the +tension upon his mind and body became too great to bear, had a strange +way of obtaining relief. He attended prize fights. It was at one of +these brutal exhibitions, whither he had dragged me in order to tell his +latest results, that his theory received striking confirmation. + +“Do you see that red-whiskered man?” he asked, pointing across the ring +to the fifth tier of seats on the opposite side. “And do you see the +next man to him, the one in the white hat? Well, there is quite a gap +between them, is there not?” + +“Certainly,” I answered. “They are a seat apart. The gap is the +unoccupied seat.” + +He leaned over to me and spoke seriously. “Between the red-whiskered +man and the white-hatted man sits Ben Wasson. You have heard me speak +of him. He is the cleverest pugilist of his weight in the country. He +is also a Caribbean negro, full-blooded, and the blackest in the United +States. He has on a black overcoat buttoned up. I saw him when he came +in and took that seat. As soon as he sat down he disappeared. Watch +closely; he may smile.” + +I was for crossing over to verify Lloyd’s statement, but he restrained +me. “Wait,” he said. + +I waited and watched, till the red-whiskered man turned his head as +though addressing the unoccupied seat; and then, in that empty space, I +saw the rolling whites of a pair of eyes and the white double-crescent +of two rows of teeth, and for the instant I could make out a negro’s +face. But with the passing of the smile his visibility passed, and the +chair seemed vacant as before. + +“Were he perfectly black, you could sit alongside him and not see him,” + Lloyd said; and I confess the illustration was apt enough to make me +well-nigh convinced. + +I visited Lloyd’s laboratory a number of times after that, and found +him always deep in his search after the absolute black. His experiments +covered all sorts of pigments, such as lamp-blacks, tars, carbonized +vegetable matters, soots of oils and fats, and the various carbonized +animal substances. + +“White light is composed of the seven primary colors,” he argued to me. +“But it is itself, of itself, invisible. Only by being reflected from +objects do it and the objects become visible. But only that portion +of it that is reflected becomes visible. For instance, here is a +blue tobacco-box. The white light strikes against it, and, with one +exception, all its component colors—violet, indigo, green, yellow, +orange, and red—are absorbed. The one exception is BLUE. It is not +absorbed, but reflected. Wherefore the tobacco-box gives us a sensation +of blueness. We do not see the other colors because they are absorbed. +We see only the blue. For the same reason grass is GREEN. The green +waves of white light are thrown upon our eyes.” + +“When we paint our houses, we do not apply color to them,” he said at +another time. “What we do is to apply certain substances that have the +property of absorbing from white light all the colors except those +that we would have our houses appear. When a substance reflects all the +colors to the eye, it seems to us white. When it absorbs all the colors, +it is black. But, as I said before, we have as yet no perfect black. All +the colors are not absorbed. The perfect black, guarding against high +lights, will be utterly and absolutely invisible. Look at that, for +example.” + +He pointed to the palette lying on his work-table. Different shades of +black pigments were brushed on it. One, in particular, I could hardly +see. It gave my eyes a blurring sensation, and I rubbed them and looked +again. + +“That,” he said impressively, “is the blackest black you or any mortal +man ever looked upon. But just you wait, and I’ll have a black so black +that no mortal man will be able to look upon it—and see it!” + +On the other hand, I used to find Paul Tichlorne plunged as deeply into +the study of light polarization, diffraction, and interference, single +and double refraction, and all manner of strange organic compounds. + +“Transparency: a state or quality of body which permits all rays of +light to pass through,” he defined for me. “That is what I am seeking. +Lloyd blunders up against the shadow with his perfect opaqueness. But I +escape it. A transparent body casts no shadow; neither does it reflect +light-waves—that is, the perfectly transparent does not. So, avoiding +high lights, not only will such a body cast no shadow, but, since it +reflects no light, it will also be invisible.” + +We were standing by the window at another time. Paul was engaged +in polishing a number of lenses, which were ranged along the sill. +Suddenly, after a pause in the conversation, he said, “Oh! I’ve dropped +a lens. Stick your head out, old man, and see where it went to.” + +Out I started to thrust my head, but a sharp blow on the forehead +caused me to recoil. I rubbed my bruised brow and gazed with reproachful +inquiry at Paul, who was laughing in gleeful, boyish fashion. + +“Well?” he said. + +“Well?” I echoed. + +“Why don’t you investigate?” he demanded. And investigate I did. Before +thrusting out my head, my senses, automatically active, had told +me there was nothing there, that nothing intervened between me and +out-of-doors, that the aperture of the window opening was utterly empty. +I stretched forth my hand and felt a hard object, smooth and cool and +flat, which my touch, out of its experience, told me to be glass. I +looked again, but could see positively nothing. + +“White quartzose sand,” Paul rattled off, “sodic carbonate, slaked lime, +cutlet, manganese peroxide—there you have it, the finest French plate +glass, made by the great St. Gobain Company, who made the finest plate +glass in the world, and this is the finest piece they ever made. It cost +a king’s ransom. But look at it! You can’t see it. You don’t know it’s +there till you run your head against it. + +“Eh, old boy! That’s merely an object-lesson—certain elements, in +themselves opaque, yet so compounded as to give a resultant body which +is transparent. But that is a matter of inorganic chemistry, you say. +Very true. But I dare to assert, standing here on my two feet, that in +the organic I can duplicate whatever occurs in the inorganic. + +“Here!” He held a test-tube between me and the light, and I noted the +cloudy or muddy liquid it contained. He emptied the contents of another +test-tube into it, and almost instantly it became clear and sparkling. + +“Or here!” With quick, nervous movements among his array of test-tubes, +he turned a white solution to a wine color, and a light yellow solution +to a dark brown. He dropped a piece of litmus paper into an acid, when +it changed instantly to red, and on floating it in an alkali it turned +as quickly to blue. + +“The litmus paper is still the litmus paper,” he enunciated in the +formal manner of the lecturer. “I have not changed it into something +else. Then what did I do? I merely changed the arrangement of its +molecules. Where, at first, it absorbed all colors from the light but +red, its molecular structure was so changed that it absorbed red and all +colors except blue. And so it goes, ad infinitum. Now, what I purpose +to do is this.” He paused for a space. “I purpose to seek—ay, and to +find—the proper reagents, which, acting upon the living organism, +will bring about molecular changes analogous to those you have just +witnessed. But these reagents, which I shall find, and for that matter, +upon which I already have my hands, will not turn the living body to +blue or red or black, but they will turn it to transparency. All light +will pass through it. It will be invisible. It will cast no shadow.” + +A few weeks later I went hunting with Paul. He had been promising me for +some time that I should have the pleasure of shooting over a wonderful +dog—the most wonderful dog, in fact, that ever man shot over, so he +averred, and continued to aver till my curiosity was aroused. But on +the morning in question I was disappointed, for there was no dog in +evidence. + +“Don’t see him about,” Paul remarked unconcernedly, and we set off +across the fields. + +I could not imagine, at the time, what was ailing me, but I had a +feeling of some impending and deadly illness. My nerves were all awry, +and, from the astounding tricks they played me, my senses seemed to have +run riot. Strange sounds disturbed me. At times I heard the swish-swish +of grass being shoved aside, and once the patter of feet across a patch +of stony ground. + +“Did you hear anything, Paul?” I asked once. + +But he shook his head, and thrust his feet steadily forward. + +While climbing a fence, I heard the low, eager whine of a dog, +apparently from within a couple of feet of me; but on looking about me I +saw nothing. + +I dropped to the ground, limp and trembling. + +“Paul,” I said, “we had better return to the house. I am afraid I am +going to be sick.” + +“Nonsense, old man,” he answered. “The sunshine has gone to your head +like wine. You’ll be all right. It’s famous weather.” + +But, passing along a narrow path through a clump of cottonwoods, some +object brushed against my legs and I stumbled and nearly fell. I looked +with sudden anxiety at Paul. + +“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Tripping over your own feet?” + +I kept my tongue between my teeth and plodded on, though sore perplexed +and thoroughly satisfied that some acute and mysterious malady had +attacked my nerves. So far my eyes had escaped; but, when we got to the +open fields again, even my vision went back on me. Strange flashes of +vari-colored, rainbow light began to appear and disappear on the +path before me. Still, I managed to keep myself in hand, till the +vari-colored lights persisted for a space of fully twenty seconds, +dancing and flashing in continuous play. Then I sat down, weak and +shaky. + +“It’s all up with me,” I gasped, covering my eyes with my hands. “It has +attacked my eyes. Paul, take me home.” + +But Paul laughed long and loud. “What did I tell you?—the most +wonderful dog, eh? Well, what do you think?” + +He turned partly from me and began to whistle. I heard the patter of +feet, the panting of a heated animal, and the unmistakable yelp of a +dog. Then Paul stooped down and apparently fondled the empty air. + +“Here! Give me your fist.” + +And he rubbed my hand over the cold nose and jowls of a dog. A dog it +certainly was, with the shape and the smooth, short coat of a pointer. + +Suffice to say, I speedily recovered my spirits and control. Paul put +a collar about the animal’s neck and tied his handkerchief to its tail. +And then was vouchsafed us the remarkable sight of an empty collar and +a waving handkerchief cavorting over the fields. It was something to see +that collar and handkerchief pin a bevy of quail in a clump of locusts +and remain rigid and immovable till we had flushed the birds. + +Now and again the dog emitted the vari-colored light-flashes I have +mentioned. The one thing, Paul explained, which he had not anticipated +and which he doubted could be overcome. + +“They’re a large family,” he said, “these sun dogs, wind dogs, rainbows, +halos, and parhelia. They are produced by refraction of light from +mineral and ice crystals, from mist, rain, spray, and no end of things; +and I am afraid they are the penalty I must pay for transparency. I +escaped Lloyd’s shadow only to fetch up against the rainbow flash.” + +A couple of days later, before the entrance to Paul’s laboratory, I +encountered a terrible stench. So overpowering was it that it was easy +to discover the source—a mass of putrescent matter on the doorstep +which in general outlines resembled a dog. + +Paul was startled when he investigated my find. It was his invisible +dog, or rather, what had been his invisible dog, for it was now plainly +visible. It had been playing about but a few minutes before in all +health and strength. Closer examination revealed that the skull had been +crushed by some heavy blow. While it was strange that the animal should +have been killed, the inexplicable thing was that it should so quickly +decay. + +“The reagents I injected into its system were harmless,” Paul explained. +“Yet they were powerful, and it appears that when death comes they force +practically instantaneous disintegration. Remarkable! Most remarkable! +Well, the only thing is not to die. They do not harm so long as one +lives. But I do wonder who smashed in that dog’s head.” + +Light, however, was thrown upon this when a frightened housemaid brought +the news that Gaffer Bedshaw had that very morning, not more than an +hour back, gone violently insane, and was strapped down at home, in +the huntsman’s lodge, where he raved of a battle with a ferocious and +gigantic beast that he had encountered in the Tichlorne pasture. He +claimed that the thing, whatever it was, was invisible, that with his +own eyes he had seen that it was invisible; wherefore his tearful wife +and daughters shook their heads, and wherefore he but waxed the more +violent, and the gardener and the coachman tightened the straps by +another hole. + +Nor, while Paul Tichlorne was thus successfully mastering the problem of +invisibility, was Lloyd Inwood a whit behind. I went over in answer to a +message of his to come and see how he was getting on. Now his laboratory +occupied an isolated situation in the midst of his vast grounds. It was +built in a pleasant little glade, surrounded on all sides by a dense +forest growth, and was to be gained by way of a winding and erratic +path. But I have travelled that path so often as to know every foot of +it, and conceive my surprise when I came upon the glade and found no +laboratory. The quaint shed structure with its red sandstone chimney +was not. Nor did it look as if it ever had been. There were no signs of +ruin, no debris, nothing. + +I started to walk across what had once been its site. “This,” I said to +myself, “should be where the step went up to the door.” Barely were the +words out of my mouth when I stubbed my toe on some obstacle, pitched +forward, and butted my head into something that FELT very much like a +door. I reached out my hand. It WAS a door. I found the knob and turned +it. And at once, as the door swung inward on its hinges, the whole +interior of the laboratory impinged upon my vision. Greeting Lloyd, I +closed the door and backed up the path a few paces. I could see nothing +of the building. Returning and opening the door, at once all the +furniture and every detail of the interior were visible. It was indeed +startling, the sudden transition from void to light and form and color. + +“What do you think of it, eh?” Lloyd asked, wringing my hand. “I slapped +a couple of coats of absolute black on the outside yesterday afternoon +to see how it worked. How’s your head? you bumped it pretty solidly, I +imagine.” + +“Never mind that,” he interrupted my congratulations. “I’ve something +better for you to do.” + +While he talked he began to strip, and when he stood naked before me he +thrust a pot and brush into my hand and said, “Here, give me a coat of +this.” + +It was an oily, shellac-like stuff, which spread quickly and easily over +the skin and dried immediately. + +“Merely preliminary and precautionary,” he explained when I had +finished; “but now for the real stuff.” + +I picked up another pot he indicated, and glanced inside, but could see +nothing. + +“It’s empty,” I said. + +“Stick your finger in it.” + +I obeyed, and was aware of a sensation of cool moistness. On withdrawing +my hand I glanced at the forefinger, the one I had immersed, but it had +disappeared. I moved and knew from the alternate tension and relaxation +of the muscles that I moved it, but it defied my sense of sight. To all +appearances I had been shorn of a finger; nor could I get any visual +impression of it till I extended it under the skylight and saw its +shadow plainly blotted on the floor. + +Lloyd chuckled. “Now spread it on, and keep your eyes open.” + +I dipped the brush into the seemingly empty pot, and gave him a long +stroke across his chest. With the passage of the brush the living +flesh disappeared from beneath. I covered his right leg, and he was +a one-legged man defying all laws of gravitation. And so, stroke by +stroke, member by member, I painted Lloyd Inwood into nothingness. It +was a creepy experience, and I was glad when naught remained in sight +but his burning black eyes, poised apparently unsupported in mid-air. + +“I have a refined and harmless solution for them,” he said. “A fine +spray with an air-brush, and presto! I am not.” + +This deftly accomplished, he said, “Now I shall move about, and do you +tell me what sensations you experience.” + +“In the first place, I cannot see you,” I said, and I could hear his +gleeful laugh from the midst of the emptiness. “Of course,” I continued, +“you cannot escape your shadow, but that was to be expected. When you +pass between my eye and an object, the object disappears, but so unusual +and incomprehensible is its disappearance that it seems to me as though +my eyes had blurred. When you move rapidly, I experience a bewildering +succession of blurs. The blurring sensation makes my eyes ache and my +brain tired.” + +“Have you any other warnings of my presence?” he asked. + +“No, and yes,” I answered. “When you are near me I have feelings similar +to those produced by dank warehouses, gloomy crypts, and deep mines. And +as sailors feel the loom of the land on dark nights, so I think I feel +the loom of your body. But it is all very vague and intangible.” + +Long we talked that last morning in his laboratory; and when I turned to +go, he put his unseen hand in mine with nervous grip, and said, “Now +I shall conquer the world!” And I could not dare to tell him of Paul +Tichlorne’s equal success. + +At home I found a note from Paul, asking me to come up immediately, and +it was high noon when I came spinning up the driveway on my wheel. Paul +called me from the tennis court, and I dismounted and went over. But the +court was empty. As I stood there, gaping open-mouthed, a tennis ball +struck me on the arm, and as I turned about, another whizzed past my +ear. For aught I could see of my assailant, they came whirling at me +from out of space, and right well was I peppered with them. But when +the balls already flung at me began to come back for a second whack, I +realized the situation. Seizing a racquet and keeping my eyes open, I +quickly saw a rainbow flash appearing and disappearing and darting over +the ground. I took out after it, and when I laid the racquet upon it for +a half-dozen stout blows, Paul’s voice rang out: + +“Enough! Enough! Oh! Ouch! Stop! You’re landing on my naked skin, you +know! Ow! O-w-w! I’ll be good! I’ll be good! I only wanted you to see +my metamorphosis,” he said ruefully, and I imagined he was rubbing his +hurts. + +A few minutes later we were playing tennis—a handicap on my part, for I +could have no knowledge of his position save when all the angles between +himself, the sun, and me, were in proper conjunction. Then he +flashed, and only then. But the flashes were more brilliant than the +rainbow—purest blue, most delicate violet, brightest yellow, and all +the intermediary shades, with the scintillant brilliancy of the diamond, +dazzling, blinding, iridescent. + +But in the midst of our play I felt a sudden cold chill, reminding me +of deep mines and gloomy crypts, such a chill as I had experienced that +very morning. The next moment, close to the net, I saw a ball rebound in +mid-air and empty space, and at the same instant, a score of feet away, +Paul Tichlorne emitted a rainbow flash. It could not be he from whom +the ball had rebounded, and with sickening dread I realized that Lloyd +Inwood had come upon the scene. To make sure, I looked for his shadow, +and there it was, a shapeless blotch the girth of his body, (the sun was +overhead), moving along the ground. I remembered his threat, and felt +sure that all the long years of rivalry were about to culminate in +uncanny battle. + +I cried a warning to Paul, and heard a snarl as of a wild beast, and an +answering snarl. I saw the dark blotch move swiftly across the court, +and a brilliant burst of vari-colored light moving with equal swiftness +to meet it; and then shadow and flash came together and there was the +sound of unseen blows. The net went down before my frightened eyes. I +sprang toward the fighters, crying: + +“For God’s sake!” + +But their locked bodies smote against my knees, and I was overthrown. + +“You keep out of this, old man!” I heard the voice of Lloyd Inwood from +out of the emptiness. And then Paul’s voice crying, “Yes, we’ve had +enough of peacemaking!” + +From the sound of their voices I knew they had separated. I could not +locate Paul, and so approached the shadow that represented Lloyd. But +from the other side came a stunning blow on the point of my jaw, and I +heard Paul scream angrily, “Now will you keep away?” + +Then they came together again, the impact of their blows, their groans +and gasps, and the swift flashings and shadow-movings telling plainly of +the deadliness of the struggle. + +I shouted for help, and Gaffer Bedshaw came running into the court. I +could see, as he approached, that he was looking at me strangely, but he +collided with the combatants and was hurled headlong to the ground. With +despairing shriek and a cry of “O Lord, I’ve got ‘em!” he sprang to his +feet and tore madly out of the court. + +I could do nothing, so I sat up, fascinated and powerless, and watched +the struggle. The noonday sun beat down with dazzling brightness on the +naked tennis court. And it was naked. All I could see was the blotch of +shadow and the rainbow flashes, the dust rising from the invisible feet, +the earth tearing up from beneath the straining foot-grips, and the wire +screen bulge once or twice as their bodies hurled against it. That was +all, and after a time even that ceased. There were no more flashes, and +the shadow had become long and stationary; and I remembered their set +boyish faces when they clung to the roots in the deep coolness of the +pool. + +They found me an hour afterward. Some inkling of what had happened got +to the servants and they quitted the Tichlorne service in a body. +Gaffer Bedshaw never recovered from the second shock he received, and +is confined in a madhouse, hopelessly incurable. The secrets of their +marvellous discoveries died with Paul and Lloyd, both laboratories being +destroyed by grief-stricken relatives. As for myself, I no longer care +for chemical research, and science is a tabooed topic in my household. I +have returned to my roses. Nature’s colors are good enough for me. + + + + +ALL GOLD CANYON + + +It was the green heart of the canyon, where the walls swerved back from +the rigid plan and relieved their harshness of line by making a little +sheltered nook and filling it to the brim with sweetness and roundness +and softness. Here all things rested. Even the narrow stream ceased its +turbulent down-rush long enough to form a quiet pool. Knee-deep in the +water, with drooping head and half-shut eyes, drowsed a red-coated, +many-antlered buck. + +On one side, beginning at the very lip of the pool, was a tiny meadow, +a cool, resilient surface of green that extended to the base of the +frowning wall. Beyond the pool a gentle slope of earth ran up and up +to meet the opposing wall. Fine grass covered the slope—grass that was +spangled with flowers, with here and there patches of color, orange and +purple and golden. Below, the canyon was shut in. There was no view. The +walls leaned together abruptly and the canyon ended in a chaos of rocks, +moss-covered and hidden by a green screen of vines and creepers and +boughs of trees. Up the canyon rose far hills and peaks, the big +foothills, pine-covered and remote. And far beyond, like clouds upon +the border of the sky, towered minarets of white, where the Sierra’s +eternal snows flashed austerely the blazes of the sun. + +There was no dust in the canyon. The leaves and flowers were clean and +virginal. The grass was young velvet. Over the pool three cottonwoods +sent their scurvy fluffs fluttering down the quiet air. On the slope +the blossoms of the wine-wooded manzanita filled the air with springtime +odors, while the leaves, wise with experience, were already beginning +their vertical twist against the coming aridity of summer. In the open +spaces on the slope, beyond the farthest shadow-reach of the manzanita, +poised the mariposa lilies, like so many flights of jewelled moths +suddenly arrested and on the verge of trembling into flight again. Here +and there that woods harlequin, the madrone, permitting itself to +be caught in the act of changing its pea-green trunk to madder-red, +breathed its fragrance into the air from great clusters of waxen bells. +Creamy white were these bells, shaped like lilies-of-the-valley, with +the sweetness of perfume that is of the springtime. + +There was not a sigh of wind. The air was drowsy with its weight of +perfume. It was a sweetness that would have been cloying had the +air been heavy and humid. But the air was sharp and thin. It was +as starlight transmuted into atmosphere, shot through and warmed by +sunshine, and flower-drenched with sweetness. + +An occasional butterfly drifted in and out through the patches of light +and shade. And from all about rose the low and sleepy hum of mountain +bees—feasting Sybarites that jostled one another good-naturedly at the +board, nor found time for rough discourtesy. So quietly did the little +stream drip and ripple its way through the canyon that it spoke only in +faint and occasional gurgles. The voice of the stream was as a drowsy +whisper, ever interrupted by dozings and silences, ever lifted again in +the awakenings. + +The motion of all things was a drifting in the heart of the canyon. +Sunshine and butterflies drifted in and out among the trees. The hum of +the bees and the whisper of the stream were a drifting of sound. And the +drifting sound and drifting color seemed to weave together in the making +of a delicate and intangible fabric which was the spirit of the place. +It was a spirit of peace that was not of death, but of smooth-pulsing +life, of quietude that was not silence, of movement that was not action, +of repose that was quick with existence without being violent with +struggle and travail. The spirit of the place was the spirit of +the peace of the living, somnolent with the easement and content of +prosperity, and undisturbed by rumors of far wars. + +The red-coated, many-antlered buck acknowledged the lordship of the +spirit of the place and dozed knee-deep in the cool, shaded pool. There +seemed no flies to vex him and he was languid with rest. Sometimes his +ears moved when the stream awoke and whispered; but they moved lazily, +with, foreknowledge that it was merely the stream grown garrulous at +discovery that it had slept. + +But there came a time when the buck’s ears lifted and tensed with swift +eagerness for sound. His head was turned down the canyon. His sensitive, +quivering nostrils scented the air. His eyes could not pierce the green +screen through which the stream rippled away, but to his ears came the +voice of a man. It was a steady, monotonous, singsong voice. Once the +buck heard the harsh clash of metal upon rock. At the sound he snorted +with a sudden start that jerked him through the air from water to +meadow, and his feet sank into the young velvet, while he pricked his +ears and again scented the air. Then he stole across the tiny meadow, +pausing once and again to listen, and faded away out of the canyon like +a wraith, soft-footed and without sound. + +The clash of steel-shod soles against the rocks began to be heard, and +the man’s voice grew louder. It was raised in a sort of chant and became +distinct with nearness, so that the words could be heard: + + “Turn around an’ tu’n yo’ face + Untoe them sweet hills of grace + (D’ pow’rs of sin yo’ am scornin’!). + Look about an’ look aroun’, + Fling yo’ sin-pack on d’ groun’ + (Yo’ will meet wid d’ Lord in d’ mornin’!).” + +A sound of scrambling accompanied the song, and the spirit of the place +fled away on the heels of the red-coated buck. The green screen was +burst asunder, and a man peered out at the meadow and the pool and the +sloping side-hill. He was a deliberate sort of man. He took in the scene +with one embracing glance, then ran his eyes over the details to verify +the general impression. Then, and not until then, did he open his mouth +in vivid and solemn approval: + +“Smoke of life an’ snakes of purgatory! Will you just look at that! Wood +an’ water an’ grass an’ a side-hill! A pocket-hunter’s delight an’ a +cayuse’s paradise! Cool green for tired eyes! Pink pills for pale people +ain’t in it. A secret pasture for prospectors and a resting-place for +tired burros, by damn!” + +He was a sandy-complexioned man in whose face geniality and humor seemed +the salient characteristics. It was a mobile face, quick-changing to +inward mood and thought. Thinking was in him a visible process. Ideas +chased across his face like wind-flaws across the surface of a lake. His +hair, sparse and unkempt of growth, was as indeterminate and colorless +as his complexion. It would seem that all the color of his frame had +gone into his eyes, for they were startlingly blue. Also, they were +laughing and merry eyes, within them much of the naivete and wonder of +the child; and yet, in an unassertive way, they contained much of calm +self-reliance and strength of purpose founded upon self-experience and +experience of the world. + +From out the screen of vines and creepers he flung ahead of him a +miner’s pick and shovel and gold-pan. Then he crawled out himself into +the open. He was clad in faded overalls and black cotton shirt, with +hobnailed brogans on his feet, and on his head a hat whose shapelessness +and stains advertised the rough usage of wind and rain and sun and +camp-smoke. He stood erect, seeing wide-eyed the secrecy of the scene +and sensuously inhaling the warm, sweet breath of the canyon-garden +through nostrils that dilated and quivered with delight. His eyes +narrowed to laughing slits of blue, his face wreathed itself in joy, and +his mouth curled in a smile as he cried aloud: + +“Jumping dandelions and happy hollyhocks, but that smells good to me! +Talk about your attar o’ roses an’ cologne factories! They ain’t in it!” + +He had the habit of soliloquy. His quick-changing facial expressions +might tell every thought and mood, but the tongue, perforce, ran hard +after, repeating, like a second Boswell. + +The man lay down on the lip of the pool and drank long and deep of its +water. “Tastes good to me,” he murmured, lifting his head and gazing +across the pool at the side-hill, while he wiped his mouth with the back +of his hand. The side-hill attracted his attention. Still lying on his +stomach, he studied the hill formation long and carefully. It was a +practised eye that travelled up the slope to the crumbling canyon-wall +and back and down again to the edge of the pool. He scrambled to his +feet and favored the side-hill with a second survey. + +“Looks good to me,” he concluded, picking up his pick and shovel and +gold-pan. + +He crossed the stream below the pool, stepping agilely from stone to +stone. Where the sidehill touched the water he dug up a shovelful of +dirt and put it into the gold-pan. He squatted down, holding the pan in +his two hands, and partly immersing it in the stream. Then he imparted +to the pan a deft circular motion that sent the water sluicing in and +out through the dirt and gravel. The larger and the lighter particles +worked to the surface, and these, by a skilful dipping movement of +the pan, he spilled out and over the edge. Occasionally, to expedite +matters, he rested the pan and with his fingers raked out the large +pebbles and pieces of rock. + +The contents of the pan diminished rapidly until only fine dirt and the +smallest bits of gravel remained. At this stage he began to work very +deliberately and carefully. It was fine washing, and he washed fine and +finer, with a keen scrutiny and delicate and fastidious touch. At +last the pan seemed empty of everything but water; but with a quick +semicircular flirt that sent the water flying over the shallow rim into +the stream, he disclosed a layer of black sand on the bottom of the pan. +So thin was this layer that it was like a streak of paint. He examined +it closely. In the midst of it was a tiny golden speck. He dribbled a +little water in over the depressed edge of the pan. With a quick flirt +he sent the water sluicing across the bottom, turning the grains of +black sand over and over. A second tiny golden speck rewarded his +effort. + +The washing had now become very fine—fine beyond all need of ordinary +placer-mining. He worked the black sand, a small portion at a time, up +the shallow rim of the pan. Each small portion he examined sharply, so +that his eyes saw every grain of it before he allowed it to slide over +the edge and away. Jealously, bit by bit, he let the black sand slip +away. A golden speck, no larger than a pin-point, appeared on the rim, +and by his manipulation of the riveter it returned to the bottom of the +pan. And in such fashion another speck was disclosed, and another. Great +was his care of them. Like a shepherd he herded his flock of golden +specks so that not one should be lost. At last, of the pan of dirt +nothing remained but his golden herd. He counted it, and then, after all +his labor, sent it flying out of the pan with one final swirl of water. + +But his blue eyes were shining with desire as he rose to his feet. +“Seven,” he muttered aloud, asserting the sum of the specks for which he +had toiled so hard and which he had so wantonly thrown away. “Seven,” + he repeated, with the emphasis of one trying to impress a number on his +memory. + +He stood still a long while, surveying the hill-side. In his eyes was +a curiosity, new-aroused and burning. There was an exultance about his +bearing and a keenness like that of a hunting animal catching the fresh +scent of game. + +He moved down the stream a few steps and took a second panful of dirt. + +Again came the careful washing, the jealous herding of the golden +specks, and the wantonness with which he sent them flying into the +stream when he had counted their number. + +“Five,” he muttered, and repeated, “five.” + +He could not forbear another survey of the hill before filling the pan +farther down the stream. His golden herds diminished. “Four, three, two, +two, one,” were his memory-tabulations as he moved down the stream. When +but one speck of gold rewarded his washing, he stopped and built a fire +of dry twigs. Into this he thrust the gold-pan and burned it till it +was blue-black. He held up the pan and examined it critically. Then he +nodded approbation. Against such a color-background he could defy the +tiniest yellow speck to elude him. + +Still moving down the stream, he panned again. A single speck was his +reward. A third pan contained no gold at all. Not satisfied with this, +he panned three times again, taking his shovels of dirt within a foot +of one another. Each pan proved empty of gold, and the fact, instead of +discouraging him, seemed to give him satisfaction. His elation increased +with each barren washing, until he arose, exclaiming jubilantly: + +“If it ain’t the real thing, may God knock off my head with sour +apples!” + +Returning to where he had started operations, he began to pan up the +stream. At first his golden herds increased—increased prodigiously. +“Fourteen, eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-six,” ran his memory +tabulations. Just above the pool he struck his richest pan—thirty-five +colors. + +“Almost enough to save,” he remarked regretfully as he allowed the water +to sweep them away. + +The sun climbed to the top of the sky. The man worked on. Pan by pan, he +went up the stream, the tally of results steadily decreasing. + +“It’s just booful, the way it peters out,” he exulted when a shovelful +of dirt contained no more than a single speck of gold. + +And when no specks at all were found in several pans, he straightened up +and favored the hillside with a confident glance. + +“Ah, ha! Mr. Pocket!” he cried out, as though to an auditor hidden +somewhere above him beneath the surface of the slope. “Ah, ha! Mr. +Pocket! I’m a-comin’, I’m a-comin’, an’ I’m shorely gwine to get yer! +You heah me, Mr. Pocket? I’m gwine to get yer as shore as punkins ain’t +cauliflowers!” + +He turned and flung a measuring glance at the sun poised above him in +the azure of the cloudless sky. Then he went down the canyon, following +the line of shovel-holes he had made in filling the pans. He crossed the +stream below the pool and disappeared through the green screen. There +was little opportunity for the spirit of the place to return with its +quietude and repose, for the man’s voice, raised in ragtime song, still +dominated the canyon with possession. + +After a time, with a greater clashing of steel-shod feet on rock, he +returned. The green screen was tremendously agitated. It surged back and +forth in the throes of a struggle. There was a loud grating and clanging +of metal. The man’s voice leaped to a higher pitch and was sharp with +imperativeness. A large body plunged and panted. There was a snapping +and ripping and rending, and amid a shower of falling leaves a horse +burst through the screen. On its back was a pack, and from this trailed +broken vines and torn creepers. The animal gazed with astonished eyes at +the scene into which it had been precipitated, then dropped its head to +the grass and began contentedly to graze. A second horse scrambled into +view, slipping once on the mossy rocks and regaining equilibrium +when its hoofs sank into the yielding surface of the meadow. It was +riderless, though on its back was a high-horned Mexican saddle, scarred +and discolored by long usage. + +The man brought up the rear. He threw off pack and saddle, with an +eye to camp location, and gave the animals their freedom to graze. He +unpacked his food and got out frying-pan and coffee-pot. He gathered an +armful of dry wood, and with a few stones made a place for his fire. + +“My!” he said, “but I’ve got an appetite. I could scoff iron-filings an’ +horseshoe nails an’ thank you kindly, ma’am, for a second helpin’.” + +He straightened up, and, while he reached for matches in the pocket of +his overalls, his eyes travelled across the pool to the side-hill. His +fingers had clutched the match-box, but they relaxed their hold and +the hand came out empty. The man wavered perceptibly. He looked at his +preparations for cooking and he looked at the hill. + +“Guess I’ll take another whack at her,” he concluded, starting to cross +the stream. + +“They ain’t no sense in it, I know,” he mumbled apologetically. “But +keepin’ grub back an hour ain’t goin’ to hurt none, I reckon.” + +A few feet back from his first line of test-pans he started a second +line. The sun dropped down the western sky, the shadows lengthened, +but the man worked on. He began a third line of test-pans. He was +cross-cutting the hillside, line by line, as he ascended. The centre of +each line produced the richest pans, while the ends came where no +colors showed in the pan. And as he ascended the hillside the lines grew +perceptibly shorter. The regularity with which their length diminished +served to indicate that somewhere up the slope the last line would be so +short as to have scarcely length at all, and that beyond could come only +a point. The design was growing into an inverted “V.” The converging +sides of this “V” marked the boundaries of the gold-bearing dirt. + +The apex of the “V” was evidently the man’s goal. Often he ran his eye +along the converging sides and on up the hill, trying to divine the +apex, the point where the gold-bearing dirt must cease. Here resided +“Mr. Pocket”—for so the man familiarly addressed the imaginary point +above him on the slope, crying out: + +“Come down out o’ that, Mr. Pocket! Be right smart an’ agreeable, an’ +come down!” + +“All right,” he would add later, in a voice resigned to determination. +“All right, Mr. Pocket. It’s plain to me I got to come right up an’ +snatch you out bald-headed. An’ I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” he would +threaten still later. + +Each pan he carried down to the water to wash, and as he went higher +up the hill the pans grew richer, until he began to save the gold in an +empty baking-powder can which he carried carelessly in his hip-pocket. +So engrossed was he in his toil that he did not notice the long twilight +of oncoming night. It was not until he tried vainly to see the gold +colors in the bottom of the pan that he realized the passage of time. He +straightened up abruptly. An expression of whimsical wonderment and awe +overspread his face as he drawled: + +“Gosh darn my buttons! if I didn’t plumb forget dinner!” + +He stumbled across the stream in the darkness and lighted his +long-delayed fire. Flapjacks and bacon and warmed-over beans constituted +his supper. Then he smoked a pipe by the smouldering coals, listening to +the night noises and watching the moonlight stream through the canyon. +After that he unrolled his bed, took off his heavy shoes, and pulled the +blankets up to his chin. His face showed white in the moonlight, like +the face of a corpse. But it was a corpse that knew its resurrection, +for the man rose suddenly on one elbow and gazed across at his hillside. + +“Good night, Mr. Pocket,” he called sleepily. “Good night.” + +He slept through the early gray of morning until the direct rays of +the sun smote his closed eyelids, when he awoke with a start and looked +about him until he had established the continuity of his existence and +identified his present self with the days previously lived. + +To dress, he had merely to buckle on his shoes. He glanced at his +fireplace and at his hillside, wavered, but fought down the temptation +and started the fire. + +“Keep yer shirt on, Bill; keep yer shirt on,” he admonished himself. +“What’s the good of rushin’? No use in gettin’ all het up an’ sweaty. +Mr. Pocket’ll wait for you. He ain’t a-runnin’ away before you can get +yer breakfast. Now, what you want, Bill, is something fresh in yer bill +o’ fare. So it’s up to you to go an’ get it.” + +He cut a short pole at the water’s edge and drew from one of his pockets +a bit of line and a draggled fly that had once been a royal coachman. + +“Mebbe they’ll bite in the early morning,” he muttered, as he made his +first cast into the pool. And a moment later he was gleefully crying: +“What’d I tell you, eh? What’d I tell you?” + +He had no reel, nor any inclination to waste time, and by main strength, +and swiftly, he drew out of the water a flashing ten-inch trout. Three +more, caught in rapid succession, furnished his breakfast. When he came +to the stepping-stones on his way to his hillside, he was struck by a +sudden thought, and paused. + +“I’d just better take a hike down-stream a ways,” he said. “There’s no +tellin’ what cuss may be snoopin’ around.” + +But he crossed over on the stones, and with a “I really oughter take +that hike,” the need of the precaution passed out of his mind and he +fell to work. + +At nightfall he straightened up. The small of his back was stiff +from stooping toil, and as he put his hand behind him to soothe the +protesting muscles, he said: + +“Now what d’ye think of that, by damn? I clean forgot my dinner again! +If I don’t watch out, I’ll sure be degeneratin’ into a two-meal-a-day +crank.” + +“Pockets is the damnedest things I ever see for makin’ a man +absent-minded,” he communed that night, as he crawled into his blankets. +Nor did he forget to call up the hillside, “Good night, Mr. Pocket! Good +night!” + +Rising with the sun, and snatching a hasty breakfast, he was early +at work. A fever seemed to be growing in him, nor did the increasing +richness of the test-pans allay this fever. There was a flush in his +cheek other than that made by the heat of the sun, and he was oblivious +to fatigue and the passage of time. When he filled a pan with dirt, he +ran down the hill to wash it; nor could he forbear running up the hill +again, panting and stumbling profanely, to refill the pan. + +He was now a hundred yards from the water, and the inverted “V” was +assuming definite proportions. The width of the pay-dirt steadily +decreased, and the man extended in his mind’s eye the sides of the “V” + to their meeting-place far up the hill. This was his goal, the apex of +the “V,” and he panned many times to locate it. + +“Just about two yards above that manzanita bush an’ a yard to the +right,” he finally concluded. + +Then the temptation seized him. “As plain as the nose on your face,” + he said, as he abandoned his laborious cross-cutting and climbed to the +indicated apex. He filled a pan and carried it down the hill to wash. It +contained no trace of gold. He dug deep, and he dug shallow, filling +and washing a dozen pans, and was unrewarded even by the tiniest golden +speck. He was enraged at having yielded to the temptation, and cursed +himself blasphemously and pridelessly. Then he went down the hill and +took up the cross-cutting. + +“Slow an’ certain, Bill; slow an’ certain,” he crooned. “Short-cuts to +fortune ain’t in your line, an’ it’s about time you know it. Get wise, +Bill; get wise. Slow an’ certain’s the only hand you can play; so go to +it, an’ keep to it, too.” + +As the cross-cuts decreased, showing that the sides of the “V” were +converging, the depth of the “V” increased. The gold-trace was dipping +into the hill. It was only at thirty inches beneath the surface that +he could get colors in his pan. The dirt he found at twenty-five inches +from the surface, and at thirty-five inches, yielded barren pans. At the +base of the “V,” by the water’s edge, he had found the gold colors at +the grass roots. The higher he went up the hill, the deeper the gold +dipped. + +To dig a hole three feet deep in order to get one test-pan was a task +of no mean magnitude; while between the man and the apex intervened +an untold number of such holes to be. “An’ there’s no tellin’ how much +deeper it’ll pitch,” he sighed, in a moment’s pause, while his fingers +soothed his aching back. + +Feverish with desire, with aching back and stiffening muscles, with pick +and shovel gouging and mauling the soft brown earth, the man toiled up +the hill. Before him was the smooth slope, spangled with flowers and +made sweet with their breath. Behind him was devastation. It looked like +some terrible eruption breaking out on the smooth skin of the hill. His +slow progress was like that of a slug, befouling beauty with a monstrous +trail. + +Though the dipping gold-trace increased the man’s work, he found +consolation in the increasing richness of the pans. Twenty cents, thirty +cents, fifty cents, sixty cents, were the values of the gold found in +the pans, and at nightfall he washed his banner pan, which gave him a +dollar’s worth of gold-dust from a shovelful of dirt. + +“I’ll just bet it’s my luck to have some inquisitive cuss come buttin’ +in here on my pasture,” he mumbled sleepily that night as he pulled the +blankets up to his chin. + +Suddenly he sat upright. “Bill!” he called sharply. “Now, listen to me, +Bill; d’ye hear! It’s up to you, to-morrow mornin’, to mosey round an’ +see what you can see. Understand? To-morrow morning, an’ don’t you forget +it!” + +He yawned and glanced across at his side-hill. “Good night, Mr. Pocket,” + he called. + +In the morning he stole a march on the sun, for he had finished +breakfast when its first rays caught him, and he was climbing the wall +of the canyon where it crumbled away and gave footing. From the outlook +at the top he found himself in the midst of loneliness. As far as he +could see, chain after chain of mountains heaved themselves into his +vision. To the east his eyes, leaping the miles between range and range +and between many ranges, brought up at last against the white-peaked +Sierras—the main crest, where the backbone of the Western world +reared itself against the sky. To the north and south he could see more +distinctly the cross-systems that broke through the main trend of the +sea of mountains. To the west the ranges fell away, one behind the +other, diminishing and fading into the gentle foothills that, in turn, +descended into the great valley which he could not see. + +And in all that mighty sweep of earth he saw no sign of man nor of the +handiwork of man—save only the torn bosom of the hillside at his feet. +The man looked long and carefully. Once, far down his own canyon, he +thought he saw in the air a faint hint of smoke. He looked again +and decided that it was the purple haze of the hills made dark by a +convolution of the canyon wall at its back. + +“Hey, you, Mr. Pocket!” he called down into the canyon. “Stand out from +under! I’m a-comin’, Mr. Pocket! I’m a-comin’!” + +The heavy brogans on the man’s feet made him appear clumsy-footed, but +he swung down from the giddy height as lightly and airily as a mountain +goat. A rock, turning under his foot on the edge of the precipice, did +not disconcert him. He seemed to know the precise time required for the +turn to culminate in disaster, and in the meantime he utilized the false +footing itself for the momentary earth-contact necessary to carry him on +into safety. Where the earth sloped so steeply that it was impossible to +stand for a second upright, the man did not hesitate. His foot pressed +the impossible surface for but a fraction of the fatal second and gave +him the bound that carried him onward. Again, where even the fraction of +a second’s footing was out of the question, he would swing his body +past by a moment’s hand-grip on a jutting knob of rock, a crevice, or +a precariously rooted shrub. At last, with a wild leap and yell, he +exchanged the face of the wall for an earth-slide and finished the +descent in the midst of several tons of sliding earth and gravel. + +His first pan of the morning washed out over two dollars in coarse gold. +It was from the centre of the “V.” To either side the diminution in +the values of the pans was swift. His lines of crosscutting holes were +growing very short. The converging sides of the inverted “V” were only a +few yards apart. Their meeting-point was only a few yards above him. But +the pay-streak was dipping deeper and deeper into the earth. By early +afternoon he was sinking the test-holes five feet before the pans could +show the gold-trace. + +For that matter, the gold-trace had become something more than a trace; +it was a placer mine in itself, and the man resolved to come back after +he had found the pocket and work over the ground. But the increasing +richness of the pans began to worry him. By late afternoon the worth of +the pans had grown to three and four dollars. The man scratched his head +perplexedly and looked a few feet up the hill at the manzanita bush that +marked approximately the apex of the “V.” He nodded his head and said +oracularly: + +“It’s one o’ two things, Bill; one o’ two things. Either Mr. Pocket’s +spilled himself all out an’ down the hill, or else Mr. Pocket’s that +damned rich you maybe won’t be able to carry him all away with you. And +that’d be hell, wouldn’t it, now?” He chuckled at contemplation of so +pleasant a dilemma. + +Nightfall found him by the edge of the stream his eyes wrestling with +the gathering darkness over the washing of a five-dollar pan. + +“Wisht I had an electric light to go on working,” he said. + +He found sleep difficult that night. Many times he composed himself and +closed his eyes for slumber to overtake him; but his blood pounded with +too strong desire, and as many times his eyes opened and he murmured +wearily, “Wisht it was sun-up.” + +Sleep came to him in the end, but his eyes were open with the first +paling of the stars, and the gray of dawn caught him with breakfast +finished and climbing the hillside in the direction of the secret +abiding-place of Mr. Pocket. + +The first cross-cut the man made, there was space for only three +holes, so narrow had become the pay-streak and so close was he to the +fountainhead of the golden stream he had been following for four days. + +“Be ca’m, Bill; be ca’m,” he admonished himself, as he broke ground for +the final hole where the sides of the “V” had at last come together in a +point. + +“I’ve got the almighty cinch on you, Mr. Pocket, an’ you can’t lose me,” + he said many times as he sank the hole deeper and deeper. + +Four feet, five feet, six feet, he dug his way down into the earth. The +digging grew harder. His pick grated on broken rock. He examined the +rock. “Rotten quartz,” was his conclusion as, with the shovel, he +cleared the bottom of the hole of loose dirt. He attacked the crumbling +quartz with the pick, bursting the disintegrating rock asunder with +every stroke. + +He thrust his shovel into the loose mass. His eye caught a gleam of +yellow. He dropped the shovel and squatted suddenly on his heels. As a +farmer rubs the clinging earth from fresh-dug potatoes, so the man, a +piece of rotten quartz held in both hands, rubbed the dirt away. + +“Sufferin’ Sardanopolis!” he cried. “Lumps an’ chunks of it! Lumps an’ +chunks of it!” + +It was only half rock he held in his hand. The other half was virgin +gold. He dropped it into his pan and examined another piece. Little +yellow was to be seen, but with his strong fingers he crumbled the +rotten quartz away till both hands were filled with glowing yellow. He +rubbed the dirt away from fragment after fragment, tossing them into +the gold-pan. It was a treasure-hole. So much had the quartz rotted away +that there was less of it than there was of gold. Now and again he found +a piece to which no rock clung—a piece that was all gold. A chunk, +where the pick had laid open the heart of the gold, glittered like a +handful of yellow jewels, and he cocked his head at it and slowly turned +it around and over to observe the rich play of the light upon it. + +“Talk about yer Too Much Gold diggin’s!” the man snorted contemptuously. +“Why, this diggin’ ‘d make it look like thirty cents. This diggin’ +is All Gold. An’ right here an’ now I name this yere canyon ‘All Gold +Canyon,’ b’ gosh!” + +Still squatting on his heels, he continued examining the fragments and +tossing them into the pan. Suddenly there came to him a premonition of +danger. It seemed a shadow had fallen upon him. But there was no shadow. +His heart had given a great jump up into his throat and was choking him. +Then his blood slowly chilled and he felt the sweat of his shirt cold +against his flesh. + +He did not spring up nor look around. He did not move. He was +considering the nature of the premonition he had received, trying to +locate the source of the mysterious force that had warned him, striving +to sense the imperative presence of the unseen thing that threatened +him. There is an aura of things hostile, made manifest by messengers +refined for the senses to know; and this aura he felt, but knew not how +he felt it. His was the feeling as when a cloud passes over the sun. +It seemed that between him and life had passed something dark and +smothering and menacing; a gloom, as it were, that swallowed up life and +made for death—his death. + +Every force of his being impelled him to spring up and confront the +unseen danger, but his soul dominated the panic, and he remained +squatting on his heels, in his hands a chunk of gold. He did not dare to +look around, but he knew by now that there was something behind him and +above him. He made believe to be interested in the gold in his hand. +He examined it critically, turned it over and over, and rubbed the dirt +from it. And all the time he knew that something behind him was looking +at the gold over his shoulder. + +Still feigning interest in the chunk of gold in his hand, he listened +intently and he heard the breathing of the thing behind him. His eyes +searched the ground in front of him for a weapon, but they saw only +the uprooted gold, worthless to him now in his extremity. There was his +pick, a handy weapon on occasion; but this was not such an occasion. +The man realized his predicament. He was in a narrow hole that was seven +feet deep. His head did not come to the surface of the ground. He was in +a trap. + +He remained squatting on his heels. He was quite cool and collected; but +his mind, considering every factor, showed him only his helplessness. +He continued rubbing the dirt from the quartz fragments and throwing +the gold into the pan. There was nothing else for him to do. Yet he knew +that he would have to rise up, sooner or later, and face the danger that +breathed at his back. + +The minutes passed, and with the passage of each minute he knew that by +so much he was nearer the time when he must stand up, or else—and his +wet shirt went cold against his flesh again at the thought—or else he +might receive death as he stooped there over his treasure. + +Still he squatted on his heels, rubbing dirt from gold and debating in +just what manner he should rise up. He might rise up with a rush and +claw his way out of the hole to meet whatever threatened on the even +footing above ground. Or he might rise up slowly and carelessly, and +feign casually to discover the thing that breathed at his back. His +instinct and every fighting fibre of his body favored the mad, clawing +rush to the surface. His intellect, and the craft thereof, favored the +slow and cautious meeting with the thing that menaced and which he could +not see. And while he debated, a loud, crashing noise burst on his ear. +At the same instant he received a stunning blow on the left side of +the back, and from the point of impact felt a rush of flame through his +flesh. He sprang up in the air, but halfway to his feet collapsed. His +body crumpled in like a leaf withered in sudden heat, and he came down, +his chest across his pan of gold, his face in the dirt and rock, his +legs tangled and twisted because of the restricted space at the bottom +of the hole. His legs twitched convulsively several times. His body was +shaken as with a mighty ague. There was a slow expansion of the lungs, +accompanied by a deep sigh. Then the air was slowly, very slowly, +exhaled, and his body as slowly flattened itself down into inertness. + +Above, revolver in hand, a man was peering down over the edge of the +hole. He peered for a long time at the prone and motionless body beneath +him. After a while the stranger sat down on the edge of the hole so that +he could see into it, and rested the revolver on his knee. Reaching +his hand into a pocket, he drew out a wisp of brown paper. Into this +he dropped a few crumbs of tobacco. The combination became a cigarette, +brown and squat, with the ends turned in. Not once did he take his eyes +from the body at the bottom of the hole. He lighted the cigarette and +drew its smoke into his lungs with a caressing intake of the breath. He +smoked slowly. Once the cigarette went out and he relighted it. And all +the while he studied the body beneath him. + +In the end he tossed the cigarette stub away and rose to his feet. He +moved to the edge of the hole. Spanning it, a hand resting on each edge, +and with the revolver still in the right hand, he muscled his body +down into the hole. While his feet were yet a yard from the bottom he +released his hands and dropped down. + +At the instant his feet struck bottom he saw the pocket-miner’s arm leap +out, and his own legs knew a swift, jerking grip that overthrew him. In +the nature of the jump his revolver-hand was above his head. Swiftly +as the grip had flashed about his legs, just as swiftly he brought +the revolver down. He was still in the air, his fall in process of +completion, when he pulled the trigger. The explosion was deafening +in the confined space. The smoke filled the hole so that he could +see nothing. He struck the bottom on his back, and like a cat’s the +pocket-miner’s body was on top of him. Even as the miner’s body passed +on top, the stranger crooked in his right arm to fire; and even in that +instant the miner, with a quick thrust of elbow, struck his wrist. The +muzzle was thrown up and the bullet thudded into the dirt of the side of +the hole. + +The next instant the stranger felt the miner’s hand grip his wrist. The +struggle was now for the revolver. Each man strove to turn it against +the other’s body. The smoke in the hole was clearing. The stranger, +lying on his back, was beginning to see dimly. But suddenly he was +blinded by a handful of dirt deliberately flung into his eyes by his +antagonist. In that moment of shock his grip on the revolver was broken. +In the next moment he felt a smashing darkness descend upon his brain, +and in the midst of the darkness even the darkness ceased. + +But the pocket-miner fired again and again, until the revolver was +empty. Then he tossed it from him and, breathing heavily, sat down on +the dead man’s legs. + +The miner was sobbing and struggling for breath. “Measly skunk!” he +panted; “a-campin’ on my trail an’ lettin’ me do the work, an’ then +shootin’ me in the back!” + +He was half crying from anger and exhaustion. He peered at the face of +the dead man. It was sprinkled with loose dirt and gravel, and it was +difficult to distinguish the features. + +“Never laid eyes on him before,” the miner concluded his scrutiny. “Just +a common an’ ordinary thief, damn him! An’ he shot me in the back! He +shot me in the back!” + +He opened his shirt and felt himself, front and back, on his left side. + +“Went clean through, and no harm done!” he cried jubilantly. “I’ll bet +he aimed right all right, but he drew the gun over when he pulled the +trigger—the cuss! But I fixed ‘m! Oh, I fixed ‘m!” + +His fingers were investigating the bullet-hole in his side, and a shade +of regret passed over his face. “It’s goin’ to be stiffer’n hell,” he +said. “An’ it’s up to me to get mended an’ get out o’ here.” + +He crawled out of the hole and went down the hill to his camp. Half an +hour later he returned, leading his pack-horse. His open shirt disclosed +the rude bandages with which he had dressed his wound. He was slow and +awkward with his left-hand movements, but that did not prevent his using +the arm. + +The bight of the pack-rope under the dead man’s shoulders enabled him +to heave the body out of the hole. Then he set to work gathering up his +gold. He worked steadily for several hours, pausing often to rest his +stiffening shoulder and to exclaim: + +“He shot me in the back, the measly skunk! He shot me in the back!” + +When his treasure was quite cleaned up and wrapped securely into a +number of blanket-covered parcels, he made an estimate of its value. + +“Four hundred pounds, or I’m a Hottentot,” he concluded. “Say two +hundred in quartz an’ dirt—that leaves two hundred pounds of gold. +Bill! Wake up! Two hundred pounds of gold! Forty thousand dollars! An’ +it’s yourn—all yourn!” + +He scratched his head delightedly and his fingers blundered into an +unfamiliar groove. They quested along it for several inches. It was a +crease through his scalp where the second bullet had ploughed. + +He walked angrily over to the dead man. + +“You would, would you?” he bullied. “You would, eh? Well, I fixed you +good an’ plenty, an’ I’ll give you decent burial, too. That’s more’n +you’d have done for me.” + +He dragged the body to the edge of the hole and toppled it in. It struck +the bottom with a dull crash, on its side, the face twisted up to the +light. The miner peered down at it. + +“An’ you shot me in the back!” he said accusingly. + +With pick and shovel he filled the hole. Then he loaded the gold on his +horse. It was too great a load for the animal, and when he had gained +his camp he transferred part of it to his saddle-horse. Even so, he +was compelled to abandon a portion of his outfit—pick and shovel and +gold-pan, extra food and cooking utensils, and divers odds and ends. + +The sun was at the zenith when the man forced the horses at the screen +of vines and creepers. To climb the huge boulders the animals were +compelled to uprear and struggle blindly through the tangled mass of +vegetation. Once the saddle-horse fell heavily and the man removed the +pack to get the animal on its feet. After it started on its way again +the man thrust his head out from among the leaves and peered up at the +hillside. + +“The measly skunk!” he said, and disappeared. + +There was a ripping and tearing of vines and boughs. The trees surged +back and forth, marking the passage of the animals through the midst +of them. There was a clashing of steel-shod hoofs on stone, and now and +again an oath or a sharp cry of command. Then the voice of the man was +raised in song:— + + “Tu’n around an’ tu’n yo’ face + Untoe them sweet hills of grace + (D’ pow’rs of sin yo’ am scornin’!). + Look about an, look aroun’, + Fling yo’ sin-pack on d’ groun’ + (Yo’ will meet wid d’ Lord in d’ mornin’!).” + +The song grew faint and fainter, and through the silence crept back the +spirit of the place. The stream once more drowsed and whispered; the hum +of the mountain bees rose sleepily. Down through the perfume-weighted +air fluttered the snowy fluffs of the cottonwoods. The butterflies +drifted in and out among the trees, and over all blazed the quiet +sunshine. Only remained the hoof-marks in the meadow and the torn +hillside to mark the boisterous trail of the life that had broken the +peace of the place and passed on. + + + + +PLANCHETTE + + +“It is my right to know,” the girl said. + +Her voice was firm-fibred with determination. There was no hint of +pleading in it, yet it was the determination that is reached through a +long period of pleading. But in her case it had been pleading, not of +speech, but of personality. Her lips had been ever mute, but her face +and eyes, and the very attitude of her soul, had been for a long time +eloquent with questioning. This the man had known, but he had never +answered; and now she was demanding by the spoken word that he answer. + +“It is my right,” the girl repeated. + +“I know it,” he answered, desperately and helplessly. + +She waited, in the silence which followed, her eyes fixed upon the light +that filtered down through the lofty boughs and bathed the great redwood +trunks in mellow warmth. This light, subdued and colored, seemed almost +a radiation from the trunks themselves, so strongly did they saturate +it with their hue. The girl saw without seeing, as she heard, without +hearing, the deep gurgling of the stream far below on the canyon bottom. + +She looked down at the man. “Well?” she asked, with the firmness which +feigns belief that obedience will be forthcoming. + +She was sitting upright, her back against a fallen tree-trunk, while +he lay near to her, on his side, an elbow on the ground and the hand +supporting his head. + +“Dear, dear Lute,” he murmured. + +She shivered at the sound of his voice—not from repulsion, but from +struggle against the fascination of its caressing gentleness. She had +come to know well the lure of the man—the wealth of easement and rest +that was promised by every caressing intonation of his voice, by the +mere touch of hand on hand or the faint impact of his breath on neck +or cheek. The man could not express himself by word nor look nor touch +without weaving into the expression, subtly and occultly, the feeling as +of a hand that passed and that in passing stroked softly and soothingly. +Nor was this all-pervading caress a something that cloyed with too great +sweetness; nor was it sickly sentimental; nor was it maudlin with love’s +madness. It was vigorous, compelling, masculine. For that matter, it was +largely unconscious on the man’s part. He was only dimly aware of it. +It was a part of him, the breath of his soul as it were, involuntary and +unpremeditated. + +But now, resolved and desperate, she steeled herself against him. He +tried to face her, but her gray eyes looked out to him, steadily, from +under cool, level brows, and he dropped his head upon her knee. Her hand +strayed into his hair softly, and her face melted into solicitude and +tenderness. But when he looked up again, her gray eyes were steady, her +brows cool and level. + +“What more can I tell you?” the man said. He raised his head and met +her gaze. “I cannot marry you. I cannot marry any woman. I love you—you +know that—better than my own life. I weigh you in the scales against +all the dear things of living, and you outweigh everything. I would +give everything to possess you, yet I may not. I cannot marry you. I can +never marry you.” + +Her lips were compressed with the effort of control. His head was +sinking back to her knee, when she checked him. + +“You are already married, Chris?” + +“No! no!” he cried vehemently. “I have never been married. I want to +marry only you, and I cannot!” + +“Then—” + +“Don’t!” he interrupted. “Don’t ask me!” + +“It is my right to know,” she repeated. + +“I know it,” he again interrupted. “But I cannot tell you.” + +“You have not considered me, Chris,” she went on gently. + +“I know, I know,” he broke in. + +“You cannot have considered me. You do not know what I have to bear from +my people because of you.” + +“I did not think they felt so very unkindly toward me,” he said +bitterly. + +“It is true. They can scarcely tolerate you. They do not show it to you, +but they almost hate you. It is I who have had to bear all this. It was +not always so, though. They liked you at first as ... as I liked you. But +that was four years ago. The time passed by—a year, two years; and then +they began to turn against you. They are not to be blamed. You spoke no +word. They felt that you were destroying my life. It is four years, now, +and you have never once mentioned marriage to them. What were they to +think? What they have thought, that you were destroying my life.” + +As she talked, she continued to pass her fingers caressingly through his +hair, sorrowful for the pain that she was inflicting. + +“They did like you at first. Who can help liking you? You seem to draw +affection from all living things, as the trees draw the moisture from +the ground. It comes to you as it were your birthright. Aunt Mildred and +Uncle Robert thought there was nobody like you. The sun rose and set in +you. They thought I was the luckiest girl alive to win the love of a man +like you. ‘For it looks very much like it,’ Uncle Robert used to say, +wagging his head wickedly at me. Of course they liked you. Aunt Mildred +used to sigh, and look across teasingly at Uncle, and say, ‘When I think +of Chris, it almost makes me wish I were younger myself.’ And Uncle +would answer, ‘I don’t blame you, my dear, not in the least.’ And then +the pair of them would beam upon me their congratulations that I had won +the love of a man like you. + +“And they knew I loved you as well. How could I hide it?—this great, +wonderful thing that had entered into my life and swallowed up all my +days! For four years, Chris, I have lived only for you. Every moment was +yours. Waking, I loved you. Sleeping, I dreamed of you. Every act I have +performed was shaped by you, by the thought of you. Even my thoughts +were moulded by you, by the invisible presence of you. I had no end, +petty or great, that you were not there for me.” + +“I had no idea of imposing such slavery,” he muttered. + +“You imposed nothing. You always let me have my own way. It was you +who were the obedient slave. You did for me without offending me. You +forestalled my wishes without the semblance of forestalling them, so +natural and inevitable was everything you did for me. I said, without +offending me. You were no dancing puppet. You made no fuss. Don’t you +see? You did not seem to do things at all. Somehow they were always +there, just done, as a matter of course. + +“The slavery was love’s slavery. It was just my love for you that made +you swallow up all my days. You did not force yourself into my thoughts. +You crept in, always, and you were there always—how much, you will +never know. + +“But as time went by, Aunt Mildred and Uncle grew to dislike you. They +grew afraid. What was to become of me? You were destroying my life. My +music? You know how my dream of it has dimmed away. That spring, when I +first met you—I was twenty, and I was about to start for Germany. I +was going to study hard. That was four years ago, and I am still here in +California. + +“I had other lovers. You drove them away—No! no! I don’t mean that. It +was I that drove them away. What did I care for lovers, for anything, +when you were near? But as I said, Aunt Mildred and Uncle grew afraid. +There has been talk—friends, busybodies, and all the rest. The time +went by. You did not speak. I could only wonder, wonder. I knew you +loved me. Much was said against you by Uncle at first, and then by Aunt +Mildred. They were father and mother to me, you know. I could not defend +you. Yet I was loyal to you. I refused to discuss you. I closed up. +There was half-estrangement in my home—Uncle Robert with a face like +an undertaker, and Aunt Mildred’s heart breaking. But what could I do, +Chris? What could I do?” + +The man, his head resting on her knee again, groaned, but made no other +reply. + +“Aunt Mildred was mother to me, yet I went to her no more with my +confidences. My childhood’s book was closed. It was a sweet book, Chris. +The tears come into my eyes sometimes when I think of it. But never +mind that. Great happiness has been mine as well. I am glad I can talk +frankly of my love for you. And the attaining of such frankness has been +very sweet. I do love you, Chris. I love you ... I cannot tell you how. +You are everything to me, and more besides. You remember that Christmas +tree of the children?—when we played blindman’s buff? and you caught +me by the arm so, with such a clutching of fingers that I cried out +with the hurt? I never told you, but the arm was badly bruised. And such +sweet I got of it you could never guess. There, black and blue, was the +imprint of your fingers—your fingers, Chris, your fingers. It was +the touch of you made visible. It was there a week, and I kissed the +marks—oh, so often! I hated to see them go; I wanted to rebruise the +arm and make them linger. I was jealous of the returning white that +drove the bruise away. Somehow,—oh! I cannot explain, but I loved you +so!” + +In the silence that fell, she continued her caressing of his hair, while +she idly watched a great gray squirrel, boisterous and hilarious, as +it scampered back and forth in a distant vista of the redwoods. A +crimson-crested woodpecker, energetically drilling a fallen trunk, +caught and transferred her gaze. The man did not lift his head. Rather, +he crushed his face closer against her knee, while his heaving shoulders +marked the hardness with which he breathed. + +“You must tell me, Chris,” the girl said gently. “This mystery—it is +killing me. I must know why we cannot be married. Are we always to be +this way?—merely lovers, meeting often, it is true, and yet with the +long absences between the meetings? Is it all the world holds for you +and me, Chris? Are we never to be more to each other? Oh, it is good +just to love, I know—you have made me madly happy; but one does get so +hungry at times for something more! I want more and more of you, Chris. +I want all of you. I want all our days to be together. I want all the +companionship, the comradeship, which cannot be ours now, and which will +be ours when we are married—” She caught her breath quickly. “But we +are never to be married. I forgot. And you must tell me why.” + +The man raised his head and looked her in the eyes. It was a way he had +with whomever he talked, of looking them in the eyes. + +“I have considered you, Lute,” he began doggedly. “I did consider you at +the very first. I should never have gone on with it. I should have gone +away. I knew it. And I considered you in the light of that knowledge, +and yet ... I did not go away. My God! what was I to do? I loved you. +I could not go away. I could not help it. I stayed. I resolved, but +I broke my resolves. I was like a drunkard. I was drunk of you. I was +weak, I know. I failed. I could not go away. I tried. I went away—you +will remember, though you did not know why. You know now. I went away, +but I could not remain away. Knowing that we could never marry, I came +back to you. I am here, now, with you. Send me away, Lute. I have not +the strength to go myself.” + +“But why should you go away?” she asked. “Besides, I must know why, +before I can send you away.” + +“Don’t ask me.” + +“Tell me,” she said, her voice tenderly imperative. + +“Don’t, Lute; don’t force me,” the man pleaded, and there was appeal in +his eyes and voice. + +“But you must tell me,” she insisted. “It is justice you owe me.” + +The man wavered. “If I do ...” he began. Then he ended with +determination, “I should never be able to forgive myself. No, I cannot +tell you. Don’t try to compel me, Lute. You would be as sorry as I.” + +“If there is anything ... if there are obstacles ... if this mystery does +really prevent....” She was speaking slowly, with long pauses, seeking +the more delicate ways of speech for the framing of her thought. “Chris, +I do love you. I love you as deeply as it is possible for any woman to +love, I am sure. If you were to say to me now ‘Come,’ I would go with +you. I would follow wherever you led. I would be your page, as in the +days of old when ladies went with their knights to far lands. You are my +knight, Chris, and you can do no wrong. Your will is my wish. I was once +afraid of the censure of the world. Now that you have come into my life +I am no longer afraid. I would laugh at the world and its censure for +your sake—for my sake too. I would laugh, for I should have you, and +you are more to me than the good will and approval of the world. If you +say ‘Come,’ I will—” + +“Don’t! Don’t!” he cried. “It is impossible! Marriage or not, I cannot +even say ‘Come.’ I dare not. I’ll show you. I’ll tell you.” + +He sat up beside her, the action stamped with resolve. He took her hand +in his and held it closely. His lips moved to the verge of speech. The +mystery trembled for utterance. The air was palpitant with its presence. +As if it were an irrevocable decree, the girl steeled herself to hear. +But the man paused, gazing straight out before him. She felt his hand +relax in hers, and she pressed it sympathetically, encouragingly. But +she felt the rigidity going out of his tensed body, and she knew that +spirit and flesh were relaxing together. His resolution was ebbing. He +would not speak—she knew it; and she knew, likewise, with the sureness +of faith, that it was because he could not. + +She gazed despairingly before her, a numb feeling at her heart, as +though hope and happiness had died. She watched the sun flickering down +through the warm-trunked redwoods. But she watched in a mechanical, +absent way. She looked at the scene as from a long way off, without +interest, herself an alien, no longer an intimate part of the earth and +trees and flowers she loved so well. + +So far removed did she seem, that she was aware of a curiosity, +strangely impersonal, in what lay around her. Through a near vista she +looked at a buckeye tree in full blossom as though her eyes encountered +it for the first time. Her eyes paused and dwelt upon a yellow cluster +of Diogenes’ lanterns that grew on the edge of an open space. It was the +way of flowers always to give her quick pleasure-thrills, but no thrill +was hers now. She pondered the flower slowly and thoughtfully, as a +hasheesh-eater, heavy with the drug, might ponder some whim-flower +that obtruded on his vision. In her ears was the voice of the stream—a +hoarse-throated, sleepy old giant, muttering and mumbling his somnolent +fancies. But her fancy was not in turn aroused, as was its wont; she +knew the sound merely for water rushing over the rocks of the deep +canyon-bottom, that and nothing more. + +Her gaze wandered on beyond the Diogenes’ lanterns into the open +space. Knee-deep in the wild oats of the hillside grazed two horses, +chestnut-sorrels the pair of them, perfectly matched, warm and golden +in the sunshine, their spring-coats a sheen of high-lights shot through +with color-flashes that glowed like fiery jewels. She recognized, almost +with a shock, that one of them was hers, Dolly, the companion of her +girlhood and womanhood, on whose neck she had sobbed her sorrows and +sung her joys. A moistness welled into her eyes at the sight, and +she came back from the remoteness of her mood, quick with passion and +sorrow, to be part of the world again. + +The man sank forward from the hips, relaxing entirely, and with a groan +dropped his head on her knee. She leaned over him and pressed her lips +softly and lingeringly to his hair. + +“Come, let us go,” she said, almost in a whisper. + +She caught her breath in a half-sob, then tightened her lips as she +rose. His face was white to ghastliness, so shaken was he by the +struggle through which he had passed. They did not look at each other, +but walked directly to the horses. She leaned against Dolly’s neck while +he tightened the girths. Then she gathered the reins in her hand and +waited. He looked at her as he bent down, an appeal for forgiveness in +his eyes; and in that moment her own eyes answered. Her foot rested in +his hands, and from there she vaulted into the saddle. Without speaking, +without further looking at each other, they turned the horses’ heads and +took the narrow trail that wound down through the sombre redwood aisles +and across the open glades to the pasture-lands below. The trail became +a cow-path, the cow-path became a wood-road, which later joined with a +hay-road; and they rode down through the low-rolling, tawny California +hills to where a set of bars let out on the county road which ran +along the bottom of the valley. The girl sat her horse while the man +dismounted and began taking down the bars. + +“No—wait!” she cried, before he had touched the two lower bars. + +She urged the mare forward a couple of strides, and then the animal +lifted over the bars in a clean little jump. The man’s eyes sparkled, +and he clapped his hands. + +“You beauty! you beauty!” the girl cried, leaning forward impulsively +in the saddle and pressing her cheek to the mare’s neck where it burned +flame-color in the sun. + +“Let’s trade horses for the ride in,” she suggested, when he had led +his horse through and finished putting up the bars. “You’ve never +sufficiently appreciated Dolly.” + +“No, no,” he protested. + +“You think she is too old, too sedate,” Lute insisted. “She’s only +sixteen, and she can outrun nine colts out of ten. Only she never cuts +up. She’s too steady, and you don’t approve of her—no, don’t deny it, +sir. I know. And I know also that she can outrun your vaunted Washoe +Ban. There! I challenge you! And furthermore, you may ride her yourself. +You know what Ban can do; so you must ride Dolly and see for yourself +what she can do.” + +They proceeded to exchange the saddles on the horses, glad of the +diversion and making the most of it. + +“I’m glad I was born in California,” Lute remarked, as she swung +astride of Ban. “It’s an outrage both to horse and woman to ride in a +sidesaddle.” + +“You look like a young Amazon,” the man said approvingly, his eyes +passing tenderly over the girl as she swung the horse around. + +“Are you ready?” she asked. + +“All ready!” + +“To the old mill,” she called, as the horses sprang forward. “That’s +less than a mile.” + +“To a finish?” he demanded. + +She nodded, and the horses, feeling the urge of the reins, caught the +spirit of the race. The dust rose in clouds behind as they tore along +the level road. They swung around the bend, horses and riders tilted at +sharp angles to the ground, and more than once the riders ducked low to +escape the branches of outreaching and overhanging trees. They clattered +over the small plank bridges, and thundered over the larger iron ones to +an ominous clanking of loose rods. + +They rode side by side, saving the animals for the rush at the finish, +yet putting them at a pace that drew upon vitality and staying power. +Curving around a clump of white oaks, the road straightened out before +them for several hundred yards, at the end of which they could see the +ruined mill. + +“Now for it!” the girl cried. + +She urged the horse by suddenly leaning forward with her body, at the +same time, for an instant, letting the rein slack and touching the neck +with her bridle hand. She began to draw away from the man. + +“Touch her on the neck!” she cried to him. + +With this, the mare pulled alongside and began gradually to pass the +girl. Chris and Lute looked at each other for a moment, the mare still +drawing ahead, so that Chris was compelled slowly to turn his head. The +mill was a hundred yards away. + +“Shall I give him the spurs?” Lute shouted. + +The man nodded, and the girl drove the spurs in sharply and quickly, +calling upon the horse for its utmost, but watched her own horse forge +slowly ahead of her. + +“Beaten by three lengths!” Lute beamed triumphantly, as they pulled into +a walk. “Confess, sir, confess! You didn’t think the old mare had it in +her.” + +Lute leaned to the side and rested her hand for a moment on Dolly’s wet +neck. + +“Ban’s a sluggard alongside of her,” Chris affirmed. “Dolly’s all right, +if she is in her Indian Summer.” + +Lute nodded approval. “That’s a sweet way of putting it—Indian Summer. +It just describes her. But she’s not lazy. She has all the fire and none +of the folly. She is very wise, what of her years.” + +“That accounts for it,” Chris demurred. “Her folly passed with her +youth. Many’s the lively time she’s given you.” + +“No,” Lute answered. “I never knew her really to cut up. I think the +only trouble she ever gave me was when I was training her to open gates. +She was afraid when they swung back upon her—the animal’s fear of the +trap, perhaps. But she bravely got over it. And she never was vicious. +She never bolted, nor bucked, nor cut up in all her life—never, not +once.” + +The horses went on at a walk, still breathing heavily from their run. +The road wound along the bottom of the valley, now and again crossing +the stream. From either side rose the drowsy purr of mowing-machines, +punctuated by occasional sharp cries of the men who were gathering the +hay-crop. On the western side of the valley the hills rose green and +dark, but the eastern side was already burned brown and tan by the sun. + +“There is summer, here is spring,” Lute said. “Oh, beautiful Sonoma +Valley!” + +Her eyes were glistening and her face was radiant with love of the +land. Her gaze wandered on across orchard patches and sweeping vineyard +stretches, seeking out the purple which seemed to hang like a dim smoke +in the wrinkles of the hills and in the more distant canyon gorges. Far +up, among the more rugged crests, where the steep slopes were covered +with manzanita, she caught a glimpse of a clear space where the wild +grass had not yet lost its green. + +“Have you ever heard of the secret pasture?” she asked, her eyes still +fixed on the remote green. + +A snort of fear brought her eyes back to the man beside her. Dolly, +upreared, with distended nostrils and wild eyes, was pawing the air +madly with her fore legs. Chris threw himself forward against her neck +to keep her from falling backward, and at the same time touched her with +the spurs to compel her to drop her fore feet to the ground in order to +obey the go-ahead impulse of the spurs. + +“Why, Dolly, this is most remarkable,” Lute began reprovingly. + +But, to her surprise, the mare threw her head down, arched her back as +she went up in the air, and, returning, struck the ground stiff-legged +and bunched. + +“A genuine buck!” Chris called out, and the next moment the mare was +rising under him in a second buck. + +Lute looked on, astounded at the unprecedented conduct of her mare, and +admiring her lover’s horsemanship. He was quite cool, and was himself +evidently enjoying the performance. Again and again, half a dozen times, +Dolly arched herself into the air and struck, stiffly bunched. Then she +threw her head straight up and rose on her hind legs, pivoting about and +striking with her fore feet. Lute whirled into safety the horse she was +riding, and as she did so caught a glimpse of Dolly’s eyes, with the +look in them of blind brute madness, bulging until it seemed they must +burst from her head. The faint pink in the white of the eyes was gone, +replaced by a white that was like dull marble and that yet flashed as +from some inner fire. + +A faint cry of fear, suppressed in the instant of utterance, slipped +past Lute’s lips. One hind leg of the mare seemed to collapse, and for a +moment the whole quivering body, upreared and perpendicular, swayed back +and forth, and there was uncertainty as to whether it would fall forward +or backward. The man, half-slipping sidewise from the saddle, so as to +fall clear if the mare toppled backward, threw his weight to the front +and alongside her neck. This overcame the dangerous teetering balance, +and the mare struck the ground on her feet again. + +But there was no let-up. Dolly straightened out so that the line of the +face was almost a continuation of the line of the stretched neck; +this position enabled her to master the bit, which she did by bolting +straight ahead down the road. + +For the first time Lute became really frightened. She spurred Washoe Ban +in pursuit, but he could not hold his own with the mad mare, and dropped +gradually behind. Lute saw Dolly check and rear in the air again, and +caught up just as the mare made a second bolt. As Dolly dashed around a +bend, she stopped suddenly, stiff-legged. Lute saw her lover torn out of +the saddle, his thigh-grip broken by the sudden jerk. Though he had lost +his seat, he had not been thrown, and as the mare dashed on Lute saw him +clinging to the side of the horse, a hand in the mane and a leg across +the saddle. With a quick cavort he regained his seat and proceeded to +fight with the mare for control. + +But Dolly swerved from the road and dashed down a grassy slope yellowed +with innumerable mariposa lilies. An ancient fence at the bottom was +no obstacle. She burst through as though it were filmy spider-web and +disappeared in the underbrush. Lute followed unhesitatingly, putting Ban +through the gap in the fence and plunging on into the thicket. She lay +along his neck, closely, to escape the ripping and tearing of the trees +and vines. She felt the horse drop down through leafy branches and into +the cool gravel of a stream’s bottom. From ahead came a splashing of +water, and she caught a glimpse of Dolly, dashing up the small bank and +into a clump of scrub-oaks, against the trunks of which she was trying +to scrape off her rider. + +Lute almost caught up amongst the trees, but was hopelessly outdistanced +on the fallow field adjoining, across which the mare tore with a fine +disregard for heavy ground and gopher-holes. When she turned at a sharp +angle into the thicket-land beyond, Lute took the long diagonal, skirted +the ticket, and reined in Ban at the other side. She had arrived first. +From within the thicket she could hear a tremendous crashing of brush +and branches. Then the mare burst through and into the open, falling +to her knees, exhausted, on the soft earth. She arose and staggered +forward, then came limply to a halt. She was in lather-sweat of fear, +and stood trembling pitiably. + +Chris was still on her back. His shirt was in ribbons. The backs of his +hands were bruised and lacerated, while his face was streaming blood +from a gash near the temple. Lute had controlled herself well, but now +she was aware of a quick nausea and a trembling of weakness. + +“Chris!” she said, so softly that it was almost a whisper. Then she +sighed, “Thank God.” + +“Oh, I’m all right,” he cried to her, putting into his voice all the +heartiness he could command, which was not much, for he had himself been +under no mean nervous strain. + +He showed the reaction he was undergoing, when he swung down out of +the saddle. He began with a brave muscular display as he lifted his +leg over, but ended, on his feet, leaning against the limp Dolly for +support. Lute flashed out of her saddle, and her arms were about him in +an embrace of thankfulness. + +“I know where there is a spring,” she said, a moment later. + +They left the horses standing untethered, and she led her lover into the +cool recesses of the thicket to where crystal water bubbled from out the +base of the mountain. + +“What was that you said about Dolly’s never cutting up?” he asked, when +the blood had been stanched and his nerves and pulse-beats were normal +again. + +“I am stunned,” Lute answered. “I cannot understand it. She never did +anything like it in all her life. And all animals like you so—it’s not +because of that. Why, she is a child’s horse. I was only a little girl +when I first rode her, and to this day—” + +“Well, this day she was everything but a child’s horse,” Chris broke in. +“She was a devil. She tried to scrape me off against the trees, and to +batter my brains out against the limbs. She tried all the lowest and +narrowest places she could find. You should have seen her squeeze +through. And did you see those bucks?” + +Lute nodded. + +“Regular bucking-bronco proposition.” + +“But what should she know about bucking?” Lute demanded. “She was never +known to buck—never.” + +He shrugged his shoulders. “Some forgotten instinct, perhaps, +long-lapsed and come to life again.” + +The girl rose to her feet determinedly. “I’m going to find out,” she +said. + +They went back to the horses, where they subjected Dolly to a +rigid examination that disclosed nothing. Hoofs, legs, bit, mouth, +body—everything was as it should be. The saddle and saddle-cloth were +innocent of bur or sticker; the back was smooth and unbroken. They +searched for sign of snake-bite and sting of fly or insect, but found +nothing. + +“Whatever it was, it was subjective, that much is certain,” Chris said. + +“Obsession,” Lute suggested. + +They laughed together at the idea, for both were twentieth-century +products, healthy-minded and normal, with souls that delighted in +the butterfly-chase of ideals but that halted before the brink where +superstition begins. + +“An evil spirit,” Chris laughed; “but what evil have I done that I +should be so punished?” + +“You think too much of yourself, sir,” she rejoined. “It is more likely +some evil, I don’t know what, that Dolly has done. You were a mere +accident. I might have been on her back at the time, or Aunt Mildred, or +anybody.” + +As she talked, she took hold of the stirrup-strap and started to shorten +it. + +“What are you doing?” Chris demanded. + +“I’m going to ride Dolly in.” + +“No, you’re not,” he announced. “It would be bad discipline. After what +has happened I am simply compelled to ride her in myself.” + +But it was a very weak and very sick mare he rode, stumbling and +halting, afflicted with nervous jerks and recurring muscular spasms—the +aftermath of the tremendous orgasm through which she had passed. + +“I feel like a book of verse and a hammock, after all that has +happened,” Lute said, as they rode into camp. + +It was a summer camp of city-tired people, pitched in a grove of +towering redwoods through whose lofty boughs the sunshine trickled down, +broken and subdued to soft light and cool shadow. Apart from the main +camp were the kitchen and the servants’ tents; and midway between was +the great dining hall, walled by the living redwood columns, where fresh +whispers of air were always to be found, and where no canopy was needed +to keep the sun away. + +“Poor Dolly, she is really sick,” Lute said that evening, when they had +returned from a last look at the mare. “But you weren’t hurt, Chris, and +that’s enough for one small woman to be thankful for. I thought I knew, +but I really did not know till to-day, how much you meant to me. I could +hear only the plunging and struggle in the thicket. I could not see you, +nor know how it went with you.” + +“My thoughts were of you,” Chris answered, and felt the responsive +pressure of the hand that rested on his arm. + +She turned her face up to his and met his lips. + +“Good night,” she said. + +“Dear Lute, dear Lute,” he caressed her with his voice as she moved away +among the shadows. + + * * * + +“Who’s going for the mail?” called a woman’s voice through the trees. + +Lute closed the book from which they had been reading, and sighed. + +“We weren’t going to ride to-day,” she said. + +“Let me go,” Chris proposed. “You stay here. I’ll be down and back in no +time.” + +She shook her head. + +“Who’s going for the mail?” the voice insisted. + +“Where’s Martin?” Lute called, lifting her voice in answer. + +“I don’t know,” came the voice. “I think Robert took him along +somewhere—horse-buying, or fishing, or I don’t know what. There’s +really nobody left but Chris and you. Besides, it will give you an +appetite for dinner. You’ve been lounging in the hammock all day. And +Uncle Robert must have his newspaper.” + +“All right, Aunty, we’re starting,” Lute called back, getting out of the +hammock. + +A few minutes later, in riding-clothes, they were saddling the horses. +They rode out on to the county road, where blazed the afternoon sun, +and turned toward Glen Ellen. The little town slept in the sun, and the +somnolent storekeeper and postmaster scarcely kept his eyes open long +enough to make up the packet of letters and newspapers. + +An hour later Lute and Chris turned aside from the road and dipped along +a cow-path down the high bank to water the horses, before going into +camp. + +“Dolly looks as though she’d forgotten all about yesterday,” Chris said, +as they sat their horses knee-deep in the rushing water. “Look at her.” + +The mare had raised her head and cocked her ears at the rustling of +a quail in the thicket. Chris leaned over and rubbed around her ears. +Dolly’s enjoyment was evident, and she drooped her head over against the +shoulder of his own horse. + +“Like a kitten,” was Lute’s comment. + +“Yet I shall never be able wholly to trust her again,” Chris said. “Not +after yesterday’s mad freak.” + +“I have a feeling myself that you are safer on Ban,” Lute laughed. “It +is strange. My trust in Dolly is as implicit as ever. I feel confident +so far as I am concerned, but I should never care to see you on her +back again. Now with Ban, my faith is still unshaken. Look at that neck! +Isn’t he handsome! He’ll be as wise as Dolly when he is as old as she.” + +“I feel the same way,” Chris laughed back. “Ban could never possibly +betray me.” + +They turned their horses out of the stream. Dolly stopped to brush a fly +from her knee with her nose, and Ban urged past into the narrow way of +the path. The space was too restricted to make him return, save with +much trouble, and Chris allowed him to go on. Lute, riding behind, dwelt +with her eyes upon her lover’s back, pleasuring in the lines of the bare +neck and the sweep out to the muscular shoulders. + +Suddenly she reined in her horse. She could do nothing but look, so +brief was the duration of the happening. Beneath and above was the +almost perpendicular bank. The path itself was barely wide enough for +footing. Yet Washoe Ban, whirling and rearing at the same time, toppled +for a moment in the air and fell backward off the path. + +So unexpected and so quick was it, that the man was involved in the +fall. There had been no time for him to throw himself to the path. He +was falling ere he knew it, and he did the only thing possible—slipped +the stirrups and threw his body into the air, to the side, and at the +same time down. It was twelve feet to the rocks below. He maintained an +upright position, his head up and his eyes fixed on the horse above him +and falling upon him. + +Chris struck like a cat, on his feet, on the instant making a leap +to the side. The next instant Ban crashed down beside him. The animal +struggled little, but sounded the terrible cry that horses sometimes +sound when they have received mortal hurt. He had struck almost squarely +on his back, and in that position he remained, his head twisted partly +under, his hind legs relaxed and motionless, his fore legs futilely +striking the air. + +Chris looked up reassuringly. + +“I am getting used to it,” Lute smiled down to him. “Of course I need +not ask if you are hurt. Can I do anything?” + +He smiled back and went over to the fallen beast, letting go the girths +of the saddle and getting the head straightened out. + +“I thought so,” he said, after a cursory examination. “I thought so at +the time. Did you hear that sort of crunching snap?” + +She shuddered. + +“Well, that was the punctuation of life, the final period dropped at +the end of Ban’s usefulness.” He started around to come up by the path. +“I’ve been astride of Ban for the last time. Let us go home.” + +At the top of the bank Chris turned and looked down. + +“Good-by, Washoe Ban!” he called out. “Good-by, old fellow.” + +The animal was struggling to lift its head. There were tears in Chris’s +eyes as he turned abruptly away, and tears in Lute’s eyes as they met +his. She was silent in her sympathy, though the pressure of her hand was +firm in his as he walked beside her horse down the dusty road. + +“It was done deliberately,” Chris burst forth suddenly. “There was no +warning. He deliberately flung himself over backward.” + +“There was no warning,” Lute concurred. “I was looking. I saw him. He +whirled and threw himself at the same time, just as if you had done it +yourself, with a tremendous jerk and backward pull on the bit.” + +“It was not my hand, I swear it. I was not even thinking of him. He was +going up with a fairly loose rein, as a matter of course.” + +“I should have seen it, had you done it,” Lute said. “But it was all +done before you had a chance to do anything. It was not your hand, not +even your unconscious hand.” + +“Then it was some invisible hand, reaching out from I don’t know where.” + +He looked up whimsically at the sky and smiled at the conceit. + +Martin stepped forward to receive Dolly, when they came into the stable +end of the grove, but his face expressed no surprise at sight of Chris +coming in on foot. Chris lingered behind Lute for moment. + +“Can you shoot a horse?” he asked. + +The groom nodded, then added, “Yes, sir,” with a second and deeper nod. + +“How do you do it?” + +“Draw a line from the eyes to the ears—I mean the opposite ears, sir. +And where the lines cross—” + +“That will do,” Chris interrupted. “You know the watering place at the +second bend. You’ll find Ban there with a broken back.” + + * * * + +“Oh, here you are, sir. I have been looking for you everywhere since +dinner. You are wanted immediately.” + +Chris tossed his cigar away, then went over and pressed his foot on its +glowing fire. + +“You haven’t told anybody about it?—Ban?” he queried. + +Lute shook her head. “They’ll learn soon enough. Martin will mention it +to Uncle Robert to-morrow.” + +“But don’t feel too bad about it,” she said, after a moment’s pause, +slipping her hand into his. + +“He was my colt,” he said. “Nobody has ridden him but you. I broke him +myself. I knew him from the time he was born. I knew every bit of him, +every trick, every caper, and I would have staked my life that it was +impossible for him to do a thing like this. There was no warning, no +fighting for the bit, no previous unruliness. I have been thinking it +over. He didn’t fight for the bit, for that matter. He wasn’t unruly, +nor disobedient. There wasn’t time. It was an impulse, and he acted upon +it like lightning. I am astounded now at the swiftness with which it +took place. Inside the first second we were over the edge and falling. + +“It was deliberate—deliberate suicide. And attempted murder. It was a +trap. I was the victim. He had me, and he threw himself over with me. +Yet he did not hate me. He loved me ... as much as it is possible for a +horse to love. I am confounded. I cannot understand it any more than you +can understand Dolly’s behavior yesterday.” + +“But horses go insane, Chris,” Lute said. “You know that. It’s merely +coincidence that two horses in two days should have spells under you.” + +“That’s the only explanation,” he answered, starting off with her. “But +why am I wanted urgently?” + +“Planchette.” + +“Oh, I remember. It will be a new experience to me. Somehow I missed it +when it was all the rage long ago.” + +“So did all of us,” Lute replied, “except Mrs. Grantly. It is her +favorite phantom, it seems.” + +“A weird little thing,” he remarked. “Bundle of nerves and black +eyes. I’ll wager she doesn’t weigh ninety pounds, and most of that’s +magnetism.” + +“Positively uncanny ... at times.” Lute shivered involuntarily. “She +gives me the creeps.” + +“Contact of the healthy with the morbid,” he explained dryly. “You will +notice it is the healthy that always has the creeps. The morbid never +has the creeps. It gives the creeps. That’s its function. Where did you +people pick her up, anyway?” + +“I don’t know—yes, I do, too. Aunt Mildred met her in Boston, I +think—oh, I don’t know. At any rate, Mrs. Grantly came to California, +and of course had to visit Aunt Mildred. You know the open house we +keep.” + +They halted where a passageway between two great redwood trunks gave +entrance to the dining room. Above, through lacing boughs, could be seen +the stars. Candles lighted the tree-columned space. About the table, +examining the Planchette contrivance, were four persons. Chris’s gaze +roved over them, and he was aware of a guilty sorrow-pang as he paused +for a moment on Lute’s Aunt Mildred and Uncle Robert, mellow with ripe +middle age and genial with the gentle buffets life had dealt them. He +passed amusedly over the black-eyed, frail-bodied Mrs. Grantly, and +halted on the fourth person, a portly, massive-headed man, whose gray +temples belied the youthful solidity of his face. + +“Who’s that?” Chris whispered. + +“A Mr. Barton. The train was late. That’s why you didn’t see him at +dinner. He’s only a capitalist—water-power-long-distance-electricity +transmitter, or something like that.” + +“Doesn’t look as though he could give an ox points on imagination.” + +“He can’t. He inherited his money. But he knows enough to hold on to it +and hire other men’s brains. He is very conservative.” + +“That is to be expected,” was Chris’s comment. His gaze went back to the +man and woman who had been father and mother to the girl beside him. “Do +you know,” he said, “it came to me with a shock yesterday when you told +me that they had turned against me and that I was scarcely tolerated. I +met them afterwards, last evening, guiltily, in fear and trembling—and +to-day, too. And yet I could see no difference from of old.” + +“Dear man,” Lute sighed. “Hospitality is as natural to them as the act +of breathing. But it isn’t that, after all. It is all genuine in their +dear hearts. No matter how severe the censure they put upon you when +you are absent, the moment they are with you they soften and are all +kindness and warmth. As soon as their eyes rest on you, affection and +love come bubbling up. You are so made. Every animal likes you. +All people like you. They can’t help it. You can’t help it. You are +universally lovable, and the best of it is that you don’t know it. You +don’t know it now. Even as I tell it to you, you don’t realize it, you +won’t realize it—and that very incapacity to realize it is one of the +reasons why you are so loved. You are incredulous now, and you shake +your head; but I know, who am your slave, as all people know, for they +likewise are your slaves. + +“Why, in a minute we shall go in and join them. Mark the affection, +almost maternal, that will well up in Aunt Mildred’s eyes. Listen to the +tones of Uncle Robert’s voice when he says, ‘Well, Chris, my boy?’ Watch +Mrs. Grantly melt, literally melt, like a dewdrop in the sun. + +“Take Mr. Barton, there. You have never seen him before. Why, you will +invite him out to smoke a cigar with you when the rest of us have gone +to bed—you, a mere nobody, and he a man of many millions, a man of +power, a man obtuse and stupid like the ox; and he will follow you +about, smoking; the cigar, like a little dog, your little dog, trotting +at your back. He will not know he is doing it, but he will be doing it +just the same. Don’t I know, Chris? Oh, I have watched you, watched you, +so often, and loved you for it, and loved you again for it, because you +were so delightfully and blindly unaware of what you were doing.” + +“I’m almost bursting with vanity from listening to you,” he laughed, +passing his arm around her and drawing her against him. + +“Yes,” she whispered, “and in this very moment, when you are laughing at +all that I have said, you, the feel of you, your soul,—call it what you +will, it is you,—is calling for all the love that is in me.” + +She leaned more closely against him, and sighed as with fatigue. He +breathed a kiss into her hair and held her with firm tenderness. + +Aunt Mildred stirred briskly and looked up from the Planchette board. + +“Come, let us begin,” she said. “It will soon grow chilly. Robert, where +are those children?” + +“Here we are,” Lute called out, disengaging herself. + +“Now for a bundle of creeps,” Chris whispered, as they started in. + +Lute’s prophecy of the manner in which her lover would be received +was realized. Mrs. Grantly, unreal, unhealthy, scintillant with frigid +magnetism, warmed and melted as though of truth she were dew and he sun. +Mr. Barton beamed broadly upon him, and was colossally gracious. Aunt +Mildred greeted him with a glow of fondness and motherly kindness, while +Uncle Robert genially and heartily demanded, “Well, Chris, my boy, and +what of the riding?” + +But Aunt Mildred drew her shawl more closely around her and hastened +them to the business in hand. On the table was a sheet of paper. On the +paper, rifling on three supports, was a small triangular board. Two of +the supports were easily moving casters. The third support, placed at +the apex of the triangle, was a lead pencil. + +“Who’s first?” Uncle Robert demanded. + +There was a moment’s hesitancy, then Aunt Mildred placed her hand on the +board, and said: “Some one has always to be the fool for the delectation +of the rest.” + +“Brave woman,” applauded her husband. “Now, Mrs. Grantly, do your +worst.” + +“I?” that lady queried. “I do nothing. The power, or whatever you care +to think it, is outside of me, as it is outside of all of you. As to +what that power is, I will not dare to say. There is such a power. I +have had evidences of it. And you will undoubtedly have evidences of +it. Now please be quiet, everybody. Touch the board very lightly, but +firmly, Mrs. Story; but do nothing of your own volition.” + +Aunt Mildred nodded, and stood with her hand on Planchette; while the +rest formed about her in a silent and expectant circle. But nothing +happened. The minutes ticked away, and Planchette remained motionless. + +“Be patient,” Mrs. Grantly counselled. “Do not struggle against any +influences you may feel working on you. But do not do anything yourself. +The influence will take care of that. You will feel impelled to do +things, and such impulses will be practically irresistible.” + +“I wish the influence would hurry up,” Aunt Mildred protested at the end +of five motionless minutes. + +“Just a little longer, Mrs. Story, just a little longer,” Mrs. Grantly +said soothingly. + +Suddenly Aunt Mildred’s hand began to twitch into movement. A mild +concern showed in her face as she observed the movement of her hand and +heard the scratching of the pencil-point at the apex of Planchette. + +For another five minutes this continued, when Aunt Mildred withdrew her +hand with an effort, and said, with a nervous laugh: + +“I don’t know whether I did it myself or not. I do know that I was +growing nervous, standing there like a psychic fool with all your solemn +faces turned upon me.” + +“Hen-scratches,” was Uncle Robert’s judgement, when he looked over the +paper upon which she had scrawled. + +“Quite illegible,” was Mrs. Grantly’s dictum. “It does not resemble +writing at all. The influences have not got to working yet. Do you try +it, Mr. Barton.” + +That gentleman stepped forward, ponderously willing to please, and +placed his hand on the board. And for ten solid, stolid minutes he stood +there, motionless, like a statue, the frozen personification of the +commercial age. Uncle Robert’s face began to work. He blinked, stiffened +his mouth, uttered suppressed, throaty sounds, deep down; finally he +snorted, lost his self-control, and broke out in a roar of laughter. +All joined in this merriment, including Mrs. Grantly. Mr. Barton laughed +with them, but he was vaguely nettled. + +“You try it, Story,” he said. + +Uncle Robert, still laughing, and urged on by Lute and his wife, took +the board. Suddenly his face sobered. His hand had begun to move, and +the pencil could be heard scratching across the paper. + +“By George!” he muttered. “That’s curious. Look at it. I’m not doing it. +I know I’m not doing it. Look at that hand go! Just look at it!” + +“Now, Robert, none of your ridiculousness,” his wife warned him. + +“I tell you I’m not doing it,” he replied indignantly. “The force has +got hold of me. Ask Mrs. Grantly. Tell her to make it stop, if you want +it to stop. I can’t stop it. By George! look at that flourish. I didn’t +do that. I never wrote a flourish in my life.” + +“Do try to be serious,” Mrs. Grantly warned them. “An atmosphere of +levity does not conduce to the best operation of Planchette.” + +“There, that will do, I guess,” Uncle Robert said as he took his hand +away. “Now let’s see.” + +He bent over and adjusted his glasses. “It’s handwriting at any rate, +and that’s better than the rest of you did. Here, Lute, your eyes are +young.” + +“Oh, what flourishes!” Lute exclaimed, as she looked at the paper. “And +look there, there are two different handwritings.” + +She began to read: “This is the first lecture. Concentrate on this +sentence: ‘I am a positive spirit and not negative to any condition.’ +Then follow with concentration on positive love. After that peace and +harmony will vibrate through and around your body. Your soul—The other +writing breaks right in. This is the way it goes: Bullfrog 95, Dixie 16, +Golden Anchor 65, Gold Mountain 13, Jim Butler 70, Jumbo 75, North Star +42, Rescue 7, Black Butte 75, Brown Hope 16, Iron Top 3.” + +“Iron Top’s pretty low,” Mr. Barton murmured. + +“Robert, you’ve been dabbling again!” Aunt Mildred cried accusingly. + +“No, I’ve not,” he denied. “I only read the quotations. But how the +devil—I beg your pardon—they got there on that piece of paper I’d like +to know.” + +“Your subconscious mind,” Chris suggested. “You read the quotations in +to-day’s paper.” + +“No, I didn’t; but last week I glanced over the column.” + +“A day or a year is all the same in the subconscious mind,” said Mrs. +Grantly. “The subconscious mind never forgets. But I am not saying that +this is due to the subconscious mind. I refuse to state to what I think +it is due.” + +“But how about that other stuff?” Uncle Robert demanded. “Sounds like +what I’d think Christian Science ought to sound like.” + +“Or theosophy,” Aunt Mildred volunteered. “Some message to a neophyte.” + +“Go on, read the rest,” her husband commanded. + +“This puts you in touch with the mightier spirits,” Lute read. “You +shall become one with us, and your name shall be ‘Arya,’ and you +shall—Conqueror 20, Empire 12, Columbia Mountain 18, Midway 140—and, +and that is all. Oh, no! here’s a last flourish, Arya, from Kandor—that +must surely be the Mahatma.” + +“I’d like to have you explain that theosophy stuff on the basis of the +subconscious mind, Chris,” Uncle Robert challenged. + +Chris shrugged his shoulders. “No explanation. You must have got a +message intended for some one else.” + +“Lines were crossed, eh?” Uncle Robert chuckled. “Multiplex spiritual +wireless telegraphy, I’d call it.” + +“It IS nonsense,” Mrs. Grantly said. “I never knew Planchette to behave +so outrageously. There are disturbing influences at work. I felt them +from the first. Perhaps it is because you are all making too much fun of +it. You are too hilarious.” + +“A certain befitting gravity should grace the occasion,” Chris agreed, +placing his hand on Planchette. “Let me try. And not one of you must +laugh or giggle, or even think ‘laugh’ or ‘giggle.’ And if you dare +to snort, even once, Uncle Robert, there is no telling what occult +vengeance may be wreaked upon you.” + +“I’ll be good,” Uncle Robert rejoined. “But if I really must snort, may +I silently slip away?” + +Chris nodded. His hand had already begun to work. There had been no +preliminary twitchings nor tentative essays at writing. At once his hand +had started off, and Planchette was moving swiftly and smoothly across +the paper. + +“Look at him,” Lute whispered to her aunt. “See how white he is.” + +Chris betrayed disturbance at the sound of her voice, and thereafter +silence was maintained. Only could be heard the steady scratching of the +pencil. Suddenly, as though it had been stung, he jerked his hand away. +With a sigh and a yawn he stepped back from the table, then glanced with +the curiosity of a newly awakened man at their faces. + +“I think I wrote something,” he said. + +“I should say you did,” Mrs. Grantly remarked with satisfaction, holding +up the sheet of paper and glancing at it. + +“Read it aloud,” Uncle Robert said. + +“Here it is, then. It begins with ‘beware’ written three times, and in +much larger characters than the rest of the writing. BEWARE! BEWARE! +BEWARE! Chris Dunbar, I intend to destroy you. I have already made two +attempts upon your life, and failed. I shall yet succeed. So sure am I +that I shall succeed that I dare to tell you. I do not need to tell you +why. In your own heart you know. The wrong you are doing—And here it +abruptly ends.” + +Mrs. Grantly laid the paper down on the table and looked at Chris, who +had already become the centre of all eyes, and who was yawning as from +an overpowering drowsiness. + +“Quite a sanguinary turn, I should say,” Uncle Robert remarked. + +“I have already made two attempts upon your life,” Mrs. Grantly read +from the paper, which she was going over a second time. + +“On my life?” Chris demanded between yawns. “Why, my life hasn’t been +attempted even once. My! I am sleepy!” + +“Ah, my boy, you are thinking of flesh-and-blood men,” Uncle Robert +laughed. “But this is a spirit. Your life has been attempted by unseen +things. Most likely ghostly hands have tried to throttle you in your +sleep.” + +“Oh, Chris!” Lute cried impulsively. “This afternoon! The hand you said +must have seized your rein!” + +“But I was joking,” he objected. + +“Nevertheless ...” Lute left her thought unspoken. + +Mrs. Grantly had become keen on the scent. “What was that about this +afternoon? Was your life in danger?” + +Chris’s drowsiness had disappeared. “I’m becoming interested myself,” + he acknowledged. “We haven’t said anything about it. Ban broke his back +this afternoon. He threw himself off the bank, and I ran the risk of +being caught underneath.” + +“I wonder, I wonder,” Mrs. Grantly communed aloud. “There is something +in this.... It is a warning.... Ah! You were hurt yesterday riding Miss +Story’s horse! That makes the two attempts!” + +She looked triumphantly at them. Planchette had been vindicated. + +“Nonsense,” laughed Uncle Robert, but with a slight hint of irritation +in his manner. “Such things do not happen these days. This is the +twentieth century, my dear madam. The thing, at the very latest, smacks +of mediaevalism.” + +“I have had such wonderful tests with Planchette,” Mrs. Grantly began, +then broke off suddenly to go to the table and place her hand on the +board. + +“Who are you?” she asked. “What is your name?” + +The board immediately began to write. By this time all heads, with the +exception of Mr. Barton’s, were bent over the table and following the +pencil. + +“It’s Dick,” Aunt Mildred cried, a note of the mildly hysterical in her +voice. + +Her husband straightened up, his face for the first time grave. + +“It’s Dick’s signature,” he said. “I’d know his fist in a thousand.” + +“‘Dick Curtis,’” Mrs. Grantly read aloud. “Who is Dick Curtis?” + +“By Jove, that’s remarkable!” Mr. Barton broke in. “The handwriting in +both instances is the same. Clever, I should say, really clever,” he +added admiringly. + +“Let me see,” Uncle Robert demanded, taking the paper and examining it. +“Yes, it is Dick’s handwriting.” + +“But who is Dick?” Mrs. Grantly insisted. “Who is this Dick Curtis?” + +“Dick Curtis, why, he was Captain Richard Curtis,” Uncle Robert +answered. + +“He was Lute’s father,” Aunt Mildred supplemented. “Lute took our name. +She never saw him. He died when she was a few weeks old. He was my +brother.” + +“Remarkable, most remarkable.” Mrs. Grantly was revolving the message +in her mind. “There were two attempts on Mr. Dunbar’s life. The +subconscious mind cannot explain that, for none of us knew of the +accident to-day.” + +“I knew,” Chris answered, “and it was I that operated Planchette. The +explanation is simple.” + +“But the handwriting,” interposed Mr. Barton. “What you wrote and what +Mrs. Grantly wrote are identical.” + +Chris bent over and compared the handwriting. + +“Besides,” Mrs. Grantly cried, “Mr. Story recognizes the handwriting.” + +She looked at him for verification. + +He nodded his head. “Yes, it is Dick’s fist. I’ll swear to that.” + +But to Lute had come a visioning. While the rest argued pro and con and +the air was filled with phrases,—“psychic phenomena,” “self-hypnotism,” + “residuum of unexplained truth,” and “spiritism,”—she was reviving +mentally the girlhood pictures she had conjured of this soldier-father +she had never seen. She possessed his sword, there were several +old-fashioned daguerreotypes, there was much that had been said of him, +stories told of him—and all this had constituted the material out of +which she had builded him in her childhood fancy. + +“There is the possibility of one mind unconsciously suggesting to +another mind,” Mrs. Grantly was saying; but through Lute’s mind was +trooping her father on his great roan war-horse. Now he was leading +his men. She saw him on lonely scouts, or in the midst of the yelling +Indians at Salt Meadows, when of his command he returned with one man +in ten. And in the picture she had of him, in the physical semblance she +had made of him, was reflected his spiritual nature, reflected by her +worshipful artistry in form and feature and expression—his bravery, +his quick temper, his impulsive championship, his madness of wrath in +a righteous cause, his warm generosity and swift forgiveness, and his +chivalry that epitomized codes and ideals primitive as the days of +knighthood. And first, last, and always, dominating all, she saw in the +face of him the hot passion and quickness of deed that had earned for +him the name “Fighting Dick Curtis.” + +“Let me put it to the test,” she heard Mrs. Grantly saying. “Let Miss +Story try Planchette. There may be a further message.” + +“No, no, I beg of you,” Aunt Mildred interposed. “It is too uncanny. +It surely is wrong to tamper with the dead. Besides, I am nervous. Or, +better, let me go to bed, leaving you to go on with your experiments. +That will be the best way, and you can tell me in the morning.” Mingled +with the “Good-nights,” were half-hearted protests from Mrs. Grantly, as +Aunt Mildred withdrew. + +“Robert can return,” she called back, “as soon as he has seen me to my +tent.” + +“It would be a shame to give it up now,” Mrs. Grantly said. “There is no +telling what we are on the verge of. Won’t you try it, Miss Story?” + +Lute obeyed, but when she placed her hand on the board she was conscious +of a vague and nameless fear at this toying with the supernatural. She +was twentieth-century, and the thing in essence, as her uncle had said, +was mediaeval. Yet she could not shake off the instinctive fear that +arose in her—man’s inheritance from the wild and howling ages when +his hairy, apelike prototype was afraid of the dark and personified the +elements into things of fear. + +But as the mysterious influence seized her hand and sent it meriting +across the paper, all the unusual passed out of the situation and she +was unaware of more than a feeble curiosity. For she was intent on +another visioning—this time of her mother, who was also unremembered +in the flesh. Not sharp and vivid like that of her father, but dim and +nebulous was the picture she shaped of her mother—a saint’s head in an +aureole of sweetness and goodness and meekness, and withal, shot +through with a hint of reposeful determination, of will, stubborn and +unobtrusive, that in life had expressed itself mainly in resignation. + +Lute’s hand had ceased moving, and Mrs. Grantly was already reading the +message that had been written. + +“It is a different handwriting,” she said. “A woman’s hand. ‘Martha,’ it +is signed. Who is Martha?” + +Lute was not surprised. “It is my mother,” she said simply. “What does +she say?” + +She had not been made sleepy, as Chris had; but the keen edge of her +vitality had been blunted, and she was experiencing a sweet and pleasing +lassitude. And while the message was being read, in her eyes persisted +the vision of her mother. + +“Dear child,” Mrs. Grantly read, “do not mind him. He was ever quick of +speech and rash. Be no niggard with your love. Love cannot hurt you. +To deny love is to sin. Obey your heart and you can do no wrong. Obey +worldly considerations, obey pride, obey those that prompt you against +your heart’s prompting, and you do sin. Do not mind your father. He is +angry now, as was his way in the earth-life; but he will come to see +the wisdom of my counsel, for this, too, was his way in the earth-life. +Love, my child, and love well.—Martha.” + +“Let me see it,” Lute cried, seizing the paper and devouring the +handwriting with her eyes. She was thrilling with unexpressed love for +the mother she had never seen, and this written speech from the grave +seemed to give more tangibility to her having ever existed, than did the +vision of her. + +“This IS remarkable,” Mrs. Grantly was reiterating. “There was never +anything like it. Think of it, my dear, both your father and mother here +with us to-night.” + +Lute shivered. The lassitude was gone, and she was her natural self +again, vibrant with the instinctive fear of things unseen. And it +was offensive to her mind that, real or illusion, the presence or the +memorized existences of her father and mother should be touched by these +two persons who were practically strangers—Mrs. Grantly, unhealthy and +morbid, and Mr. Barton, stolid and stupid with a grossness both of +the flesh and the spirit. And it further seemed a trespass that these +strangers should thus enter into the intimacy between her and Chris. + +She could hear the steps of her uncle approaching, and the situation +flashed upon her, luminous and clear. She hurriedly folded the sheet of +paper and thrust it into her bosom. + +“Don’t say anything to him about this second message, Mrs. Grantly, +please, and Mr. Barton. Nor to Aunt Mildred. It would only cause them +irritation and needless anxiety.” + +In her mind there was also the desire to protect her lover, for she knew +that the strain of his present standing with her aunt and uncle would +be added to, unconsciously in their minds, by the weird message of +Planchette. + +“And please don’t let us have any more Planchette,” Lute continued +hastily. “Let us forget all the nonsense that has occurred.” + +“‘Nonsense,’ my dear child?” Mrs. Grantly was indignantly protesting +when Uncle Robert strode into the circle. + +“Hello!” he demanded. “What’s being done?” + +“Too late,” Lute answered lightly. “No more stock quotations for you. +Planchette is adjourned, and we’re just winding up the discussion of the +theory of it. Do you know how late it is?” + + * * * + +“Well, what did you do last night after we left?” + +“Oh, took a stroll,” Chris answered. + +Lute’s eyes were quizzical as she asked with a tentativeness that was +palpably assumed, “With—a—with Mr. Barton?” + +“Why, yes.” + +“And a smoke?” + +“Yes; and now what’s it all about?” + +Lute broke into merry laughter. “Just as I told you that you would do. +Am I not a prophet? But I knew before I saw you that my forecast had +come true. I have just left Mr. Barton, and I knew he had walked with +you last night, for he is vowing by all his fetishes and idols that you +are a perfectly splendid young man. I could see it with my eyes shut. +The Chris Dunbar glamour has fallen upon him. But I have not finished +the catechism by any means. Where have you been all morning?” + +“Where I am going to take you this afternoon.” + +“You plan well without knowing my wishes.” + +“I knew well what your wishes are. It is to see a horse I have found.” + +Her voice betrayed her delight, as she cried, “Oh, good!” + +“He is a beauty,” Chris said. + +But her face had suddenly gone grave, and apprehension brooded in her +eyes. + +“He’s called Comanche,” Chris went on. “A beauty, a regular beauty, the +perfect type of the Californian cow-pony. And his lines—why, what’s the +matter?” + +“Don’t let us ride any more,” Lute said, “at least for a while. Really, +I think I am a tiny bit tired of it, too.” + +He was looking at her in astonishment, and she was bravely meeting his +eyes. + +“I see hearses and flowers for you,” he began, “and a funeral oration; I +see the end of the world, and the stars falling out of the sky, and the +heavens rolling up as a scroll; I see the living and the dead gathered +together for the final judgement, the sheep and the goats, the lambs and +the rams and all the rest of it, the white-robed saints, the sound of +golden harps, and the lost souls howling as they fall into the Pit—all +this I see on the day that you, Lute Story, no longer care to ride a +horse. A horse, Lute! a horse!” + +“For a while, at least,” she pleaded. + +“Ridiculous!” he cried. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you well?—you who +are always so abominably and adorably well!” + +“No, it’s not that,” she answered. “I know it is ridiculous, Chris, I +know it, but the doubt will arise. I cannot help it. You always say I +am so sanely rooted to the earth and reality and all that, but—perhaps +it’s superstition, I don’t know—but the whole occurrence, the messages +of Planchette, the possibility of my father’s hand, I know not how, +reaching, out to Ban’s rein and hurling him and you to death, the +correspondence between my father’s statement that he has twice attempted +your life and the fact that in the last two days your life has twice +been endangered by horses—my father was a great horseman—all this, I +say, causes the doubt to arise in my mind. What if there be something in +it? I am not so sure. Science may be too dogmatic in its denial of the +unseen. The forces of the unseen, of the spirit, may well be too +subtle, too sublimated, for science to lay hold of, and recognize, and +formulate. Don’t you see, Chris, that there is rationality in the very +doubt? It may be a very small doubt—oh, so small; but I love you too +much to run even that slight risk. Besides, I am a woman, and +that should in itself fully account for my predisposition toward +superstition. + +“Yes, yes, I know, call it unreality. But I’ve heard you paradoxing upon +the reality of the unreal—the reality of delusion to the mind that is +sick. And so with me, if you will; it is delusion and unreal, but to me, +constituted as I am, it is very real—is real as a nightmare is real, in +the throes of it, before one awakes.” + +“The most logical argument for illogic I have ever heard,” Chris smiled. +“It is a good gaming proposition, at any rate. You manage to embrace +more chances in your philosophy than do I in mine. It reminds me of +Sam—the gardener you had a couple of years ago. I overheard him and +Martin arguing in the stable. You know what a bigoted atheist Martin is. +Well, Martin had deluged Sam with floods of logic. Sam pondered awhile, +and then he said, ‘Foh a fack, Mis’ Martin, you jis’ tawk like a house +afire; but you ain’t got de show I has.’ ‘How’s that?’ Martin asked. +‘Well, you see, Mis’ Martin, you has one chance to mah two.’ ‘I don’t +see it,’ Martin said. ‘Mis’ Martin, it’s dis way. You has jis’ de +chance, lak you say, to become worms foh de fruitification of de cabbage +garden. But I’s got de chance to lif’ mah voice to de glory of de Lawd +as I go paddin’ dem golden streets—along ‘ith de chance to be jis’ +worms along ‘ith you, Mis’ Martin.’” + +“You refuse to take me seriously,” Lute said, when she had laughed her +appreciation. + +“How can I take that Planchette rigmarole seriously?” he asked. + +“You don’t explain it—the handwriting of my father, which Uncle Robert +recognized—oh, the whole thing, you don’t explain it.” + +“I don’t know all the mysteries of mind,” Chris answered. “But I believe +such phenomena will all yield to scientific explanation in the not +distant future.” + +“Just the same, I have a sneaking desire to find out some more from +Planchette,” Lute confessed. “The board is still down in the dining +room. We could try it now, you and I, and no one would know.” + +Chris caught her hand, crying: “Come on! It will be a lark.” + +Hand in hand they ran down the path to the tree-pillared room. + +“The camp is deserted,” Lute said, as she placed Planchette on the +table. “Mrs. Grantly and Aunt Mildred are lying down, and Mr. Barton has +gone off with Uncle Robert. There is nobody to disturb us.” She placed +her hand on the board. “Now begin.” + +For a few minutes nothing happened. Chris started to speak, but she +hushed him to silence. The preliminary twitchings had appeared in her +hand and arm. Then the pencil began to write. They read the message, +word by word, as it was written: + +There is wisdom greater than the wisdom of reason. Love proceeds not out +of the dry-as-dust way of the mind. Love is of the heart, and is +beyond all reason, and logic, and philosophy. Trust your own heart, +my daughter. And if your heart bids you have faith in your lover, then +laugh at the mind and its cold wisdom, and obey your heart, and have +faith in your lover.—Martha. + +“But that whole message is the dictate of your own heart,” Chris +cried. “Don’t you see, Lute? The thought is your very own, and your +subconscious mind has expressed it there on the paper.” + +“But there is one thing I don’t see,” she objected. + +“And that?” + +“Is the handwriting. Look at it. It does not resemble mine at all. It +is mincing, it is old-fashioned, it is the old-fashioned feminine of a +generation ago.” + +“But you don’t mean to tell me that you really believe that this is a +message from the dead?” he interrupted. + +“I don’t know, Chris,” she wavered. “I am sure I don’t know.” + +“It is absurd!” he cried. “These are cobwebs of fancy. When one dies, he +is dead. He is dust. He goes to the worms, as Martin says. The dead? I +laugh at the dead. They do not exist. They are not. I defy the powers of +the grave, the men dead and dust and gone! + +“And what have you to say to that?” he challenged, placing his hand on +Planchette. + +On the instant his hand began to write. Both were startled by the +suddenness of it. The message was brief: + +BEWARE! BEWARE! BEWARE! + +He was distinctly sobered, but he laughed. “It is like a miracle play. +Death we have, speaking to us from the grave. But Good Deeds, where art +thou? And Kindred? and Joy? and Household Goods? and Friendship? and all +the goodly company?” + +But Lute did not share his bravado. Her fright showed itself in her +face. She laid her trembling hand on his arm. + +“Oh, Chris, let us stop. I am sorry we began it. Let us leave the +quiet dead to their rest. It is wrong. It must be wrong. I confess I +am affected by it. I cannot help it. As my body is trembling, so is +my soul. This speech of the grave, this dead man reaching out from the +mould of a generation to protect me from you. There is reason in it. +There is the living mystery that prevents you from marrying me. Were my +father alive, he would protect me from you. Dead, he still strives to +protect me. His hands, his ghostly hands, are against your life!” + +“Do be calm,” Chris said soothingly. “Listen to me. It is all a lark. We +are playing with the subjective forces of our own being, with phenomena +which science has not yet explained, that is all. Psychology is so young +a science. The subconscious mind has just been discovered, one might +say. It is all mystery as yet; the laws of it are yet to be formulated. +This is simply unexplained phenomena. But that is no reason that we +should immediately account for it by labelling it spiritism. As yet we +do not know, that is all. As for Planchette—” + +He abruptly ceased, for at that moment, to enforce his remark, he had +placed his hand on Planchette, and at that moment his hand had been +seized, as by a paroxysm, and sent dashing, willy-nilly, across the +paper, writing as the hand of an angry person would write. + +“No, I don’t care for any more of it,” Lute said, when the message was +completed. “It is like witnessing a fight between you and my father in +the flesh. There is the savor in it of struggle and blows.” + +She pointed out a sentence that read: “You cannot escape me nor the just +punishment that is yours!” + +“Perhaps I visualize too vividly for my own comfort, for I can see his +hands at your throat. I know that he is, as you say, dead and dust, but +for all that, I can see him as a man that is alive and walks the earth; +I see the anger in his face, the anger and the vengeance, and I see it +all directed against you.” + +She crumpled up the scrawled sheets of paper, and put Planchette away. + +“We won’t bother with it any more,” Chris said. “I didn’t think it would +affect you so strongly. But it’s all subjective, I’m sure, with possibly +a bit of suggestion thrown in—that and nothing more. And the whole +strain of our situation has made conditions unusually favorable for +striking phenomena.” + +“And about our situation,” Lute said, as they went slowly up the path +they had run down. “What we are to do, I don’t know. Are we to go on, as +we have gone on? What is best? Have you thought of anything?” + +He debated for a few steps. “I have thought of telling your uncle and +aunt.” + +“What you couldn’t tell me?” she asked quickly. + +“No,” he answered slowly; “but just as much as I have told you. I have +no right to tell them more than I have told you.” + +This time it was she that debated. “No, don’t tell them,” she said +finally. “They wouldn’t understand. I don’t understand, for that matter, +but I have faith in you, and in the nature of things they are not +capable of this same implicit faith. You raise up before me a mystery +that prevents our marriage, and I believe you; but they could not +believe you without doubts arising as to the wrong and ill-nature of the +mystery. Besides, it would but make their anxieties greater.” + +“I should go away, I know I should go away,” he said, half under his +breath. “And I can. I am no weakling. Because I have failed to remain +away once, is no reason that I shall fail again.” + +She caught her breath with a quick gasp. “It is like a bereavement to +hear you speak of going away and remaining away. I should never see you +again. It is too terrible. And do not reproach yourself for weakness. +It is I who am to blame. It is I who prevented you from remaining away +before, I know. I wanted you so. I want you so. + +“There is nothing to be done, Chris, nothing to be done but to go on +with it and let it work itself out somehow. That is one thing we are +sure of: it will work out somehow.” + +“But it would be easier if I went away,” he suggested. + +“I am happier when you are here.” + +“The cruelty of circumstance,” he muttered savagely. + +“Go or stay—that will be part of the working out. But I do not want you +to go, Chris; you know that. And now no more about it. Talk cannot mend +it. Let us never mention it again—unless ... unless some time, some +wonderful, happy time, you can come to me and say: ‘Lute, all is well +with me. The mystery no longer binds me. I am free.’ Until that time let +us bury it, along with Planchette and all the rest, and make the most of +the little that is given us. + +“And now, to show you how prepared I am to make the most of that little, +I am even ready to go with you this afternoon to see the horse—though +I wish you wouldn’t ride any more ... for a few days, anyway, or for a +week. What did you say was his name?” + +“Comanche,” he answered. “I know you will like him.” + + * * * + +Chris lay on his back, his head propped by the bare jutting wall of +stone, his gaze attentively directed across the canyon to the opposing +tree-covered slope. There was a sound of crashing through underbrush, +the ringing of steel-shod hoofs on stone, and an occasional and mossy +descent of a dislodged boulder that bounded from the hill and fetched +up with a final splash in the torrent that rushed over a wild chaos of +rocks beneath him. Now and again he caught glimpses, framed in green +foliage, of the golden brown of Lute’s corduroy riding-habit and of the +bay horse that moved beneath her. + +She rode out into an open space where a loose earth-slide denied +lodgement to trees and grass. She halted the horse at the brink of the +slide and glanced down it with a measuring eye. Forty feet beneath, +the slide terminated in a small, firm-surfaced terrace, the banked +accumulation of fallen earth and gravel. + +“It’s a good test,” she called across the canyon. “I’m going to put him +down it.” + +The animal gingerly launched himself on the treacherous footing, +irregularly losing and gaining his hind feet, keeping his fore +legs stiff, and steadily and calmly, without panic or nervousness, +extricating the fore feet as fast as they sank too deep into the sliding +earth that surged along in a wave before him. When the firm footing +at the bottom was reached, he strode out on the little terrace with a +quickness and springiness of gait and with glintings of muscular fires +that gave the lie to the calm deliberation of his movements on the +slide. + +“Bravo!” Chris shouted across the canyon, clapping his hands. + +“The wisest-footed, clearest-headed horse I ever saw,” Lute called back, +as she turned the animal to the side and dropped down a broken slope of +rubble and into the trees again. + +Chris followed her by the sound of her progress, and by occasional +glimpses where the foliage was more open, as she zigzagged down the +steep and trailless descent. She emerged below him at the rugged rim +of the torrent, dropped the horse down a three-foot wall, and halted to +study the crossing. + +Four feet out in the stream, a narrow ledge thrust above the surface of +the water. Beyond the ledge boiled an angry pool. But to the left, from +the ledge, and several feet lower, was a tiny bed of gravel. A giant +boulder prevented direct access to the gravel bed. The only way to gain +it was by first leaping to the ledge of rock. She studied it carefully, +and the tightening of her bridle-arm advertised that she had made up her +mind. + +Chris, in his anxiety, had sat up to observe more closely what she +meditated. + +“Don’t tackle it,” he called. + +“I have faith in Comanche,” she called in return. + +“He can’t make that side-jump to the gravel,” Chris warned. “He’ll +never keep his legs. He’ll topple over into the pool. Not one horse in a +thousand could do that stunt.” + +“And Comanche is that very horse,” she answered. “Watch him.” + +She gave the animal his head, and he leaped cleanly and accurately to +the ledge, striking with feet close together on the narrow space. On +the instant he struck, Lute lightly touched his neck with the rein, +impelling him to the left; and in that instant, tottering on the +insecure footing, with front feet slipping over into the pool beyond, +he lifted on his hind legs, with a half turn, sprang to the left, and +dropped squarely down to the tiny gravel bed. An easy jump brought him +across the stream, and Lute angled him up the bank and halted before her +lover. + +“Well?” she asked. + +“I am all tense,” Chris answered. “I was holding my breath.” + +“Buy him, by all means,” Lute said, dismounting. “He is a bargain. I +could dare anything on him. I never in my life had such confidence in a +horse’s feet.” + +“His owner says that he has never been known to lose his feet, that it +is impossible to get him down.” + +“Buy him, buy him at once,” she counselled, “before the man changes his +mind. If you don’t, I shall. Oh, such feet! I feel such confidence in +them that when I am on him I don’t consider he has feet at all. And he’s +quick as a cat, and instantly obedient. Bridle-wise is no name for it! +You could guide him with silken threads. Oh, I know I’m enthusiastic, +but if you don’t buy him, Chris. I shall. Remember, I’ve second +refusal.” + +Chris smiled agreement as he changed the saddles. Meanwhile she compared +the two horses. + +“Of course he doesn’t match Dolly the way Ban did,” she concluded +regretfully; “but his coat is splendid just the same. And think of the +horse that is under the coat!” + +Chris gave her a hand into the saddle, and followed her up the slope to +the county road. She reined in suddenly, saying: + +“We won’t go straight back to camp.” + +“You forget dinner,” he warned. + +“But I remember Comanche,” she retorted. “We’ll ride directly over to +the ranch and buy him. Dinner will keep.” + +“But the cook won’t,” Chris laughed. “She’s already threatened to leave, +what of our late-comings.” + +“Even so,” was the answer. “Aunt Mildred may have to get another cook, +but at any rate we shall have got Comanche.” + +They turned the horses in the other direction, and took the climb of the +Nun Canyon road that led over the divide and down into the Napa Valley. +But the climb was hard, the going was slow. Sometimes they topped the +bed of the torrent by hundreds of feet, and again they dipped down and +crossed and recrossed it twenty times in twice as many rods. They rode +through the deep shade of clean-bunked maples and towering redwoods, to +emerge on open stretches of mountain shoulder where the earth lay dry +and cracked under the sun. + +On one such shoulder they emerged, where the road stretched level before +them, for a quarter of a mile. On one side rose the huge bulk of the +mountain. On the other side the steep wall of the canyon fell away in +impossible slopes and sheer drops to the torrent at the bottom. It was +an abyss of green beauty and shady depths, pierced by vagrant shafts +of the sun and mottled here and there by the sun’s broader blazes. The +sound of rushing water ascended on the windless air, and there was a hum +of mountain bees. + +The horses broke into an easy lope. Chris rode on the outside, looking +down into the great depths and pleasuring with his eyes in what he +saw. Dissociating itself from the murmur of the bees, a murmur arose of +falling water. It grew louder with every stride of the horses. + +“Look!” he cried. + +Lute leaned well out from her horse to see. Beneath them the water slid +foaming down a smooth-faced rock to the lip, whence it leaped clear—a +pulsating ribbon of white, a-breath with movement, ever falling and ever +remaining, changing its substance but never its form, an aerial waterway +as immaterial as gauze and as permanent as the hills, that spanned space +and the free air from the lip of the rock to the tops of the trees far +below, into whose green screen it disappeared to fall into a secret +pool. + +They had flashed past. The descending water became a distant murmur that +merged again into the murmur of the bees and ceased. Swayed by a common +impulse, they looked at each other. + +“Oh, Chris, it is good to be alive ... and to have you here by my side!” + +He answered her by the warm light in his eyes. + +All things tended to key them to an exquisite pitch—the movement of +their bodies, at one with the moving bodies of the animals beneath them; +the gently stimulated blood caressing the flesh through and through with +the soft vigors of health; the warm air fanning their faces, flowing +over the skin with balmy and tonic touch, permeating them and bathing +them, subtly, with faint, sensuous delight; and the beauty of the world, +more subtly still, flowing upon them and bathing them in the delight +that is of the spirit and is personal and holy, that is inexpressible +yet communicable by the flash of an eye and the dissolving of the veils +of the soul. + +So looked they at each other, the horses bounding beneath them, the +spring of the world and the spring of their youth astir in their blood, +the secret of being trembling in their eyes to the brink of disclosure, +as if about to dispel, with one magic word, all the irks and riddles of +existence. + +The road curved before them, so that the upper reaches of the canyon +could be seen, the distant bed of it towering high above their heads. +They were rounding the curve, leaning toward the inside, gazing before +them at the swift-growing picture. There was no sound of warning. She +heard nothing, but even before the horse went down she experienced +the feeling that the unison of the two leaping animals was broken. She +turned her head, and so quickly that she saw Comanche fall. It was not a +stumble nor a trip. He fell as though, abruptly, in midleap, he had died +or been struck a stunning blow. + +And in that moment she remembered Planchette; it seared her brain as +a lightning-flash of all-embracing memory. Her horse was back on its +haunches, the weight of her body on the reins; but her head was turned +and her eyes were on the falling Comanche. He struck the road-bed +squarely, with his legs loose and lifeless beneath him. + +It all occurred in one of those age-long seconds that embrace an +eternity of happening. There was a slight but perceptible rebound from +the impact of Comanche’s body with the earth. The violence with which +he struck forced the air from his great lungs in an audible groan. His +momentum swept him onward and over the edge. The weight of the rider on +his neck turned him over head first as he pitched to the fall. + +She was off her horse, she knew not how, and to the edge. Her lover was +out of the saddle and clear of Comanche, though held to the animal by +his right foot, which was caught in the stirrup. The slope was too steep +for them to come to a stop. Earth and small stones, dislodged by their +struggles, were rolling down with them and before them in a miniature +avalanche. She stood very quietly, holding one hand against her heart +and gazing down. But while she saw the real happening, in her eyes was +also the vision of her father dealing the spectral blow that had smashed +Comanche down in mid-leap and sent horse and rider hurtling over the +edge. + +Beneath horse and man the steep terminated in an up-and-down wall, from +the base of which, in turn, a second slope ran down to a second wall. +A third slope terminated in a final wall that based itself on the +canyon-bed four hundred feet beneath the point where the girl stood and +watched. She could see Chris vainly kicking his leg to free the foot +from the trap of the stirrup. Comanche fetched up hard against an +outputting point of rock. For a fraction of a second his fall was +stopped, and in the slight interval the man managed to grip hold of a +young shoot of manzanita. Lute saw him complete the grip with his other +hand. Then Comanche’s fall began again. She saw the stirrup-strap draw +taut, then her lover’s body and arms. The manzanita shoot yielded its +roots, and horse and man plunged over the edge and out of sight. + +They came into view on the next slope, together and rolling over and +over, with sometimes the man under and sometimes the horse. Chris no +longer struggled, and together they dashed over to the third slope. Near +the edge of the final wall, Comanche lodged on a buttock of stone. He +lay quietly, and near him, still attached to him by the stirrup, face +downward, lay his rider. + +“If only he will lie quietly,” Lute breathed aloud, her mind at work on +the means of rescue. + +But she saw Comanche begin to struggle again, and clear on her vision, +it seemed, was the spectral arm of her father clutching the reins and +dragging the animal over. Comanche floundered across the hummock, the +inert body following, and together, horse and man, they plunged from +sight. They did not appear again. They had fetched bottom. + +Lute looked about her. She stood alone on the world. Her lover was gone. +There was naught to show of his existence, save the marks of Comanche’s +hoofs on the road and of his body where it had slid over the brink. + +“Chris!” she called once, and twice; but she called hopelessly. + +Out of the depths, on the windless air, arose only the murmur of bees +and of running water. + +“Chris!” she called yet a third time, and sank slowly down in the dust +of the road. + +She felt the touch of Dolly’s muzzle on her arm, and she leaned her head +against the mare’s neck and waited. She knew not why she waited, nor for +what, only there seemed nothing else but waiting left for her to do. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1089 *** |